Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
There’s a new study out, under the imprimatur of the Energy Institute of the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, California, entitled The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits. As the title implies, it looks at who actually profited from the various “green energy” tax credits across the United States. SPOILER ALERT! It wasn’t the poor folks.
How much money are we talking about? Well, the paper says that from 2006 to 2012, the taxpayers have been on the hook for $18 BILLION DOLLARS to fund these subsidies, money that would have otherwise gone into the General Fund.
And just how much money is eighteen billion dollars? Here’s one way to think about eighteen gigabucks, regarding safe, clean drinking water.
Water Wells for Africa reports from their ongoing projects that on average it has cost them about $3.50 per person ($7,000 per well serving 2,000 people) to provide people with clean safe well water. So eighteen billion dollars is enough money to drill drinking water wells for three-quarters of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants. (Yes, I know that’s a gross simplification, some folks don’t live over a subterranean water table, and so on, but it is still enough money to drill the two and a half million wells that would be needed.)
So what did we do with this huge amount of money, enough wealth to truly change the lives of the world’s poor?
Well, following the brilliant policies pushed by the Obama Administration and the climate alarmists, we took enough taxpayer money to truly change the lives of the world’s poor folks … and instead, we gave it to the American rich folks.
No kidding! This is not a joke. This is what passes for moral activism in the liberal American universe. Throwing money at the rich is seen as striking a noble blow for POSSIBLY saving the poor from a tenth of a degree of warming by 2100.
Sadly, it’s no joke at all—the whole war on carbon has been a tragedy for the poor. In this case, the result of these misguided tax subsidies, of the type which have been pushed by climate alarmists for years, has been to create a real climate “hockeystick”. Here is the data from their paper:
Figure 1. Distribution of benefits of the “Clean Energy Tax Credits” by the income class of the benefit recipient for the period 2006-2012. All values are percentages of the given benefit. “Residential” is subsidies for residential solar systems and weatherization. “Hybrid” are the subsidies paid to the owners of hybrids, as well as hydrogen, fuel cell and natural gas vehicles. “Electric Vehicle” is the subsidy paid to the pure electric vehicles like the Tesla, Leaf, and Volt.
Note that in all cases, the bottom half of the income scale got 4% or less of the benefits …
Look, if someone wants to fight the claimed evil menace of CO2, that’s their business.
And when they want to justify it on the basis that to them, it is a deed most noble and virtuous to be POSSIBLY helping the poor in 2050 by POSSIBLY reducing the future global average temperature by a few tenths of a degree … well, I gotta say that’s as dumb as a bag of ball bearings, but there’s no law against dumb.
But that’s just for starters. From there, it gets ugly fast. Tragically the preferred method of fighting evil carbon is to increase the cost of energy, which is an extremely regressive tax. Not only is it regressive, but unlike many taxes, there is no escape at the bottom of the income scale from increased energy costs. The poor pay no income tax, but they pay energy costs, and energy costs are a greater portion of their expenses than for the rich. So rather than going down with decreasing income, the effect of hikes in energy costs go UP with decreasing income. Like I said, it is among the most regressive,inescapable kinds of taxes you could design.
Raising energy costs sentence the global poor to further impoverishment, sickness, and even death. And hiking energy prices based on the pathetic justification of a POSSIBLE cooling by 2050 of a few tenths of a degree is a crime against the poor of unimaginable size and ubiquitous effect. The war on carbon literally hurts, sickens, and kills poor people all over the world. And I can assure you … the poor are not amused.
But I guess that merely shafting the poor by increasing energy costs doesn’t help the rich enough. So the other noble and virtuous method for POSSIBLY helping the future poor is to fling tax money at various pluted bloatocrats … yeah, that’s the ticket. We’ll help the poor in 2050 by making it easier for rich people to buy a new $100,000 Tesla, and meanwhile Elon Musk is laughing all the way to the bank … at this point, we have to wonder how much folks like Al Gore and Warren Buffet and the UN Climate Ambassador Leonardo Dicaprio had to do with the design of these tax subsidies for the rich.
And of course, these are just the income tax subsidies. They don’t include the massive subsidies handed out directly to the solar and wind industries. They don’t include the subsidies paid to the people wealthy enough to justify rooftop solar when the utilities have to buy their electric production at three times market value … or the cost that I and millions of others pay as electrical consumers to subsidize those over-the-top rooftop solar payments. They don’t include the cost of Solyndra and the other solar companies slurping at the public trough. They don’t include the millions of dollars that with one stroke of the pen Obama gave to his billionaire pal Warren Buffet by vetoing the Keystone pipeline. This is merely the Federal tax-related subsidies, nothing more … and this tiny part of the global waste in the war on carbon is eighteen billion freakin’ dollars.
But always remember … this is all being justified by the alarmists on the basis of “Think of the grandchildren”, and because they’re saving the planet from imminent doooom and destruction.
And if you are someone saving the planet from imminent doooom and destruction, well, you are the man. There is no action that you shouldn’t take if it is in the service of your noble cause. You know that you have right on your side, you’re preventing disaster. You know you are fighting the good fight to cool the fevered brows of those sweltering in the 2050 heat by at least a tenth of a degree, and that it is a fight that has to be fought if we are to save the very planet. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure, and you have the moral high ground. As a result of all of that, there is no transgression you won’t commit in order to have other people pay to make your beautiful Elysian (and slightly-cooler) dream come to fruition … and meanwhile, let’s go for a spin in your new Tesla. After all, you only bought an electric car because it’s noble and virtuous and pollution-free … if you don’t count the coal-fired power plant providing your electricity.
