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.
Yes of course.
CAGW is just an amped up improved version of this age old scheme.
The cause is usually very vague and flexible, the objective always the same. rob the many to enrich the well connected few.
Paris-ites have always worked this way.
I was disappointed to see the study did not include the same breakdown on tax credits to commercial solar and wind farms, where it’s almost exclusively the high-roller, limited partner investors who reap the benefits of tax credits and accelerated depreciation and where only “sophisticated investors” (translate: rich and politically connected) need apply. There, the numbers are just obscene.
Claude Harvey August 29, 2015 at 8:09 pm
Claude, I try to limit the scope of my posts to one subject. For that subject, you might see my analyses of a couple such commercial projects:
Regards,
w.
The exclusion from road taxes for diesel fuel used by farmers and boaters is no subsidy.
The tax was installed in order to pay for the road system, and since farm vehicles and boats don’t use roads, then it makes no sense to tax them to support the roads.
Without the exemption, farm vehicles and boats would be subsidizing motorists.
Thanks, Mark. You are right that that was the initial reasoning. However, since then the fuel tax in many states has just been swept into the general fund, and so that reason no longer holds.
w.
A few years ago (2000?), the tax refund laws in Texas became so convoluted and the fines for minor mistakes so high, that our local fuel distributer quit selling non-taxed fuel. I worked for a fracking company which used 75% of its fuel for off-road but it was cheaper to just pay the tax.
Why should the gas tax “trust fund” be any different from the Social Security “trust fund”. Politicians have never been able to keep their hands off of large sums of available cash by which they can buy a few more votes, or line their own pockets.
As to the off road diesel tax…I used to own a refrigerated trailer. The diesel used to run the reefer unit falls under the off road category. There used to be places you could find off road pumps, where the fuel had no tax applied. For a whole host of reasons, they have for the most part disappeared. If you want to go through the headache, you can fill out a lot of paperwork to get refunded the tax.
Off road diesel is also dyed. Taxed fuel is clear. Some states have special officers running around checking trucks for dyed fuel in their truck fuel tank. IIRC the minimum fine is $5,000 for having dyed untaxed fuel in an on road vehicle.
The depreciaton allowance for miners and drillers is only a “subsidy” if the same allowance for all other businesses is a subsidy.
Actually if you thought about, having to depreciate items rather than cost them completely in the year in which they were purchased increases the taxes that businesses have to pay.
Don’t fall for the left wing nonsense that any tax that is less than 100% is a subsidy.
This is how Obama got elected. People donate to him to open the floodgates of tax monies to themselves.
bull, he is part of the machine politics out of Chicago which are no different than the politics out of California. It is not just a popularity contest it is machine politics that the media knows about but never reports on.
This is a great interview between Carly Fiorina and Katie Fouric. One of the very few times that someone actually lays the issues if the economy, health, education, real pollution and limited resources (like over fishing-my insert) on the line versus the waste of resources on a climate that always changes. Like the story of King Canute turning back the tides, the climate will change in spite of us.
Thanks for another great post Willis.
Oh, and I just read a story about a 5000 year old Olive tree in Palestine. I wonder what stories it could tell. Adapt or die.
https://www.facebook.com/conservative50plus/videos/10153429217450873/
+100
I wish she had made it more of an issue as Climate Change should be made into the hottest topic and the candidates should study and then reveal the hoax to the voters. So far, in the mainstream media, nobody hears the dissenters. Our arguments are being censored effectively because nobody just runs across our claims as often as they get the reinforced mantra of Global Warming. I think we need a candidate to make the hoax into an issue, otherwise they will regret it – come December. We need the “silent majority” to get the word out.
I wondered how to describe these “do-gooders”. “Psychopath” is not quite right, although their callousness towards others’ actual (rather than modelled, ie imaginary, future) pain suggests it is.
I suggest the term “ecopath” for an environmentalist who wilfully injures (or causes to be injured) other humans in the course of pursuing their goals.
It’s not enough to be well-meaning if you also disregard the social and human costs of your well-intentioned actions, or if you prioritise imaginary benefits over actual harm to other humans.
