People and economies will seek and use the most cost effective energy source that is marginally environmentally acceptable. This is a fundamental truth of the universe, not subject to modification by small groups of people. Don’t take my word for it, check it out for yourself.
Now. If a small group of people, like the elected officials of the U.S. Government, decide that there is benefit to them in tampering with the above universal truth, hold onto your asses. Here is how it will work.
There are a few routes to getting people to violate the above stated universal energy law. One, you can outlaw the more cost effective energy sources. Two, you can mount a propaganda campaign to convince a critical mass of people that the more cost effective energy sources are NOT environmentally acceptable. Three, you can impose taxes on the more cost effective energy sources, to drive the price up and thereby making less cost effective sources more attractive. Four, you can use the Nation’s credit card and the printing press at the Treasury to subsidize less cost effective energy sources.
What is going on right now is a huge combination of the above, drowning in propaganda from all sides. The results will be several, all unfavorable. Good jobs for young Americans are already scarce, they will become more scarce as jobs flee this country.
The debt burden, already crushing, will continue to inflate to unimaginable proportions.
The only jobs to be created by a Government program to force our economy off the rails will be installer jobs. Minimum wage, no future, non-union … because the only alternative will be for the Government to borrow and/or print yet more money to subsidize wage enhancements (there will be design and management jobs created, but those will be well out of reach of the pathetically uneducated workforce).
The economy is a very bad place for acting out one’s ideology, it’s simply too important to be fooled with over experiments in social engineering. I have never recommended defensive positions, I’ve always had faith in our system of free enterprise and marketplace competition. I have lost no faith in those factors, what is pushing me to defensiveness right now is the way the core values and strengths of American prosperity are under siege.
May God Bless America, g’nite all.