I have a proposal for a new name for the Holocene, and it’s not the Anthropocene like some folks claim.
I think we should call it the Egoscene …
Regards to all,
w.
My Plea For Better Understanding: If you disagree with someone, please have the courtesy to quote the exact words you disagree with. This will allow all of us to understand precisely what you are objecting to.
About The Title: For those not up on their English history, Robin Hood was the name of a legendary English outlaw whose most notable characteristic was that he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor … hence my invention of the term“Hood Robin Syndrome” to describe the opposite action.
Fossil Fuel Subsidies: To me, the issue is never the existence of a subsidy. It is whether we get something for the subsidy. For example, one of the fossil-fuel subsidies in the US is the tax exemption for diesel used by farmers and fishermen … in exchange for which, it encourages production and so we get more food. To me, that’s a good deal. The problem with renewable subsidies is that we’ve been subsidizing solar and wind since Jimmy Carter was President, and they are still not economically competitive in the grid-scale marketplace.
We get large value in return for fossil fuel subsidies, whereas for solar and wind subsidies we get almost nothing. Per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy produced from solar and wind, there is a subsidy to the producers of about two cents/kWh. Since base electric price in the US is around 8-10 cents per kilowatt-hour, that’s about a 20% subsidy.
The subsidy for oil, on the other hand, is about a hundredth of one cent per kWh, coal is about two hundredths of a cent per kWh, and nuclear is about eight hundredths of a cent per kWh.
Why the huge disparity? It’s because solar and wind don’t produce economically, so they have to be artificially propped up. I wouldn’t mind the subsidy if they actually produced. It’s the lack of getting value in return that is the problem.
Very definition of madness, wouldn’t you say? Take money from the working poor and give it to the idle rich to indulge their green fantasies. Save us from those who would save the world. I’ll take my chances with global warming.
Hi from Oz. No, Alan, these ‘green fantasists’ are not mad – quite the opposite, these are smart, well organised people. Taking gob-smacking amounts of money from the working poor under the guise of ‘saving the planet’ and giving to the rich is just one of their opaque strategies to achieve their evil end purpose. To defeat this cult, we must focus on stopping them achieving the ends that they seek, not ridiculing the means that they use to achieve it – especially when the data above indicates that they are being very successful! Having lived through the Cold War, I suggest that all AGW skeptics read up on their 20th century history – especially the strategies and tactics used in the Stalinist era, the Nazis, the Cold War, etc., which the AGW crowd (and those quietly behind them, urging them on) have studied deeply and are using very effectively against the West. We must not sleepwalk into allowing them to win by merely laughing at them.
Very true, This is a political issue not a scientific one and should be dealt with via politics. An article such as the one above when understood by those whose earnings are being stolen would lead to many arrests for fraud and savage financial penalties for the guilty, politicians, scientists, foundations, journalists and the media. Bring it on.
Van Jones was very explicit that the radical Left anywhere loves the Green Energy gambit precisely because it has political authorities deciding what will be produced, where, by whom, and who will be hired. It is a means of reuniting political sovereignty with economic power for the benefit of designated groups.
Climate Change is just an excuse for Cronyism and State Capitalism. Of course the connected Oligarchs are the ones who benefit.
Being smart and well-organized doesn’t mean they’re not mad – in fact, just as with the Bolsheviks, the fact that they’re smart, well-organized and mad is really the problem.
It’s a souped up hypered fantasy that so-called top concerns cannot renege on. Despite overwhelming contrary physical evidence, it’s undoubtedly written large and successively pumped to a gullible public,
Hey, Willis – was at the Falkirk Wheel Monday past. That’s quality and understanding for sure.
It’s not madness, it’s just that the aims of the policy are not the claimed aims. NONE of this is about saving the environment, it is about saving the banks.
From the graph caption:
When they introduce subsidies for solar panels ( for example ) and say the are giving the money to ‘residential’ users, all they are doing is inflating the market price of panels. The money goes to the residential sector of the market, not the residents.
If someone can find $1000 to invest in PV and the state gives another $1000 ‘subsidy’ the solar companies simply double the cost until the subsidies run out.
To do a full, grid-tied,residential installation with regulators, inverters etc you are talking tens of thousands, not thousands. So in most cases this means … a bank loan.
In the case of feed-in tariffs, as are applied in most european countries the PV installation produces a guaranteed income. With a guaranteed income you can go to a bank and the bank can justify lending you more money.
Once you sign on the dotted line and agree to give the bank X thousand dollars over the next tens years, the bank instantly increases it’s on paper assets by X thousand dollars and lends it to you part of what you’ve just promised to pay them, to buy your PV installation.
No you did not misread it, they lend you money that they did not have before you signed the loan agreement. That is how debt-wealth is created.
All the “green” subsidies are is a means of recapitalising the banks. Many naively think the word green refers to the environment, but it’s green as in greenbacks.