Joyce Kilmer were she a 21st century environmentalist
I think that I shall never see
A child as lovely as a tree
Eugene WR Gallun
“Watermelon” (see avatar) and “Ecoloon” are my favorites.
Good article Willis:
We knew and published some of these points in 2002 – including the key point of clean water, infant mortality and misallocation of resources:
Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity. [Since the start of global warming hysteria, about 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated water.]
Thank you, Allan
[excerpts from my recent article published on icecap.us]
THE UN’S IPCC HAS NO CREDIBILITY ON GLOBAL WARMING – by Allan MacRae
In 2002 the PEGG, the journal of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of Alberta (APEGA) solicited the following debate on the now-defunct Kyoto Accord (Kyoto Protocol), between Dr. Matthew Bramley and Matt McCullough, P.Eng. of the Pembina Institute, who supported the Kyoto Accord and relied upon the IPCC’s position, and Dr. Sallie Baliunas, Harvard Astrophysicist, Dr. Tim Patterson, Carleton Paleoclimatologist, and Allan MacRae, P.Eng., who opposed Kyoto based on scientific statements in their PEGG article and rebuttal.
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/KyotoAPEGA2002REV1.pdf
Now, after 13 years, it is instructive to look back at the two positions and determine how they have fared.
One’s predictive track record is perhaps the only objective measure of one’s competence. The IPCC has a negative predictive track record, because ALL of its scary projections have failed to materialize. The IPCC thus has NO credibility, actually it has NEGATIVE credibility.
Probabilistically; based the IPCC’s negative predictive track record, one would more correct if one assumed the opposite of the IPCC’s scary projections.
All the IPCC’s scary projections of catastrophic humanmade global warming, wilder weather, and climate change have failed to materialize, despite significant increases in atmospheric CO2, the purported driver of this falsely-predicted “weather weirding”. According to the best data from satellites, global temperatures measured in the Lower Troposphere (LT) have not increased significantly in about 18 years. Hurricane frequency and intensity are at record low levels. The climate has been remarkably stable despite substantial increases in atmospheric CO2.
…
In comparison, let us review the eight predictions we made on our 2002 Rebuttal [my comments in brackets]:
Kyoto has many fatal flaws, any one of which should cause this treaty to be scrapped.
Climate science does not support the theory of catastrophic human-made global warming – the alleged warming crisis does not exist. [NO net global warming has occurred for about 18 years.}
Kyoto focuses primarily on reducing CO2, a relatively harmless gas, and does nothing to control real air pollution like NOx, SO2, and particulates, or serious pollutants in water and soil. [Note pollution in China and the former Soviet Union.]
Kyoto wastes enormous resources that are urgently needed to solve real environmental and social problems that exist today. For example, the money spent on Kyoto in one year would provide clean drinking water and sanitation for all the people of the developing world in perpetuity. [Since the start of global warming hysteria, about 50 million children below the age of five have died from contaminated water.]
Kyoto will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and damage the Canadian economy – the U.S., Canada’s biggest trading partner, will not ratify Kyoto, and developing countries are exempt. [Canada adopted Kyoto but then most provinces wisely ignored it – the exception being now-depressed Ontario, where government drank the Kool-Aid.]
Kyoto will actually hurt the global environment – it will cause energy-intensive industries to move to exempted developing countries that do not control even the worst forms of pollution. {Note the air in China.]
Kyoto’s CO2 credit trading scheme punishes the most energy efficient countries and rewards the most wasteful. Due to the strange rules of Kyoto, Canada will pay the former Soviet Union billions of dollars per year for CO2 credits.
[We shamed our government into not paying the FSU, but other governments did so, to bribe them to sign Kyoto.]
Kyoto will be ineffective – even assuming the overstated pro-Kyoto science is correct, Kyoto will reduce projected warming insignificantly, and it would take as many as 40 such treaties to stop alleged global warming. [IF one believed the utterly false climate models, one would probably conclude that we must cease fossil fuel consumption.].
The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels. [Those governments who adopted “green energy” schemes such as wind and solar power are finding these schemes are not green and produce little useful energy. Their energy costs are soaring and those governments are in retreat, dropping their green energy subsidies as they try to save face.]
