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The U.S. economy has gone from bad to worse to worst over the past year. The current unemployment rate of 7.2 percent is the highest in 15 years, with more layoffs likely. Major companies have declared bankruptcy, while others teeter on the brink. Outgoing President George W. Bush opposed all but the barest economic stimulus measures, leaving the new Obama administration and 111th Congress to clean up the mess.That's from the woefully misnamed Center for American Progress, where nobody is sufficiently curious to ask: Does "clean energy" have some special economic value?
Thankfully, the days of inertia and inaction are over. As President-elect Barack Obama prepares to ascend to the nation’s highest office, he travels today to Bedford Heights, Ohio. There he will visit a wind turbine factory to urge Congress to promptly enact an $850 billion economic stimulus and recovery plan, which includes an unprecedented $77 billion for clean energy programs.
I mean, suppose that the same $77 billion were spent on -- oh, I don't know -- let's say, health care. Why is the provision of health care less worthy of $77 billion in taxpayer dollars than the development of "clean energy"?
At least we know that there is an actual market demand for health care, whereas "clean energy" is so inherently inefficient that nobody will pay what it costs to produce. If it weren't for government subsidies and mandates, we wouldn't be putting ethanol in our gas or building wind farms.
No, it's not enough that idiot liberals want to pour out $850 billion in money we don't have in order to try a neo-Keynesian solution to a financial problem that can't possibly be fixed by such interventionist "pump priming." (It won't work!) The Center for American Progress is excitedly celebrating the fact that nearly a tenth of the "stimulus" package will be spent on the most economically inefficient uses imaginable.
Maybe for $77 billion dollars, some of these idiots could buy what they really need: A clue.
Oh, look! Yet another uneconomic stimulus: More money for mass transit projects that will never recoup their costs and require constant additional injections of taxpayer funds merely to meet operation and maintenance costs.
Ron Paul speaks economic truth to idiotic power:
We are at an economic dead-end and those in power are in denial. The truth is our economic problems are due to loose monetary policy, central economic planning, and the parasitic expenses of government. Unless we assess these problems honestly, we unfortunately have a long way to go until, like the junkie, we hit rock bottom.Weimar America, here we come!
Indeed, I believe you are quite right to abjure this delusory modern day jousting at windmills by the environauts. However, the solution to the current deleveraging of the multi-trillion dollar speculative derivatives bubble is neither neo-Keysnianism nor gold bug/Ron Paul phantasmagoria. Both of these mindsets hold that wealth is a material "thing." Either money for the Keynesian monetarist or some quantity of gold for the anti National Bank Jacksonian populists. These are just two sides of the same coin. The crisis we have now to overcome is due to the abandonment of the funding of our physical economy. It has broken down. Trying to save the bubble of speculation is like a doctor trying to save the cancer rather than the patient. We need to put the speculators through chapter 11 bankruptcy and set up a new credit creation mechanism not controlled by Wall Street ala the Federal Reserve. We need credit investments in infrastructure, rail, power grids, waterways, and power production, i.e. nuclear. It doesn't matter if we hoard all the gold in the world in our fallout shelters with our tinfoil hats. Investment in that which progressively improves the standard of living is what we must move into. If we don't then I'm afraid we will live to sorely regret it.
ReplyDeletenobody will pay what it costs to produce
ReplyDeleteWrong.
You will be forced to pay whatEVER it costs.
That's another reason for the 2nd Amendment, my friend.