It is the very essence of corruption, tyranny, and thought control.
Yeah, but those stupid paupers don’t pay much taxes anyway. So they don’t lose much, right?
That was a pretty ignorant comment Mr John Silver. True, they don’t pay income taxes, but as the article points out, high energy costs affect the poor far more than the middle class and the rich. The poor by definition have little extra disposable income. Taking what little they have in additional energy costs makes their lives more difficult. Also, poor does not equal stupid. Far from it.
this disabled vet has no taxable income however receives no welfare/SS/etc yet still pays electric bills that keep rising.
so this stupid pauper does lose.
I do hope you meant that sarcastically.
if not we have a problem.
Kolowski, I think Silver was being sarcastic there.
Well, no. The Court of Verseilles would be in admiration of the Warmistas “Quel scam!” they would applaud.
Have you all noticed the many parallels between the failed predictions of the Club of Rome and those of the IPCC. How the few anointed ones want to control the economies of the world, based only on models that are validated against reality?
Has anyone here read ‘The Vision of the Anointed’, by Thomas Sowell?
correction: ‘How the few anointed ones want to control the economies of the world, based only on models that have not been validated against reality?’
Alan
I think you missed the point of the post – take this subsidy money and spend it on the poor in another country.
It is not about taking money from the US poor and giving it to the US rich, since most of the US tax money is coming from the same people getting the subsidies. Thus, the subsidies are acting as a tax rebate incentive to become more energy efficient.
Opa50
The more important thing to keep in mind is that EVs in most of the country are powered by American coal. They’re mostly charged at night when coal is the predominant energy source.
I think this is a good thing.
That said, I agree that all subsidies and mandates are inefficient. Better to use the money for R&D.
We’d probably have fusion power plants producing energy too cheap to meter by now if we’d used the PTC and ITC money for R&D instead of subsidies for wind, solar, energy efficiency, and EVs. Once we get there, EVs will sell themselves.
Seems I have heard the “…too cheap to meter…” promise before.
That’s a bit of a leap. I think that if you look you will find that the working poor aren’t paying much in taxes. I think you will find that it is the middle and upper level incomes who are paying the taxes that fund these subsidies.
That’s not to say that these policies don’t affect the poor negatively. Surely they do. Just not in the way you say.
And, BTW, the “rich” aren’t necessarily idle.
I was actually enjoying my day before I read this. 🙁 Now my blood is angryfied.
It’s inconceivable that people in this country who have teeth rotting in their mouths are subsidizing Tesla purchases as well as an endless string of useless expenditures. (Yes you, Mr. Mann)
The U.S. distributes 3 trillion dollars every year. A lot of that gets spread out via medicare, soc. sec. etc., but hundreds of billions are left to give favors to the wealthy and connected, or groups who can deliver votes.
Sorry, Willis, but thirsty folks in Africa can’t vote.
The answer, of course, is to reduce the amount they receive. It won’t happen, I know, but one can dream.
“…thirsty folks in Africa can’t vote” Really, there are people who can’t vote in American elections? Don’t let the pol hear of that.
My observation over the years has been that aid programs for the poorest of underdeveloped nations serves mostly to take money from middle-class people in rich countries and give it to rich people in poor countries.
Bingo, Ron!
Jesus knew that about nations and gov’ts:
“For you have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good; but Me you do not have always.” Mark 14:7 (NKJV)
Indeed. And Jesus also knew how to deal with poor tenants, who were behind with their rent. The moral of the parable is that the absentee landlord should eliminate the idle tenant, and let out his land to more reliable tenants. Job done, as they say….
Quote:
“The (absentee landlord) will miserably destroy those wicked (tenant farmers), and will let out his vineyard unto other (tenant farmers), who shall pay him the rent in their seasons.” (Math 21:41)
R
ralfellis:
Please read the passage you quote (Math 21:41) in its context.
Jesus was not saying how absentee landlords should behave:
he asked how absentee landlords do behave when tenants behave badly.
And you are plain wrong when you say
The moral of the parable is that those who were in religious authority (i.e. “the chief priests and the Pharisees”) were abusing their oversight of the religion.
The NIV translation of the relevant section of Mathew 21 is this
The Parable of the Tenants
33 “Listen to another parable:
There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey.
34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third.
36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way.
37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’
39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures: ” ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’ ?
43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit.
44 He who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them.
46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.”
The parable is also in other Gospels at Mark 12:1-12 and Luke 20:9-19.
Richard
Indeed, Ral. If you remember a different parable, he urges debtholders to forgive their debtors (the parable of the unforgiving servant, Matthew 18:21-35). There is a strong difference between being behind on one’s rent and being abusive and murderous.
>>Richard.
>>The moral of the parable is that those who were in religious
>>authority were abusing their oversight of the religion.
Nonsense. it was originally a scathing comment about the Romans, who were living on Judaean lands and not paying rent. It was a political commentary, not a religious one.
R
@ralfellis August 31, 2015 at 8:07 am
Wow, your exegesis could not be more wrong. Clearly you have been quaffing too much from the cup of Liberation Theology. Richard S. Courtney has given quite sufficient context for anyone to see how far you’ve missed the mark. Or in this case, the Matthew.
You definitely hit the mark with that one.