**********
In summary, all our predictions have proven correct in those venues that fully embraced the now-defunct Kyoto Accord, whereas none of the IPCC’s scary projections have materialized.
So what happens next? Will we see catastrophic humanmade global warming? No, our planet will cool.
I (we) predicted the commencement of global cooling by 2020-2030 in an article published in the Calgary Herald in 2002. That prediction is gaining credibility as solar activity [in current SC24] has crashed.
…
Timing is difficult to estimate, but I now expect global cooling to be evident by 2020 or sooner.
*************
It’s worse than a question of “is wind better / cheaper than coal?” Everyone thinks it’s an equation. It’s not. Power demand is shrinking in US and AUS. The power stations and grids are ALREADY in place.
If you needed capacity, THEN it’s an equation. Is coal better than wind (net of all applicable externalities if you like). But when you don’t need it, the economic value of the windmill is zero or negative.
A few more points on energy:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/01/water-is-replacing-climate-as-the-next-un-environmental-resource-scare/#comment-1465010
[excerpts]
The modern energy industry keeps those of us who live above the tropics from freezing and starving to death.
When imbecilic politicians fool with their countries’ energy systems, they put entire societies at risk. This is particularly true today in Britain and Western Europe, where these fools have compromised their energy systems through the widespread adoption of nonsensical grid-connected wind and solar schemes that produce little or no useful net energy. We predicted this energy debacle in several articles published in 2002.
We said in 2002:
““The ultimate agenda of pro-Kyoto advocates is to eliminate fossil fuels, but this would result in a catastrophic shortfall in global energy supply – the wasteful, inefficient energy solutions proposed by Kyoto advocates simply cannot replace fossil fuels.”
Apparently that blunt statement was not clear enough.
Sadly, it will take a catastrophe to enlighten these fools, and I fear we will see it soon, in the form of an increase in excess winter mortality in certain European countries.
Regards to all, Allan
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/clean-water-or-dirty-science-its-our-choice/
“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 …”
It’s pure graft. Tesla now rated by Consumer Reports as “best car evahh!” – so good it broke their ratings scale. Just like the guy with his mallet at carnival, knocking the bell right off the top of the “high striker” game. Wow!
A little skin ripped from the hide of the American public… must be good for covering somebody’s poor business acumen.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/consumer-reports-spends-its-juice-badly-1440803078
Leftists also forget there are always unforeseen and unintended consequences of circumventing free-market forces by State economic control: the lost jobs, the lost inventions that were never made, the new products that were never launched, the new companies that were never started, etc., all as a direct result of the State wasting capital that a free-market would have utilized differently…
Free-markets are the best and most moral way to effectively use and allocate land, labor and capital.
If you exclude tax breaks from the definition of subsidies then the whole thing makes more sense. All that matters is the NET flow of money ie, total tax less total ‘subsidy’. If that net is negative then you are being subsidized, of it is positive then you are paying tax. If you are claiming to be a producer of energy but are being subsidized then in reality you are a net absorber of energy. ie you are a burden.
Thanks Willis. I know this makes you angry. Me too.
I’ll send a link to our local (small town) paper.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The numbers are news but the conclusion is not.
It takes money to make money.
This is the reverse Robin Hood effect.
Absolutely.
It is a bit like city-center car-tolls, that prevent the poor from driving in cities. Well, the great unwashed should be on buses anyway. Don’t they know their place? /sarc
Liberals deserve blame for much of the looting but conservatives have dirty hands too. In 1999 Gov George Bush pushed a law in Texas forcing power companies to buy all green power produced in Texas. This mainly benefitted Sam Wyly, the Green King of Texas. In 2000 Bush did badly in the first 3 primaries. He had to win in S Carolina or give up. The polls had McCain 10 points ahead of Bush. Ten days before the election somebody flooded S Carolina with TV spots calling McCain a military coward. Bush won. Several months later it was learned that the Green King funded the attack ads.
By 2010 West Texas had so many wind mills that only 75% of the power being produced could be sent to consumers in East Texas cities. Presidential candidate Rick Perry pushed a bill that forced the rate payers of Texas to fund new high tension lines costing $5 billion. I could go on with this.
