Whether through paid advertising or free media coverage, political parties and candidates will do their best to create the narrative they hope will motivate voters in the coming midterm elections. The top issues usually include some mix of monetary issues centered on the state of the economy, tax policy or jobs. Other times, social issues lead the way, including abortion, healthcare and education.
But no matter how campaigns try to frame their preferred topics, the issue of energy overrides all others. No single entity impacts almost everything in American life as does the availability, reliability and cost of energy.
Consider the following:
- How much money we can spend on groceries, clothing or school supplies for our children is dependent on how much we must first spend on illuminating, heating and cooling our homes. Over the course of several years, studies have found that energy costs are the determining factor in how much disposable income is available for other products and services.
- The cost of gasoline and diesel determines whether we can afford to travel to work, allow our children to participate in extracurricular school activities, or take a vacation. Last year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that “drivers will spend less than 2% of their personal disposable incomes on gasoline in 2025 – the lowest share since 2005, excluding 2020,” when covid impacted travel. So far this year, Americans have seen the impact of higher gasoline prices, emphasizing the importance of polices that keep such costs affordable.
- The cost of virtually everything that is manufactured is largely driven by the energy required in the transportation and manufacturing process. Lower energy costs mean lower prices that consumers pay for those products. When looking to lower their cost of doing business, manufacturers almost always first explore ways to reduce their energy spending, whether from switching from one energy source to another or cutting back on consumption – the least desirable avenue since it reduces productivity.
- Inflation – the increased cost of goods and services – is determined more than anything by energy costs, the foundation of the economy. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports energy costs as a primary force in the fluctuations in the Consumer Price Index.
- Energy is a national security issue. When the U.S. is energy independent, it is not at the mercy of the policies and whims of foreign countries, including our enemies. Protecting America’s energy independence is a primary factor in ensuring our freedom and liberty.In government, tax rates and other economic policies are debated and decided. Sometimes taxes are raised, other times they are reduced. But what all Americans need to understand is that government mandates on energy can make energy costs a hidden form of taxation, draining money from household budgets.Which brings us to the most important point as we head into the fall election. Candidates on the left and right will inundate voters with their positions on healthcare, immigration, taxation, trans rights, abortion, the Middle East and more. But for voters who care about the future – for themselves, their children and future generations – determining a candidate’s stand on energy is the most important place to start.
Frighteningly, the Democratic Party is rapidly being coopted by candidates who are either proud socialists or, as is often the case, “progressives” who claim not to be socialists, but whose policies nonetheless reflect socialism in practice.
Many candidates on the left are aligned, either openly or tacitly, with the Democratic Socialists of America organization. What does the DSA have to say about energy? It wants to undertake a “massive investment” in the Green New Deal, with “publicly owned energy and transit infrastructure” while phasing out fossil fuels – our most affordable, reliable and abundant energy sources.
In other words, it’s the typical socialist recipe – the government seizes industry and eliminates competition and innovation, which leads to higher prices, poorer service and increased vulnerability to foreign intervention. High-profile advocates for the DSA-backed Green New Deal are rapidly seizing control of the Democratic Party and are a growing influence in the halls of Congress. They are joined by a host of upstart far-left socialist Democrats who are increasingly winning primary elections.
In the coming weeks and months, candidates, parties and independent groups will bombard us with the issues they want to make important. But nothing is more important than a candidate’s position on energy.
Are they in favor of affordable, reliable and effective energy policies that lower the prices of all goods and services and keep the U.S. safe and secure? Or do they believe in heavy-handed government control of energy, phasing out or eliminating our most trusted and dependable sources while mandating and subsidizing “alternatives” that fail to meet our demands and leave us reliant on foreign adversaries?
That’s the top consideration in the coming election. Study a candidate’s energy policy closely, then choose wisely. The ripple effect will be enormous.
Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing opinion columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
AOC, pretty face, no brains.
Still managed to graduate cum laude from Boston University in 2011 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, earning dual majors in International Relations and Economics.
In a world where intellectual Behemoths like Kamala Harris and GW Bush have their degrees (didn’t he visit Yale and Harvard with a master of business administration and wrecking every business he laid his hands on)
participation seems to be the decisive factor.
As opposed to the socialists who have ruined every country they’ve ever tried to run.
Thereby calibrating the value of a BA from BU.
Skipped bartending school?
Trash degrees from a trash university.
No big deal.
The only job she could find with those gold plated degrees that have you so impressed, was as a barista.
The university where the telephone was invented!