“…
calls for the ouster of Prime Minister Najib Razak have grown louder in recent months after the government
appeared to be obstructing an investigation into how more than $600 million in funds from a Goldman-backed development bank ended up in Najib’s personal bank account.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-30/malaysia-bans-color-yellow-protests-swell-hundreds-thousands
This is quite a devastating analysis. Thank you. Would like to see one or two of the Republican Presidential aspirants making this case to the American people. The Dems conjure a war on women and a war on blacks, but the real war is the war on the poor. And it’s waged not by the right, but the left.
As I said, just devastating…
(aka pokerguy)
“The Dems conjure a war on women and a war on blacks, but the real war is the war on the poor. And it’s waged not by the right, but the left.”
It’s ludicrous to call Democrats “the left”. They are more right wing than British Conservatives.
I think we should call it the Egoscene
I prefer the shorter Obscene.
I had the same reaction.
Affluentocene?
Flatulentocene?
Chuck wins the thread! 😀
Oligoposcene.
Kleptocene?
Hypocricene?
This is a post that should be sent to all newspapers and media outlets. Maybe one or more might decide to publish it or an abbreviated version.
Great post. I wish more people would understand what’s going on with these subsidies/taxes, etc. Thanks Willis! The poor are the hardest hit with these “policies” and even the “middle class” is hard hit – whatever that/they are.
Of course, the goal of those subsidies was not the relief of income inequality — that is better served with other, and not necessarily tax, policies. The goal of these programs was to encourage the adoption of non-carbon emitting technologies. I would not expect poor and lower middle income people to have the excess income available to buy a new Tesla, Volt or Prius or to install solar panels on their rented homes. By definition this involves choices that people make with their disposable income and the more disposable income you have the more you can benefit from such subsidies. This is hardly and indictment of the policy although it does point out a weakness of tax subsidies as opposed to a refundable carbon tax for achieving these goals.
The economic consequences of a tax or subsidy, or whatever other policy, are not a matter of intentions. They are simply observable consequences that follow from a certain policy. Whatever the intent of the legislator, the fact is that some groups benefit and some others bear the cost. In this particular case, the rich benefit and the poor bear the cost. Pre-subsidy income distribution would thus be less unequal that the post-subsidy distribution (“less unequal” does not involve a judgment: it just means that without the subsidy the rich receive relatively less,and the poor relatively more, whatever the merits of such change in distribution).
That’s about the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard. It is important to evaluate a policy in terms of what it was intended to accomplish. In aspects — takeup of solar voltaic for example — this appears to have been a successful policy. Other aspects are more debatable. But it is important to note, that for things like residential solar or weatherization, renters and landlords were specifically excluded from benefiting from this policy, and other benefits, such as the credits for hybrid and electric vehicles only apply to new cars. This will of course have negative distributional effects, but the policy was not intended to have positive distributional effects, it was intended to have effects on the takeup of alternative energy and efficiency technologies. Other aspects of ARRA did address lower income people. I personally benefited from a program to weatherize rental housing, which saved me a substantial amount of money on my winter heating costs.
The interesting part of this study is the question of how effective was it in promoting efficiency and alternative energy (answer: in some cases very good, in others moderately), not what the distributional effects might be, since other programs addressed helping lower income people.
Old Huemul August 29, 2015 at 6:50 pm
Rattus Norvegicus August 29, 2015 at 9:53 pm
First, Ratty, since you didn’t quote what you disagreed with, I’m forced to guess that it is the statement above. In future, let me ask you once again to quote what you object to.
More to the point, intentions are pretty meaningless in the real world. In fact, they are so meaningless that we have a saying about them—”The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” So analyzing the results of our intentions, as you advise, may just provide us with a metric of how fast we’re getting to Hell …
For example, the intention of the many doctors who prescribed thalidomide for pregnant women was very clear. It was prescribed to avoid pregnancy-related “morning sickness”.
The observable consequences of their intentions were horrendously deformed babies.
So … should we judge the practice of prescribing thalidomide based on whether or not it was actually able to control morning sickness in pregnant women?
Because that’s assuredly what you are saying, that we need to evaluate the decision to prescribe thalidomide “in terms of what it was intended to accomplish”, which was nausea reduction … and judged by that metric it was a roaring success.
Now, I can understand why you want that narrow focus on the claimed intentions of a program. It prevents you from looking at the real effects of green policies, the unintended things like the poor subsidizing the rich, or the shafting of the three billion people living on under $3 per day by the insane push to drive up energy costs.
With that narrow focus on intentions, you can say “We are saving the world! We achieved our goal of driving down energy use by raising gas prices to European levels”, while ignoring the single mother who depends on her car to get to work, and who will now have to choose whether to cut back on food or on medical services for her kids …
I fear that kind of willful blindness will get you little traction here. Because trying to convince the practical folks that populate this site that we should ignore the real-world unintended consequences of poorly designed programs, and we should look only at whether thalidomide actually did prevent morning sickness … well, that dog won’t hunt.
w.
Rattus, I accept your premise that a policy must be evaluated on whether it met it’s goals. However, it’s goals must also be evaluated on how well they align with the greater purpose they serve.
I would accept your point that we are evaluating it on the wrong basis, if helping the poor wasn’t the explicit reason given for much of the anti-carbon movement. So these policies accomplish the short term goal by undermining the long term one.