Also, you might think that SOME subsidies are good, like farming subsidies. I don’t buy it. Sure we get a lot of food, more than we can eat. Then we dump it in Africa. That makes African farmers uneconomic and they stop farming. Then they move to city slums, doubling the ranks of poor people. I see a bunch of conservative governors and congress critters strongly supporting farmers with ethanol subsidies and other green crap, like foecing all gasoline to have 10% alcohol. The vast majority of the farm subsidies go to people with home addresses in New York City or San Francisco. Rich bankers with low wage share croppers working the land. (Remember the conservative lady from Iowa who ran for president last time? She got farm subsidies AND subsidies for her medical business.)
All subsidies distort the free market structure of production. They should all be abolished.
Guess what? George Bush is not a conservative. Don’t lump him in with conservatives. We haven’t had a conservative president since Ronald Reagan, and even then he wasn’t a pure conservative, but better than most…
“All subsidies distort the free market structure of production. They should all be abolished.”
Exactly! And they all have “unintended” negative consequences that become the excuse for another government program. Pass an energy policy that artificially drives up the cost of home heating and then pass a program to subsidize the cost of home heating. Have agriculture policies that set minimum crop prices and then set up a food subsidy program so the poor can afford the overpriced groceries. This evolves into a government so large and with so many regulations and programs that even the staff in the agencies can’t know all of them. And in the end you wind up like Greece.
tgasloli,
You got it. The biggest beneficiaries are the millions (really) of bureaucrats who personally benefit from that racket.
When I’m running things (starting the second Tuesday of Never), there will be a mass layoff of every employee of the Dept’s of Education, Energy, Homeland Security, the EPA, and a dozen other federal bureaucracies. That enormous burden should be lifted from hard-bitten taxpayers. Despite their self-servong P.R., they add no net value to the country.
Security and national defense should be provided by police, the military, and the 50 National Guards. The others are State issues — per the Constitution.
The problem was even predicted by none other than Karl Marx, who warned of a growing, unaccountable, nameless and facelss bureaucracy. That is happening now. Since year 2000, “fees” for public services have risen by more than 25%. Why? Because there is never enough money to feed the ravenous beast.
There are very few legitimate reasons for subsidies. At least 97% of all subsidies should be eliminated. The free market works far better and more efficiently than any government solutions.
But we have probably passed the point of no return. The federal bureaucracy, including most of the teachers receiving federal subsidies, numbers in the multi-millions. One-half of all Americans are now on the dole. They all vote, and they will not vote to cut their own benefits and jobs.
Yes , the overwhelming transfer of wealth the political class creates , whatever their rhetoric is to themselves and their bureaucratic empires .
In highschool in the `60s we read essays worried about how we would fill our expanded leisure time in the future . The State has taken care of that with regulations and paper work , backed , as Alan Greenspan said in his Ayn Rand days , by a gun .
One of the Statist mantras is “creating jobs” . Jobs don’t create wealth ; production does . One of the shallowest thoughts proffered here was that the subsidies for Teslas for the rich was fine because other programs subsidized energy for the poor . It reminds me of one of Thomas Sowell’s brilliantly simple observations : If people think healthcare is too expensive , how do they expect that that healthcare plus a bureaucracy to administer it will be less ?
If the production is there , eg , the energy cheap , then more people need to work less . And that’s a pleasant thought — the common expectation a half century ago .
“They don’t include the massive subsidies handed out directly to the solar and wind industries.”
It’s a pity you didn’t include this, as I suspect it dwarfs other subsidies. For example, it is not surprising that “GE does not disclose revenue for its wind business”, however having flogged over 25,000 of the monstrosities, at a couple of mega bucks a pop, taxpayers have poured $50B or so down the drain on GE alone.
The logical next step would be to conduct a study of which companies, countries and stockholders benefitted from the manufacture of heavily subsidized wind and solar equipment, electric vehicles and biofuels. In the case of solar equipment (PV Modules), seven of the top ten manufacturers are based in China and two in Japan, only one in the U.S. Of the top ten manufacturers of wind turbines, four are based in China, three in Germany, one in Spain, one (the largest – Vestas) in Denmark, and one in the U.S. It seems clear that a substantial portion of the subsidy benefit is being exported.