After graduating she went home to the Bronx to look after her mother, who was in danger of losing her home following her father’s death to cancer, and worked two jobs in order to do so. Her doing that definitely impressed me.
Why so many down votes? If we simply dismiss our highly intelligent and cunning enemies as having no brains, they will continue to rule the roost.
They may be wrong, they may be mistaken, they may be misinformed and they may have evil intent but that has little to do with how smart they are.
It is a lazy surrender to dismiss their cunning and guile and skill at wielding power.
Yes she is a formidable adversary. Underestimating your adversary is a bad plan.
Yes AOC is the real deal. Do not underestimate her. She was a bartender because Wall Street does not have a lot of openings for socialists.
“Yes AOC is the
realraw deal.”There: fixed the typo for you . . . no charge (and I do appreciate your sarcasm!)
Occasional Cortex indeed
AOC wants to eliminate blonde jokes.
She’s the only one who has successfully established a serious competition.
Probably her greatest achievement besides forging the GND with 0 knowledge about energy;
Yet it is considered the gold standard by almost all western leaders –
Probably the biggest mystery of this century besides Obamas Nobel Prize and
Joe Biden , with no campaigning, Zero-Hype and lockdowns and being trashed by Sanders at the beginning of the primaries
getting 12 mio more votes than peak Obama with 200% Hype all of Hollywood,MSM and Big Tech on his side and 95% of black votes on top.
Anyone who follows politics knows how Biden did it, but saying so will get yoi banned.
Try to find a recent closeup photo of her without makeup!
BTW, wasn’t AOC heavily associated with (and got a lot of press attention from) something called the “Green New Deal” some five to seven years ago? Talk about a fadeout!
She’s freezing her eggs
More carbon….
One might assume they’re scrambled.
“pretty face, “
…. for a horse !!
and when she starts braying, you realise its a donkey… or an ass.
I wouldn’t challenge her to a contest of eating corn on the cob through a picket fence.
In any case, her high speed train to Hawaii is going to be expensive.
One of the most off-topic—yet appropriately funny, based on the above article’s lead-in photo—comments ever posted on WUWT!
I agree energy is a very important election issue (but not the only one). It doesn’t now and won’t in the future work in Democrat favor. Too invested for too long in ‘Green New Deals’ and their disastrous consequences to ever disassociate—AOC, the Squad, Hochul, Newsom cannot escape the consequences of their past/present positions. The farcical California bullet train to nowhere with no track yet laid is but one example of many.
Most of what is said in this article is unknown to most people so not an election issue for them.
If true, then we have a lot of work to do in a lot of states between now and November.
Very few people even know the word energy in the physics sense. It just refers to how they feel. This cannot be changed.
And yet the MSM will glorify them and ignore the failures, and the low-intelligence voters will continue to elect folks like them.
Greens are almost always watermelons-green on the outside, red inside. In any case, it is an indication they will govern by fantasy.
All voters should certainly consider this:
history has shown that the odds of any politician/bureaucrat staying true to their campaign positions and promises are about the same as those of a box turtle successfully crossing a busy four lane interstate highway.
First and foremost, once elected to office they “follow the money”.
Politicians, to the extent they “stand” for anything, stand on shifting sands.
Yep.
Take no notice of anything they SAY, just note what they DO and/or DON’T DO.
While the author rails against socialism, it is unregulated capitalist monopolies that cause the most damage. Billionaire oligarchs pay little in tax but run the Congress and the Media. They want to end Social Security, the most successful pension plan in history, wanted by the vast majority of the people. But the rich don’t get much back and hate paying any taxes, no matter how insignificant to them they are.
You neglected the fact they are responsible for the employment of millions of people….
You neglected the fact that the Soviets and Chinese Communist achieved full industrialization and full employment where capitalism has failed for millennium, installed colonialism and kept the poor countries unindustrialized through economic hitmen and dictators. Again, I am not defending their bad parts, but you want to make it all of nothing. Today, Russia and China are not communists.
‘Today, Russia and China are not communists.’
Which is exactly why they are no longer as poor as when they were.
Russia and China went from peasant, agrarian economies to modern industrial giants under Stalinism and Maoism, neither of which were really communism. They did this is a few decades after being kept suppressed by capitalists. Now they are more like meritocracies and oligopolies under a benevolent government. As such, they have surpassed the uncontrolled oligopolies of the US and EU,
It’s easy to industrialize when you run a slave economy and are willing to kill anyone who disagrees.
1.) The Commies murdered over 100 million people in the 20th century and you think capitalist monopolies caused the most damage?