Willis’s point still stands.
Well of course any excuse to keep the rich rich if not richer.
“Adoption of non-carbon emitting technologies” is as good an excuse as any.
Re Rattus:
**** encourage the adoption of non-carbon emitting technologies****
So does that mean Gore used the subsidy to fly commercial instead of his carbon emitting private jet to make his 300K spoof speech?
So Rattus, the ends justify the means? Even assuming the ends are laudable (which is questionable in this case), how can any educated person support such a supposition when so much evil in the history of the world has been committed using this demented logic?
You say:
….”refundable carbon tax for achieving these goals.”
==============
Now in my little corner of this world, called Illinois, the states budget is so out of whack that winners of the state lottery have to wait for the politicians to pass a budget to collect their winnings.
You don’t really expect me to assume I’ll get a carbon tax “refund” do you ?
Maybe you ain’t from Illinois ?
Think off this as “job creation!” Another layer of bureaucracy will be required to administer refund evaluation and dispensation, along with attendant underlings and supervisors; plus additional oversight personnel.
“Carbon Tax Refunding” might reduce unemployment considerably, and might not cost more than 60%(+/-) of refunds.
Gee. The people in Illinois have to wait for the legislature “to pass a budget to collect their winnings?” This is after the state has already collected way more than enough in bets to cover the winnings? That sounds like a state that someone like Obama might have come from…. It is a good way to discourage people from playing the lottery.
‘… thalidomide “in terms of what it was intended to accomplish”, which was nausea reduction … and judged by that metric it was a roaring success …’
============================
The parallel is apt up too a point, however in this case the technologies which the subsidies are directed to are useless boondoggles that don’t even work.
While I understand your point, the supposed goal of green energy was to change societal energy use patterns.
Simply making the top 20% richer is changing society, but not in the way the proposals were sold as.
Making poor people poorer does not engender better attitudes toward energy efficiency or alternative energy – except perhaps in the sense of forcing more of them off the grid to burn wood and dung.
What I would like to see is a simple calculation that takes the total amount of subsidies paid out, and divides it by the amount of CO2 not produced, and tells us what it actually cost us per ton of CO2. I would suspect we are paying some many thousands of times the “market price.” In other words, we are probably getting a bad deal.
You truly have to admire the beautiful symmetry of this scheme! I have a brilliant solution to a problem to a problem that may not exist. I band together with other like-minded entrepreneurs, and lobby the government to convince them that the problem is not only real, but much worse that we feared, but there’s good news! We just need a few minor subsidies and loan guarantees to let this fledgling business get off the ground…until we develop “scale”. The government willingly obliges, thereby elevating yours truly out of the working class, and securing my little piece of the American Dream.
Honestly, who doesn’t like Christmas?
Christmas? Where I come from it’s called a “confidence game” and people are supposed to go to jail for it.
Accountability requires the responsible agencies of government to admit error, which happens rather less often than one might hope for.
The list is getting pretty long: Solyndra, A123, Fisker, and on we go.
To be fair, though, military contractors operate in much the same mode. Most beneficiaries of government largesse have some sort of angle, and they are not in the game to just break even!
That all you got ??
I’m thinking not.
Keep it coming.
People might start to listen.
It has always fascinated me that the left wing parties in the democracies, i.e. the so called “Labor” party in Australia, the British Labour party, the various Green parties in Europe have always supported energy policies that penalise the lower income groups they claim to represent. The Democratic party in America seems a somewhat different animal, it appears to contain an inordinate number of billionaires. Perhaps they think their ability to amass fortunes entitles them to tell others how to behave.
“Perhaps they think their ability to amass fortunes entitles them to tell others how to behave.”
That is exactly what they think, and I find it completely contemptible on every level.
Regressive policies are not left-wing.
The Green policies that are adopted by left-wing parties (and by right-wing parties too) are the result of infiltration of the parties.
Infiltration by those who put their religion above “justice” or “utility / benefit maximisation”.
Their religion is green. See the previous post about appeasing zealots.
They corrupt the political process by not standing on their own platform (as the Green Party loses when it does).
And for real fun discuss why US Evangelicals have abandoned Jimmy Carter’s party. There’s no ideological reason for that. Just a matter of expediency.
The sincere greenies are just tools. The policies forced upon us in the US are actually neither Democrat nor Republican, liberal nor conservative, green and not green. They are policies contrived by globalists, international bankers and other special interests who have different objectives and care little about saving the planet.
The real political struggle is between “We-the-people” and the special interests. Unfortunately, not enough of the electorate have actually come to realize that yet. Until they do, nothing will change here.
OK, I’ll bite. US Evangelicals have abandoned the Democratic party because it is anti-Israel, pro-gay marriage and pro-abortion. See? Not hard to figure at all. And it’s hardly expedient given the pounding they get in the press and the calls from Dem legislators to restrict their First Amendment rights.
The term is limousine liberal.
And the notion that this is just an American phenomenon is false. In Europe over 150 years ago, Rousseau came up with the notion of the “noble savage” – the predecessor to modern limousine liberalism. Rousseau didn’t intend that, but many of the upper classes of the era used this notion to justify obstructing progressive policies.
