New Sawmill in Emmett

I attended the opening and ribbon cutting of the first new sawmill opened in the last 15 years. Emerald Forest Products is owned by Dick Vinson, Dennis Drake, and the Pruyn family. It will provide 47 new jobs. The sawmill is located on the old Boise-Cascade sawmill site in Emmett.

Our standard of living and quality of life depend upon access to natural resources. That is where our wealth comes from. The saw mill cost $10 million to open. This is an investment of $212,000 per employee. Another 30 jobs will be created to support the mill in related industries. This mill and the jobs created add to our tax base and our overall standard of living.

By contrast, the Health and Welfare budget was $1.7 billion in Idaho last year. If that $1.7 billion had been used to invest in production facilities at the rate of $212,000 per employee, Idaho could have had 8,018 new jobs created to run the facilities plus another 5,100 support jobs. Imagine creating 13,000 new jobs. Instead, we are spending $1.7 billion and the money is simply gone. No new buildings, no new jobs, and no new businesses that pay taxes.

The lost economic opportunity is one of the problems with our current entitlement system. At the end of 10 years we could have 130,000 new jobs with the money now being spent on government social programs. Now, I understand that we can’t simply eliminate all social programs; but, we should be able to reduce the costs of the programs and free up capital for business expansion. A job is a higher form of charity than a government handout.

Public School Funding and Natural Resources

Many times this last week employees of public education have asked me to find more money for public schools. This is a polite way of saying, please raise taxes.

I tell them that I cannot; but, I do explain the link between economic activity and the five natural resources (mining, logging, manufacturing, agriculture, and energy). Our economy cannot improve until at least two or three of these industries start growing. Simply increasing the money supply cannot cause long-term stimulation of the economy; only primary production can.

The natural resource industries cannot grow until the EPA backs off and allows use of the land. The EPA has so many regulation that, in effect, they are stopping most new economic activity. In other words, radical environmentalism being taught in our public schools and in the media needs to be replaced with balanced environmentalism where natural resource industries can use the land. If this does not happen, funds to public schools and other social programs will continue to decline. I don’t see any other outcome.

Will public school teachers and the public at large demand the government to allow the use of the land by natural resource industries? When they do, we have hope the economy will improve and public funding can stabilize.