2.) Where do these “unregulated” capitalist “monopolies” exist? I have run a business in the U.S. since I was 21 and I have been heavily regulated for every single day.
The Soviets and the Maoists were not communists. Read Marx and Engels. The US firebombed Germany and Japan and dropped atomic bombs on civilians, killing millions in total, all war crimes. The Japanese and Germans were both capitalists who murdered hundreds of millions. I do not defend the dictatorships in the Soviet Union or Communist China. You should not defend the war crimes of the USA, UK and others
A very simple request of you: please provide one credible reference that the United States has ever been charged, tried or convicted for war crimes in its prosecution of WWII, including firebombing Germany and the dropping of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Hint for you: any good Web search engine can be your friend in attempting to do this.)
Furthermore, Allied strategic bombing and firebombing campaigns over Germany during World War II resulted in an estimated 350,000 to 500,000 civilian deaths.
An estimated 150,000 to 246,000 people died from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. This total includes both the people killed instantly and those who died from radiation sickness, burns, and other long-term injuries by the end of the year and into later decades.
Doing the math for you, the above total to a estimated maximum number of less than 750,000 deaths to German and Japanese military and civilians from WWII firebombing and use of nuclear weapons . . . not the “killing millions” that you claim.
IOW, there is what you would like to believe, and then there is reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_casualties_in_World_War_II
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/COMM.10.5.03.HTM
So if it was only 500,000 that is ok with you? It was mass murder of civilians, they were war crimes. The Atomic Bombs were totally unnecessary – Japan was surrendering – they just wanted their king not to be hung – . Truman sacrificed Japanese lives to scare the Soviets. No American General recommended using atomic bombs. It was the civilians who ordered that mass murder.
Such a collection of stupid comments, highlighted by “It was the civilians who ordered that mass murder.”
You really want to assert that “civilians” were responsible for controlling US military actions during WWII???
Good grief!
BTW, still waiting on that one credible reference to backup your ridiculous assertion that the US committed any war crime during WWII. You appear to be having trouble producing that.
It is documented that Truman forced the military to use the atomic bomb. Truman replaced MacArthur. Roosevelt withheld information that the Japanese were about to attack Pearl Harbor and ordered the best ships out of the harbor, inviting the attack so he could shock the people into the war. before the attack, 90% opposed. The day after, one million men volunteered.
https://fdr.blogs.archives.gov/2022/09/07/roosevelt-commander-in-chief/
President Truman was Commander-in-chief of US military forces at the time he ordered the use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese . . . he clearly was not a “civilian” at that time in any definition of that word.
The rest of your comment is pretty much a word salad.
I see we are dealing with another ideologue who feels that anyone who isn’t pure communist is some form of capitalist.
Germany and Japan were both fascist, which is a form of socialism.
I oppose pure communism. There has never been one. I oppose pure capitalism. There is never been one. So there is no proof that either would work.
Throughout history, electorates have wanted mixed economies. SS is extremely popular.
As Ayn Rand pointed out, Capitalism degenerates into Oligarchs, crony capitalism, taking over the government using money to pervert it to their benefit. This is what we have today with Trump and his cronies, We live in a Tech Fascist state,
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/aug/05/journalist-taking-on-tech-fascists-silicon-valley
Mussolini defined Fascism as “the merger of the state and corporations”, which is what the US is today. I, and most of you, oppose that.
Here is CIA/Mosadpedia’s definition.
“Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence primarily in Europe of the interwar period.[1][2][3] Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4] Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,[5][6] fascism is at the far-right end of the traditional left–right spectrum.[1][6][7] What constitutes a precise definition of fascism has been a longrunning and complex debate among scholars.”
“Read Marx and Engels. “
Read “Animal Farm”.
I’ve read them both. In America, the people with billions are more equal than others. They did not earn it, they acquired it. No one “earns” billions
More stupidity. I suggest you look up how Elon Musk, Larry Page, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison, Mark Zukenberg, Warren Buffett and some others of the more than 900 billionaires in the USA became billionaires during their lifetimes. They did not all inherit (i.e., “acquire it”, your words) or find it at the end of a rainbow.
They gamed the system. They acquired it does not mean inherit it. It means the used legal methods but did not really deserve it for the value they added. Elon Musk bought into PayPal and then left. He did not create it. He now sucks off the government tit for his space program. Zuckerberg defrauded the real creators of facebook. Larry Ellison is a Mossad agent helping Israel destroy the US, intentional or not. Listing billionaires does not mean they deserve it. I say no one deserves billions of dollars
Ahhhh, now I get it . . .besides you yourself, who else is fit to decide who “deserves” what?
