Green Subsidies

There’s this bit from Power Line:

And this quote from Severin Borenstein’ and Lucas Davis’ The Distributional Effects of U.S. Tax Credits for Heat Pumps, Solar Panels, and Electric Vehicles:

Over the last two decades, US households have received $47 billion in tax credits for buying heat pumps, solar panels, electric vehicles, and other “clean energy” technologies. Using information from tax returns, we show that these tax credits have gone predominantly to higher-income households. The bottom three income quintiles have received about 10% of all credits, while the top quintile has received about 60%.

It’s reasonable to ask why those “bottom” quintiles—which include the middle-class folks—don’t buy more of these cool green devices. The answer is because even after the lavish subsidies, they can’t afford the devices. The remaining, out of pocket, costs still are too great. Worse, those remaining out of pocket costs comprise the entirety of the costs for much of the bottom two quintiles:

About 40% of US households pay no federal income tax, so millions of mostly low- and middle-income filers are simply ineligible for these credits.

It’s also reasonable to wonder whether Government is simply subsidizing a market until the devices become ubiquitous enough for prices to come down. Leave aside the fact that subsidies vanishingly rarely go away and protected industries just as vanishingly rarely lose their “protection.” The plain fact here is that, after all these years of pushing the devices, and even after all these years of real improvements in their performance, there is no interest in these devices across the broad market. It’s an industry that’s not going to take off without ever larger subsidies, ever increasing government pressure on us to get these devices anyway, ever increasing effort government effort to deny us access to alternative devices.

These green subsidies just give the already rich liberal Left a way to look good to each other in their solar-heated showers.

Maybe it’s time to start making the supporters of Green Politics pay their fair share.

 

H/t Ralf Longwalker

Our Minds Are Made Up

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs held a hearing in Plano, Texas, Tuesday on energy from the perspective of a number of oil and gas industry leaders.

The 15 Progressive-Democrat members of the subcommittee were invited to the hearing—as all members of a (sub)committee must be when that body meets in its official capacity—and all 15 chose not to attend. That refusal is within House rules, but it’s no less unethical or downright chickens** for that.

Congressional hearings often are puppet theater presentations, with the Congressmen often occupying their time allocations for questioning witnesses with speeches rather than with efficiently asked questions that leave the bulk of the time for witness answers. Too, witnesses often are chosen for their ability to support a political narrative.

All of that, though, is easily enough refuted by Congressmen proceeding from their own lines of questioning. Actual questions, mind you, not self-aggrandizing speech-ifying.

Instead regarding the Plano field hearing, the Progressive-Democratic Party subcommittee members said, “Don’t confuse us with facts,” with their decision to absent themselves.

 

The hearing itself can be viewed via C-SPAN here.

Biden’s Inflation

This is what Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden’s proudly touted Bidenomics has inflicted on us: continued high inflation.

Tacitly, Biden knows his policies are a failure, but he won’t admit it.

For now, officials said, Biden and his senior aides aren’t planning any major policy or rhetorical shifts.

Yet,

Behind the scenes, administration officials said there was no magic bullet to slow rising prices immediately, an issue that has dogged the president for years.

Rising prices—inflation—has been Biden’s problem since he took office; that’s the time frame of that drily put “for years.” From the Biden-caused sharp increase that damaged so many millions of pocketbooks of us ordinary Americans through that partial fall in inflation, of which Biden is so, and so misleadingly, proud, to the last few months of steadier 3+% inflation, we’re still facing price levels increasing at much higher rates than before Biden began his reign.

Some of Biden’s cost-cutting plans will take months to come to fruition and will do little in the short term to slow the rate of price increases.

[T]ake months to come to fruition: yeah—they’ve taken three years and counting.

Some stubbornly high prices, such as the cost of groceries, are mostly out of the Biden administration’s control.

Here, the news personalities who wrote the article at the link are badly mistaken. ­All of those high prices are fully under the administration’s control. Begin with Biden’s war of destruction on our energy industry. Energy underlies every aspect of our economy: fuel for our personal vehicles, energy to heat our homes in winter and cool them in summer, fuel for generating the electricity that’s needed in every aspect of our personal and business lives, shipping costs for all of our goods and services—including shipment of our groceries—and on and on. By seeking to destroy our coal-, oil-, and natural gas-based energy production, and continuing to passively block development and construction of nuclear power plants, Biden is raising the prices of energy, and that alone raises the price of every single item in our economy. Including those groceries.

Most economists don’t believe Biden can do much at this point to bring down inflation, absent major tax increases or spending cuts that could curtail consumer spending. Even those policies, which aren’t being seriously considered in Washington, would take time to work their way through the economy.

Most economists are right as far as they go. And they’re wrong. Tax increases or government spending cuts would take time to have effect. However, tax increases would reduce economic activity in general by taking even more money out of our private economy than our usurious current tax code does. That reduced economic activity will only lead to continued, if not increased, government spending in the form of welfare handouts, and those lead to greater deficits and debt, and to increased dependence on government.

Government spending cuts won’t, though, lead to less consumer spending. On the contrary, with less government competition for the same goods and services our private economy needs, inflation—and real price levels—would come down, making it easier for us consumers to consume, not harder.

But most economists don’t go far enough. There is much the Biden administration—Biden himself as President—can do that would have more immediate favorable effects on price levels. He can remove his Executive Orders that are interfering with the free flow of goods and services and that inhibit coal, oil, and natural gas production. He can instruct his Departments and Agencies to withdraw their rules that interfere with that free flow and that inhibit energy production.

But he won’t.

Empty Promises

The Left and their Progressive-Democratic Party politicians have been promising “good paying” jobs in green energy as they try to push our nation off hydrocarbon-based energy onto their “green” energy sources. Here’s an example, in Moapa, NV, of how well kept those promises are.

A coal power plant that once employed as many as 300 people closed near this small town about an hour outside of Las Vegas in 2017. Nevada’s public utility has since transformed the site into a home for batteries that store energy captured by nearby solar panels. The $257 million project received roughly $100 million in federal tax credits because of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
… Construction of the site and installation of the batteries required roughly 200 workers over a year. Maintaining and operating the batteries will require about five.

Never fear, tough.

NV Energy [that Nevada public utility] executives said the federal money will enable the utility to make new investments while keeping energy costs low for consumers across the state. “We can pass that benefit directly onto our customers in a time-efficient way,” NV Energy Chief Executive Doug Cannon said.

Right. And I might know of some beachfront property north of Santa Fe that these folks might be interested in.

Not only is Party doing its best to push us onto expensive, unreliable energy sources, it’s also reducing the number of jobs available in our energy production industry, and farther as the ripples from the sort of failure here spreads.

This is why we’ll never have nice things as long as the Progressive-Democratic Party reigns.

Metaphorical Payroll

Now the claim is that a number of the extremely wealthy donors pressured Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden into effecting a moratorium on approvals for new liquified natural gas exports.

Charities controlled by members of the Rockefeller family and billionaire donors were key funders of a successful campaign to pressure President Biden to pause new approvals of liquefied natural gas exports from the US.

And

“They got our attention,” a senior Biden administration official said of the activists’ efforts, describing the campaign as intense.

I beg to differ on the “pressure” part. Joe Biden is the President, not these rich folks. Any pressure he felt would have come from within himself only; no one could force him or threaten him into doing anything.

The only way he would feel any pressure from the Rockefeller family and billionaire donors would be if he were on their metaphorical payroll and feared losing his metaphorical job with them.

‘Course, maybe that’s the case. That is the modus operandi of the richest lobbyists—paying their politicians to do their bidding.