“dch47982”, indeed, almost all collectivist societies end up being tyrannies. Reasons are the underlying irrationality of collectivism makes it very difficult for people to stop the shift to tyranny because they lack thinking skills to debate the power-grabbers and they’ve bought into the premise that the collective is moral – anything it does it right. (So Hitler succeeded with his pitch that the Aryan’s value was in his sacrifice to society, not in his individual attributes.)
(Note the nature of those who gain power:
– Lenin and Trotsky were cheap thugs who met in jail
– Hitler was a n’er do well
– Che Gueverra enjoyed killing
I am only aware of one democratically elected heavily socialist society that voted itself out of existence – the kibbutz movement in Israel. And perhaps the Pilgrim’s after their first winter in America, as reality was staring them in the face (Individual effort varied in their socialist system.)
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/issues/2012-spring/individualism-collectivism/
This is why the west has a shrinking middle class.
They can always justify rob’n the hood to give to the rich. That’s because all the big-money donors to political parties just happen to be rich. They have to pay them back somehow or they’ll stop donating. Besides, if they don’t prevent climate change now by giving billions to the rich, they’ll just have to give trillions to them in the future to pay for all the damage rising sea levels will do to their beach-front homes. /Sarc
Robn Hood did not steal from the rich and give to the poor – rather he stole from the government (King/nobelmen) that which the government had already stole from the citizens. Robin Hood did not practice altrusim but rather he defended justice!
We shouldn’t smear Robin Hood, he was a good guy.
I think the article is referring to his brother Robin Bastard.
Right on Willis! You did, however, wake the bee in my bonnet. 🙂
Dumb often carries the death penalty. It’s pathetic that the condemned usually know better. It is beyond description when the guy who ended up with his boot nails welded to the floor of the equipment enclosure was the very person who wrote the safety manual for that very equipment.
“Dumb often carries the death penalty.”
“Nature abhors a moron.”
—H.L. Mencken
We even have Darwin awards for these folks.
“Hey y’all! Watch me swallow this little bluegill backwards!”
And here was the 2009 winner of the Darwin awards.
She believed the Greenie propaganda that said poly bears were nice and cuddly, and thought it would be a good idea to swim with them. But reality bit her on the arrse…
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rtvChUMcuAI/hqdefault.jpg
One thing I have a beef with and that is this statement ‘ The poor pay no income tax, but they pay energy costs” that statement drives me crazy. I have on occasion been in the income bracket where I did not have to pay “income taxes” ( a family with a stay at home mother etc). But I still paid taxes, gasoline, beer , rent , hydro heating fuel and even food, they and many others like VAT , (GST, PST in Canada). indirect taxes and other hidden taxes are being paid by even the “poor”. To only mention “income taxes really irks me.
It’s true while income tax is the most visible and largest singular tax, there is death by thousand cuts type taxes as well. I often wondered when an evangelist climate nut will propose a tax based on size of family since the larger the family the more CO2 is produced.
Indeed. I could not find a taxation pie chart for the lower and middle classes, but the following is a UK government revenue chart. And the only taxation the poor will not pay here, is income tax.
NIC. ….. National Health, and they pay that.
VAT. ….. Yes, they pay that on purchases, although not on food in the UK.
Corporation taxes. ….. Yup, the company just loads those onto the product price.
Fuel and N. Sea duty. ….. Yes, because the oil company puts that in the price of petrol.
Business rates. ….. Yes, included in the cost of goods.
Council tax. ….. Yes. Less for the poor, but a big percentage of income.
Sin tax. ….. I presume this is fags and booze. And the poor pay a lot of this.
http://www.economicshelp.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/tax-pie-chart.jpg
Thanks, asybot. That’s why I said “but unlike many taxes”, because although for some taxes there is a bottom limit, for other taxes there is no lower threshold.
And you are correct that many taxes are equally applied top to bottom. You pay gas tax, rich or poor.
w.
Gas tax – the rich can afford it, no problem – the poor cannot, sometimes cannot even get to work (I’ve been there) sometimes I would use coins just to get enough gas to get home…
Sorry Willis, I missed that but a lot of people never ever seem to understand this and I have often heard this ridiculous statement from many people:
” Be glad you only make a little money you don’t have to pay taxes” It used to drive me nuts , now I just think to myself, just another ignoramus.
asybot, one of the things that drives me nuts about the US tax policy is that “fees,” “fines” and “surcharges” are not considered “taxes.” They really should be. We have fees added to telephone service, internet service, and so forth to “finance the oversight” of same….but then we can’t exempt ourselves from the sum of those fees in our income tax preparation.
If I paid $2,000 in sales, use, contractor, fee, fine, and surcharges to various governments, shouldn’t I be able to itemize those and reduce my effective income? Even if we exempt “fines” as a result of doing something administratively “bad,” shouldn’t these others be considered double taxation?
Hi, asybot! You’re forgetting one very big one: property taxes. I’ve been successful in recently getting a loan modification on my duplex. The mortgage with escrow is $962.32/month. Since 1 bedroom apartment rents in the Chicagoland area run $800-$1,000/month continuing to own my home is the best bet. But, here’s the hitch; the property tax portion of that $962 is almost $300/month. And, that’s with a disability exemption. And, whereas the mortgage is fixed, the only thing that will stop yearly increases (250% total since 2002) in the property tax are probably cosmic rays in the stratosphere. There’s a whole bunch of elderly homeowners living on Social Security (payments which fall far short in equivalency to the $15/hour minimum wage that the ‘same’ political class is calling for) that are surrendering 10-15% of their SS payments to this onerous tax.