And in the current 21st century, the CCP has arbitrarily placed over 1 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities into mass internment and prison systems just since 2017. No telling how many of those have been murdered outright in the process.
Separately, investigating the illegal war Russia started against Ukraine in 2014, independent estimates and international bodies place Ukrainian military deaths between 55,000 and 140,000, while verified civilian deaths surpass 16,400. The United Nations General Assembly and legal experts worldwide have formally declared Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to be a violation of international law and an illegal use of force. Russian President Vladimir Putin was judged to be a war criminal on March 17, 2023, by the International Criminal Court, which issued an arrest warrant for him stating there are reasonable grounds to believe he bears individual criminal responsibility for the war crime of unlawful deportation and transfer of children from Ukraine to Russia. This illegal war continues today.
And Jimmy Walter asserts that “it is unregulated capitalist monopolies that cause the most damage”???
Can you site one example of an unregulated capitalist monopoly?
Exactly. Our so-called ‘robber barons’, after having had their butts repeatedly handed to them while trying to establish ‘monopolies’ during the pre-regulatory ‘Gilded Age’, eventually learned that it was much easier to do so with the assistance of captured regulators.
I misspoke. Oligopolies like Big Pharm, Military Contractors, Big Banks, Big Agriculture, and so on. The conspire together, by default, fund Congressmen, Senators and lobbying firms to defang regulations against them. They even call it, the revolving door, since those that regulate them go to Golden jobs in them after “retiring”
That’s better, but it seems you paint your world with a broad brush and only know one color.
You make vague, ad hominem attacks, illogical and irrelevant
Somewhat better, but you’re still missing the point. Market ‘oligopolies’, as is the case with monopolies, are unsustainable absent the use of government coercion to prevent the entry of competitors into markets. Limit government’s role to simply protecting ‘inalienable rights’, i.e., negative rights such as life, liberty, property, etc., and all of the so-called ‘market failures’ the Left rails about will disappear.
Yes, the government is involved. The Congress is bought through donations, lobbyists and Golden jobs in the industry when they “retire”. There is also the huge “buy in” to be a player in an oligopoly – business people want sure things, not competition or risk. Then there are payoffs and buy outs to keep competition out and the oligopolies supreme.
When capitalists buy government and use it to get wealthy, it’s proof that capitalism is evil.
On the other hand when socialists buy government and use it to get rich, it’s proof that socialism is perfect.
Anyone who buys the government to get rich is bad (evil has a religious connotation so I do not use it). Both parties play the game that they are doing whatever for the people when they are, in fact, doing it for money and power. The Supreme Court has made this legal with its “Citizens United” ruling that corporations can give all the like and deduct it from their earnings and that the rich can give all they like to change laws that benefit them, both directly or throw lobbying firms, calling both, “Freedom of Speech”. The rich and the Zionists have taken over the Main Stream Media so that is no longer “free speech”, but propaganda.
And once again, we get the usual drivel that anyone who is rich is evil. Unless you are running a communist utopia.
Once again we get the usual drivel that anyone who is rich deserves it and anyone who is poor deserves it and should not be helped. Did you ever hear of the Light Bulb conspiracy? The manufacturers of light bulbs colluded to reduce the life of light bulbs so they could sell more – document fact. This is just one of the “planned obsolescence” conspiracies by capitalists
Yes I was very surprised when I moved to the US from the UK how short the lifetime of the incandescent bulbs was!
From one poor defined and even more inaccurately used word to another.
At this point, an oligopoly is any company that is bigger than your corner grocery store.
As to the claim that these companies have bought congress, that charge is always raised whenever congress does something that the communist/socialits disagree with.
According to their ideology, the only possible reason why congress would ever disagree with them, is because they are being paid to.
You forgot the Masons, the Grail Knights, the Jesuits, the Vatican, Illuminati, Alien Abductions and …
JW, you need to get your facts straight before commenting here. Relevant facts about your stated view that the rich don’t pay taxes—took me about 10 seconds to look up. This is for the most recently available tax year 2023, so is 2024 data:
>10:1 federal tax burden disparity still not good enough in your progressive view?
The disparity is actually much worse, because within the bottom 50% are also all the received Medicaid, SNAP, Section 8 housing, and other federal benefits that the bottom 50% pay virtually nothing toward.
