Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Buying Battery-Operated Cars

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My then-new gasoline-powered 2022 Ford Escape and my wife’s new 2023 Ford Maverick hybrid, each one level down from Ford’s top tier, each cost in the low- to mid-$30 thousands. Joanna Stern, The Wall Street Journal‘s Senior Personal Technology Columnist, evaluated a number of battery-operated cars under $60,000 to see which one of those she liked best. The ones she looked into were the Ford Mustang Mach-E, Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, and Volkswagen ID.4.

The prices of these, as tested, were—oh, wait; she didn’t discuss equipage in any detail, nor did she name the price of those cars as tested. Accordingly, here are the prices I found after an arduous five minute Bing search. All prices, save Tesla, are via Edmunds; Tesla’s prices are per Tesla.

  • Mach-E: $42,500-$60,000, depending on how gussied up you want it
  • Model Y: $52,900-$66,000, depending….
  • Ioniq 5: $47,700-$59,400, depending….
  • EV6: $45,900-$60,200, depending….
  • 4: $40,300-$56,500, depending….

Assume, arguendo, that Stern’s evaluations are reasonable (noting that some of her criteria are matters of taste), and truncate the gussying to Stern’s $60,000 cap. This is the cost of transportation that the Progressive-Democrat Biden administration is trying to force us to pay in the name if its—and the Left’s—climate funding industry and related artificial hysteria.

This is just to get into the car, too; the comparison elides questions of range; the availability of charging stations outside the home garage; the long time to charge to the battery-operated cars’ 300-ish miles range (my Escape reaches 400+ miles on a tank of gas, and the tank fills in three minutes, or so); and of special importance to the Left (except when inconvenient to them); the environmental damage done by mining the raw materials and disposing of the spent batteries.

Electrifying Transportation

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A Wall Street Journal editorial centered on California’s idiotic push to fully electrify cars and trucks—yes, including heavy duty freight trucks—within the next dozen years, has this tidbit, which is canonical in exemplifying such foolishness anywhere in the US:

One trucking company wanted to install charging stations for 30 trucks at a terminal in Joliet, Illinois, only to be told by local officials they would draw more power than the entire city.

And this, specific to California and its already existing green ideology:

In January northern California utility PG&E told a charging provider that one of its large fleet customers couldn’t charge its trucks on summer afternoons owing to a power crunch.

A power crunch which PG&E knew six months in advance was going to occur. It’s clear: neither facts nor the fiscal or quality of life costs of ignoring them matter to the mainstream Left. They’re right, and if you have questions about that, they’ll enthusiastically disabuse you of your questions. Never mind that

[a] Southern California Edison executive recently said some fleets are powering chargers using diesel generators so electric trucks don’t go unused.

Pay no attention to the zealot behind the door.

Drug Price…Foolishness

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President Joe Biden (D) and his associates over in Medicare have identified the drugs of which he’s willing to pretend to negotiate the price. The particular drugs aren’t important; what matters is the precedent being set regarding the Progressive-Democrat-run administration’s view of what constitutes negotiation in Party’s lexicon. Readers interested in which drugs are targeted for now can find the list at the end of the linked-to article.

What’s important here is this.

The naming of the 10 drugs subject to price negotiations kicks off a lengthy process. Drugmakers have until October 1 to say whether they will join in the negotiations.
If they don’t negotiate or accept the price resulting from it, companies face a tax of up to 95% on a medicine’s US sales, or they can pull all of their drugs from Medicare and Medicaid coverage.

And this:

Drug makers that don’t participate or reject the government’s price will incur a crippling daily excise tax that starts at 186% and eventually climbs to 1,900% of the drug’s daily revenues. This is extortion, not a negotiation.

That’s not negotiation, that’s “Take our price, or pay even more through our usurious, if not confiscatory, taxes.” The outcome will be a stifling of medical (not just for medicinal) innovation in the US. Instead, innovation, such as might remain, will be pushed overseas, in large part to nations that don’t themselves innovate very much, having come to rely on American developments which they then heavily subsidize for their own citizens.

Some of those drugs, too, will be pulled from Medicare/Medicaid coverage, along with all of the other drugs a company makes available through those programs, which will price them out of reach of those most in need—those with the ailments being treated by those medicines and who lack the money to pay the full price.

That is, until Party takes the next obvious step and taxes those medicines’ sales revenues earned outside of Medicare/Medicaid, to be followed by Party’s diktat that those medicines must be offered through Medicare/Medicaid.

Which will result in those medicines no longer being manufactured in the US at all and no longer being sold at all in the US, regardless of their manufacture.

Increasing Choice

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New Jersey’s Progressive-Democratic Party Governor Phil Murphy’s Newspeak definition of increasing choice as he applies it to vehicles he will permit his subjects the citizens of New Jersey to buy goes like this:

“There’s a lot of misinformation about what this order does,” his climate director Catherine Klinger said in an interview with ROI-NJ that was published this week. “It requires that new vehicle sales in the state are zero emission by 2035. More than 50% of vehicles that are sold in the state are used. And there is absolutely no change to the used vehicle market.”
If you like your Jeep Cherokee, you’ll still be able to buy a used one….

While supplies last.

No, Murphy’s proclamation, made through his climate director, is nothing more than a cynical variation on Henry Ford’s marketing slogan of a century ago:

The customer can have any color they want as long as it’s black. A New Jersey citizen can have any vehicle he wants, as long as it’s electric. Never mind whether he can afford one.

Achieving Energy Security

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Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm thinks it would be good for our energy security were we to eliminate the 60% of our oil-centered energy that we import and switching over to 100% clean electricity by 2035.

It’s true that wiping out that 60% of our oil imports would help our energy security, but only if it’s done right. We shouldn’t be importing any energy, much less from enemy nations or from nations vulnerable to enemy nations. The right way to eliminate those imports is to release our own oil—and natural gas and coal, come to that—producers to produce from our own, domestic, hydrocarbon-based sources. It’s highly important, too, to get the regulators out of the way of our producers’ ability to produce nuclear power. Sadly, though, Granholm—Energy Secretary Granholm, mind you—seems unable even to say the words “nuclear power,” or at least she never does say them.

The problem with Granholm’s wish to supplant those imports with 100% clean electricity—as even Granholm knows full well—is that the raw materials needed for “renewable,” or “green,” or “clean” energy production come from Peoples Republic of China mines, or PRC-controlled mines in Africa and Siberia (the latter are not yet developed, but they will be). Beyond that, far too many components for “renewable” energy production come from PRC-domiciled factories. Granholm’s move in no way reduces our dependence on enemy nations for our energy.

It is, however, a distinct elimination of our ability to have energy security.