@ur momisugly Tom J . I do count them in, as a renter I pay the property tax for the owner as part of the rent. You don’t think I’d get a break now do you? I am not familiar with the system in Chicago But in our area property taxes are public knowledge but as to how the system works seems better left to an accountant the rules, restrictions give/ take away etc drove me nuts when I first looked at buying. The other thing was that you pay property taxes as long as own the home , then pay taxes on the selling price and death taxes when you left it to your kids, as they say they get coming and going. to me renting was the solution never had enough long term security to end up buying.
Man I got out of IL over 30 yrs ago and am now in TX, thank God!
Every now and then I hear someone say TX should have an income tax and maybe we could lower our property taxes. I always interject that I’ve lived in two states with income taxes and that it doesn’t work that way. If you let the politicians have an income tax, they won’t cut some other tax, they’ll just spend it all.
You left out that you can deduct a significant part of your payment from your income tax. Also that your payment is building up equity. And the owning of a property gives you the capability to gain from asset price increases (and decreases).
None of the above is true for renters.
Hi again, asybot. I was a renter too for about 20 years.
Here’s a funny story. A number of years back I was having a conversation with an accountant. I said that as a renter I was paying my landlord’s property tax. He told me, no, I wasn’t paying the property tax, the landlord was paying it.
I’ve come to the conclusion that that’s what a college education does to someone. His answer was technically true I guess, but it was totally meaningless.
He went on to argue that the landlord’s property tax was irrelevant to the rent I was paying. This was an accountant!
I fear there’s an awful lot of people who think that way.
Tom J, accountants often lack the real-world application of their accounting. As someone who spends a lot of time working with corporate accountants, I have often dragged them out of the cubicle and taken them to an operating location and had to open their eyes to what the real world is doing, why it was doing it, and what money ramifications it had.
Old man story time: I once had to prove a property that the company owned existed by taking an accountant to it because the post office decided that 1400 East Street was a bad address and returned mail going to it a few times. It turns out that the PO had a glitch in their addressing software that wanted the address to be at the beginning of the block we owned (Something like 1000 East Street instead of 1400) The company owned the address and about 15 acres on each side of the building, so the particular address was a moot point – until the post office started bouncing letters with the ‘wrong’ address on them, creating a stir at the corporate offices.
Accountants, in my harsh generalization, are basically math majors with a backing rule set (like GAAP in the US). They often don’t understand the goal the rules they implement are aiming toward and can thus implement them hilariously wrong or disturbingly ruthlessly.
Pffffft. My NJ 3-bedroom is over $750/mo in property taxes, and I don’t live in the lake association where is would be 2X that. With the balance on my mortgage what it is, I basically rent my home from the town.
Poor people can’t AFFORD electric and hybrid vehicles and they CERTAINLY don’t own their own homes.
I don’t know what you’re bitching about because these subsidies were never intended for the poor or even to help the poor.
Only an idiot would think that.
And just where do you think the money came from for these subsidies? And when the PV feed-in rates force electric rates to increase, who do you think is hardest hit? Not the rich. Of course these subsidies weren’t designed for the poor; they are gifts to the rich and (to some extent) on the backs of the poor. That’s the point of this article. Only an idiot wouldn’t understand that.
Barbee got that right, this is a subsidy for only the rich and since there are so many poor people the poor people can afford the regressive tax structure these subsidies help create. And if the poor get any ideas about buying hybrid cars or homes they should remember it is the rich really that need these things.
That is exactly the point Willis is making. It’s perverse that a lawyer can end up paying less income tax than his secretary and even more preverse when his secretary’s taxes end up subsidizing him.
[sarc] Perhaps you think the poor should be taxed more as an incentive to make them work harder. They’re only poor because they’re lazy after all. [/sarc]
“[b]About The Title:[/b] For those not up on their English history, Robin Hood was the name of a legendary English outlaw whose most notable characteristic was that he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor … hence my invention of the term“Hood Robin Syndrome” to describe the opposite action.”
I always felt that was what Robin Hood was about until I read the other day someone state that he actually robbed from the over taxing government of the day and gave it back to the citizens.
Right . Back in 2003 I wrote :
The only people who were rich were the political class and their enforcers .
There were actually two Robin Hoods. You’re right about one of them: he actually did rob over taxing officials and return the money to the citizens.
However there was a second Robin Hood. But, he was a wealthy government official who fleeced the citizens. Robin was his nickname. His full name was Robbing Hood.
I guess we know where Gore and Suzuki fit in.
I’ve paid way more than my share of taxes. I don’t feel bad one bit about receiving a credit for my Tesla purchase.
Be sure to wave at the homeless from your trick ride, Doc, and don’t forget who’s paying for your juice when you have to plug it in.
Jason Joice MD August 29, 2015 at 7:26 pm
Dr. Joice, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who actually pays federal income tax, state income tax, state sales tax, gas tax, and all the rest of the taxes, who would not make that same statement that they pay more than their share. We all feel like we pay more than our share of taxes, including myself.