I misspoke. I should have said “marginal utility”. Between sales taxes, property taxes and income taxes, not to mention all the offshore tax havens, the rich pay a pittance in marginal utility money. In 2023, the top 5% of earners collectively paid nearly $1.3 trillion in income taxes, or about 60% of the national total. That does not include sales taxes or property taxes, which hurt the poor even more disproportionately in terms of marginal utility.
The bottom 50% cannot afford healthcare due to the predatory capitalistic health care industry.
While there is some fraud in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, there is some fraud in every system, government and capitalist. The heartless capitalists under Trump and Musk, and other billionaires like them, cut both Medicade and SNAP while leaving the entire fraud and waste in the Military budget as well as increasing it 50%. The Patriot missiles have been proven to be less than 3% effective against ballistic and hypersonic missiles. Yet the US has increased its orders of them. Raytheon threatened the life of Ted Postol, who exposed this fraud. They also tried to get him fired from MIT.
As for section 8 housing, capitalists have been buying up housing to make money, but that makes it even more unaffordable to the poor. Your claims that Medicaid, SNAP and section 8 somehow make everything ok for the poor deserve a military section 8.
SS is paid for by the wage earners, not the government. The problem with SS today is that the baby boomers and those that came shortly after them are all retiring, while the working age people ratio to the whole and birth rates are declining. That could be remedied by raising the limit on SS taxes on the rich. Such additional taxes would cause the rich not to miss out on anything they need or reasonable would use for entertainment.
people caught in holes should first stop digging
He sounds like one of AI exchanges some have put up here they eventually get the AI to admit it “misspoke” about something.
Ask it the original question the next day and it will “misspeak” again.
Social security is a joke as bad as your mother and you.
Ad hominem attacks are illogical and irrelevant – a sure sign you have no facts or logic to support your position
There is no such thing as a capitalist monopoly.
The only way to form a monopoly is through the use of government force.
Anyone who actually believes that millionaires and billionaires pay little in taxes is someone who has been taken in by the talking points and has never had an independent thought
The top 10% of income tax payers pay almost 90% of all income taxes.
As for SS being successful, that’s a laugh. SS was designed to fail from day one. It was never actuarily sound, which is why the trust fund is going bust in another few years.
Every time a Republican tried to point out the coming crash, the usual morons started screaming about taking away “their SS” and the whole issue was buried again.
Their are definitely capitalists oligopolies that conspire, set prices, decide not to compete against each other on a quid pro basis.
As for the taxes, I misspoke. I should have said “marginal utility”. Between sales taxes, property taxes and income taxes, not to mention all the offshore tax havens, the rich pay a pittance in marginal utility money. In 2023, the top 5% of earners collectively paid nearly $1.3 trillion in income taxes, or about 60% of the national total. That does not include sales taxes or property taxes, which hurt the poor even more disproportionately in terms of marginal utility.
The SS was not designed to fail. Prove that assertion. The problem with SS today is that the baby boomers those that came shortly after them are retiring, while the working age people ratio and birth rate are declining. That could be remedied by raising the limit on SS taxes on the rich.
‘The SS was not designed to fail. Prove that assertion.’
The basic definition of a Ponzi scheme is a swindle where early ‘investors’ are paid using money from later ‘investors’. What makes ‘SS’ even worse than a Ponzi scheme is that its earlier surpluses were poured down government ratholes rather than invested in productive assets.
As for declining birth rates, you can lay that on the Left, as well:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/six-nooses-how-interventionism-strangling-familys-will-reproduce
You prove my point by pointing out that their surpluses were not invested as they should have been – that capitalists controlling Our Congress were the ones that tried to ruin SS.
Birth rates always decline as wealth goes up and the need for the family to have many child laborers goes down, not some plot by the left.
The funds were invested, they were invested in t-bills.
That the left refused to let anyone change how SS was financed, even as birth rates plummeted, is not proof that capitalists tried to destroy SS.
They are now trying to eliminate SS. See my other comment today, below on the complexity of this question/problem
The tax were never sufficient.
SS allowed people who had only paid in for a few years to retire at full benefits.
“The age you stop working can affect the amount of your Social Security retirement benefits. We base your retirement benefit on your highest 35 years of earnings and the age you start receiving benefits.
If You Stop Work Before You Start Receiving BenefitsIf you stop work before you start receiving benefits and you have less than 35 years of earnings, your benefit amount is affected. We use a zero for each year without earnings when we calculate the amount of retirement benefits you are due. Years with no earnings reduce your retirement benefit amount.