The tax on gasoline and diesel fuel refunded to farmers is because fuel is used off road and the tax was originally passed to support the construction and maintenance of roads.
Well, like it or not, it is the poorer members of our society who tend to vote these leftist clowns and ecoloons into high office.
Leftist clowns and ecoloons by definition are not economically savvy and are usually obsessed with ’causes’ designed to make them look caring and concerned. The end result is inevitable and always the same, the poor get screwed by the rich, as the latter are normally quick to understand how they can personally exploit the situation.
Put simply, the left likes to think that because of action A, the result will be B and that is good, but ignore the fact that B causes the further results C, D & E, which can usually be relied on to be bad or detrimental.
Takes a liberal to discover a cool way to rape the poor
Leo, I am so stealing that.
Best to avoid labels, and address issues.
The liberal-conservative, left-right paradigms really reflect the two front paws of the same tiger, playing both sides against the middle. Divide and conquer.
Imagine, if you could rate a movie, or novel, only by describing it as liberal or conservative. This is your mind on programming and propaganda. If you’re going to use labels, at least broaden your palette.
In this case Barbara, you’ve jumped in with both feet at the chance to blame all raping of the poor on liberals, but do you really think our world is so simple, so predictable, so easily understood that it can be rendered completely only in black & white?
Of course I hasten to note as I close that the idea never crossed my mind that any conservative would ever think of raping the poor.
NEW YORK The U.S. war in Iraq has cost $1.7 trillion with an additional $490 billion in benefits owed to war veterans, expenses that could grow to more than $6 trillion over the next four decades counting interest, a study released on Thursday said.14 Mar 2013 nationalpriorities.org
Are the Iraqis more secure? Fewer deaths? Freedom to live peacefully?
Matters of Scale – Spending Priorities
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide reproductive health care for all women in developing countries $12 billion
Amount of money spent annually on perfumes in Europe and the United States $12 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide water and sanitation for all people in developing nations $9 billion
Amount of money spent annually on cosmetics in the United States $8 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic health an nutrition needs universally in the developing world $13 billion
Amount of money spent each year on pet food in Europe and the United States $17 billion
Amount of money needed each year (in addition to current expenditures) to provide basic education for all people in developing nations $6 billion
Amount of money spent each year on militaries worldwide $780 billion
Combined wealth of the world’s richest 225 people $1 trillion
Combined annual income of the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people $1 trillion
worldwatch.org
And your point is?
Are you pretending that an all-powerful, anonymous, un-accountable international “government” would do a better job more accurately or more efficiently of taking all the world’s time, money and energy from everybody (except those whom that international government favors!) and giving it to those who that international government favors?
Or merely that “you” would “feel better” if “your” propaganda were satisfied according to how “you” feel that propaganda should be satisfied? How do “you” propose treating those innocents who disagree with “you” (and those guilty of NOT agreeing!) with “your” interpretation of a prefect world and “your” desires to impose “your” will on everybody else?
Once again another good article Willis. This same racket is happening here in UK too.
http://get.better-energy.net
In the North East of England where I live, in the middle of summer we get up to 16 hours of daylight. We do not need the electricity then, since very few buildings are air-conditioned, lights are not needed etc. In the middle of winter when we do need the electricity for heating and lighting we get 7 hours of daylight, with the Sun a maximum of 15 degrees of altitude.
Failed UK politician Ed Milliband’s lasting political legacy legacy is the Climate Change Act, the single most effective instrument of legislation in the last 300 years at transferring money from the poor to the rich. Why?, because the poor pay artificially inflated energy bills and the rich own the land that attracts renewable energy subsidy…
This whole issue of robbing the poor to pay the rich reminds me of the 19th Century Corn Laws. Increasing the cost of energy by imposing taxes in order to fund so called Green Energy is an example of state interference that clearly rewards an uneconomic industry. If it is easier to make money by getting the state to tax its citizens rather than to lower your industry costs by improving efficiency or applying new technology, then lobbying the politicians to impose taxes is clearly the correct business decision to make.
Put simply if an industry is not profitable then it is not sustainable. Funding Green Energy is a pyramid scheme, another example of the myth of a free lunch, that we can all have endless energy for no effective cost or effort.