So what?
Well, I never said you should feel bad about getting taxpayer money to support your expensive tastes. What I said was that the program was industrial-strength dumb. But hey, if the government offered me money, I’d take it.
My difficulty with taking government energy bucks is a practical one—I’ve always lived a simple and minimal life. As a result, my electricity bill is far too low for me to economically justify installing a solar system, even including claiming the government credit.
And when I built the house I live in, I weatherized it to the max, so I can’t take advantage of any weatherization programs.
So the guy like me living a simple and minimal life gets penalized, and the rich get rewarded with taxpayer money … not my idea of a reasonable response, particularly to an imaginary problem.
So I said nothing about the people getting taxpayer money. Like I said, I’d take it if I could, you’d be a fool not to.
Nor did I say anything about the taxes you pay.
As a result, the simple fact that you felt a burning need to justify taking the subsidy by discussing your taxes and your Tesla indicates to me that in fact you do feel bad about it … well, that, and you want us to know you have a Tesla. And I understand that, because if I had one, I’d likely slip it in about every third sentence …
In any case, my congratulations on your successes in life, and I mean that seriously. Tesla or no Tesla, clearly you’ve done well, and I see no reason for you to apologize for any part of that success.
w.
beautiful reply!
Perhaps there should be an energy allocation system. I can imagine an ‘Individual Energy Allocation Account’ (IEAA?) for each resident. Every resident would receive (annually?) permission to purchase xx kwh of electricity, xx gallons of gasoline, xx air miles, etc. These allocation units could be traded, bought and sold. Balance could be managed by a smart-card system from a gov’t maintained database using a hybrid of E-Bay and Obamacare Marketplace software.
Willis could trade (or sell) his electricity units to Al Gore, and Al could trade them to me for air miles. At year’s end, low energy consumers could convert unused units to tax credits, or sell them to Al for cash.
Low income households could get a supplementary income and Al could pay for permission to buy as much av-gas as he can afford.
I think of it as “Trickle Down Cap and Trade.”
Slywolfe
And what if every one of those “credits” was issued based on each individual’s own specific “value” or “worth” to society – as agreed on by some standard of course, and could be traded freely for any other item of value to each each person?
What if each such “energy credit” were colored a specific color to present how much value it represented? Say “green” or “purple” or “blue” with decorative symbols and impressive signatures and numbers all over it – just to make it difficult to cheat and counterfeit such “energy credits” obviously. And what if you could purchase any “non-energy” things you might need with unneeded or excess or spare “energy credits” – certainly, not everybody needs to buy heat or air conditioning every day of the year. Diapers, clothing, food, or shelter are sometimes needed too. Chairs, tables, boxes, paper, ink, pencils … Why, ANYTHING could be “bought” or sold at any time with “energy credits”!
What a concept! You’ve come up with something new and valuable that should be marketed by governments and kings and dictators everywhere! /sarcasm. 8<)
Nope! Everybody gets the same ration.
I’ve been tossing this concept around in my mind for a few days, but I’ve been hesitant to post it.
Obama might hear about it.
(removes tongue from cheek)
I’ve heard it said that Tesla is more a fashion statement than a form of transportation. Personally, I choose a bad haircut and well-worn shoes….and a proper car.
Sorry Doc. A Tesla is nothing more than an expensive toy, a profligate waste of your money and mine, since I helped to subsidize your purchase. You can get from point A to point B in just as much style for a lot less money. It is a poor investment, and you would have been a lot smarter to have put the extra cash into something that would pay good dividends and help shelter your income. Enjoy your second adolescence.
From the article:
Solar subsidy 2 cents/kWh
Oil subsidy 1/100 cent/kWh
Coal subsidy 2/100 cent/kWh
Nuclear subsidy 8/100 cent/kWh
It is good to know solar subsidies are about 200 times larger than oil subsidies and 18 to 20 times larger than all the other energy subsidies combined. But to climate zealots and activists, eco-profiteers, and the lobotomized (when it comes to climate) media and politicians it only means that it is horrific that we still have subsidies for oil, coal, and Nuclear.
“…a legendary English outlaw whose most notable characteristic was that he robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.”
I understand that Robin, early on, tried it the other way around. It was a spectacular failure, though he did make a few farthinges here and there. I think it was Friar Tuck who suggested a better way.
It took a few hundred years but finally the Democratic party figured out how to rob from the poor and give to the rich.
Eugene WR Gallun
Willis,
Yes, climate zealots, and those who take advantage of all the ‘green’ subsidies, are hurting, and as you note, even killing the poorest of the poor through making energy more expensive and less available.
But is there a surprise in any of this? Zealots of every persuasion have been responsible for most atrocities and abominations for all of recorded history, along with a host of lesser evils. ISIS cuts off the heads of innocent people and then say they act only on behalf of God. Surely there can be little expectation climate zealots will not do terrible harm….. if people allow them to. Zealotry is an almost perfect predictor of who has the potential to do great harm…… if people allow it to happen.
Good overview of subsidies for those who don’t need it:
http://www.amazon.com/Free-Lunch-Wealthiest-Themselves-Government/dp/1591842484