Even if you have 35 years of earnings when you stop working, some of those years may be low-earning years. When you file for retirement benefits, those years are averaged into your calculation, creating a lower benefit. However, if you had continued to work, your low earning years are replaced with your high earning years. Higher earnings increase your benefit amount.
If You Stop Work Between Age 62 and Your Full Retirement AgeYou can stop working before your full retirement age and receive reduced benefits. The earliest age you can start receiving retirement benefits is age 62. If you file for benefits when you reach full retirement age, you will receive full retirement benefits.
If You Stop Work After Full Retirement AgeIf you choose to work beyond your full retirement age, you have 2 options:
https://www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/planner/stopwork.html
Unregulated…lol
The rich, corporations and their lobbyists fill the Congress with their minions who defang the very people who are supposed to regulate them. They even call it, the revolving door.
Well I agree Big Pharma was working with the Biden administration
Social Security accounts for roughly one-fifth of total federal spending, making it the largest individual item managed by the government and a major cause of the exponentially ballooning US national debt.
In typical fashion, you failed to define “the rich” and “insignificant”. And by implication, you really assert that the not-rich like paying taxes? Good grief!
Just so you know, the top 10% of all US Federal income tax filers (by income) pay 71-72% of ALL Federal income tax revenue.
— reference: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/detail/who-pays-income-taxes-tax-year-2023
People pay money into Social Security. The government raided those funds instead of investing them. And your assertions about the percentages are totally wrong
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/
$1.8 trillion. Of that, over $1.3 trillion went to the defense department and related expenses. The Patriot missiles do not work at all. Watch Ted Postol on YouTube. Raytheon threatened his life for exposing their fraud. The F35’s can not fly most of the time.
The money was invested in t-bills.
They have been earning interest since day one.
So SS is not paid by the deficit, is not a government give away.
And it is complex, “before 2000, the Social Security surpluses added to national saving. After 2000, when the entire budget appeared to be moving toward rising surpluses, the optics made large tax cuts too tempting. In other words, I think that the Social Security surpluses enabled the Bush tax cuts. To the extent that saving did not occur, the burden of the Baby Boomers was not prefunded. This issue of prefunding will arise again when Congress turns its attention to eliminating Social Security’s long-term financing problem. An immediate increase in taxes will once again produce an increase in trust fund reserves. If these reserves are to increase saving rather than just cover current expenditures, we need a better set-up. One option is to change the budgeting so that Social Security is taken completely off the books as is the case of the pensions sponsored by state and local governments. Another option is to change the trust fund’s investments. When the money is invested in government bonds, it becomes immediately available for government spending. If it were invested in corporate bonds or even equities – an idea I like a lot – the money would not be available for government spending.
So while the government does not actually steal money from the Social Security trust funds, the prefunding exercise probably has not worked as well as envisioned. If we are going to build up trust fund reserves again, we need to do a better job of structuring the deal. ”
https://crr.bc.edu/does-the-government-steal-from-social-security/
Even tho not specifically pertinent, thought I would provide a fuller list of relevant issues mentioned in comment above for the upcoming midterm and 2028 presidential elections. This post discussed energy cost and availability. But there are others of in my opinion roughly equal importance:
And there are lesser issues where other good stuff is already visibly happening, such as US cost of prescription drugs, or the whole crazy ‘trans’ thing.
beyond stupid. every millennial and centennial knows we get energy from a can of red bull
If they say that all we need is more wind and solar, then you know that you are looking at a candidate who wants you dead.
Gary,
You exaggerate a little about energy supremacy.
In the long term, people will become extinct and so require no energy if the reproduction rate stays too low for too long. Ditto from a lethal disease, or from a large enough asteroid impact.
I agree with the direction of your article, disagree with over-emphasis.
Can I suggest that politicians should have no part to play in how we choose and construct our sources of energy?
Geoff S
The fundamental problem with this piece is it’s predicated on the notion that economics is the only issue that matters, and energy dictates economic outcomes. If, as many do, you consider economics a subordinate matter then energy can’t be the critical issue. Important? Sure. But ethical matters will trump it e.g. support or opposition for God given rights.
Republicans tend to be weak, Democrats hostile. Exceptions may exist but …
the issue of energy overrides all others. No single entity impacts almost everything in American life as does the availability, reliability and cost of energy.
Well that’s why your Gummint wants everyone driving EVs to save money-
The hidden costs of private kerbside charging
Trust them they’re from the Gummint and they’re bending over backwards to help.
First, REGISTER to vote. then TURN UP and VOTE
With a photo ID.
(And keep an eye on the ballot counters.)