by Fabius Maximus, FabiusMaximus.com
About the Green New Deal, dreams given form – Part 2
This is the second of two parts of an article published in critical review of the Green New Deal. The first part of the original post was published here: The Green New Deal Panic.
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Inflation and debt.
Most measures suggest that the US economy is running at or near capacity. Another massive fiscal stimulus might spark inflation, as the combination of the Vietnam War and Great Society did in the 1960s. That becomes especially likely since some versions of the GND advocate Fed action to suppress interest rates. Spending cuts – such as to DoD – could offset this. But US history suggests that such grand plans seldom pass when combined with such measures.
Advocates often point to the many workers not in the labor force. But that is a mirage. First, many lack the skills needed to fill jobs created by the green energy industry. Second, there are not that many of them. Many of those not in the labor force are retired or disabled. One measure is the number of people not in the labor force but looking for work: putting them to work would increase the labor force by 1%.
Click the graph to enlarge.
Second, this is a bad time to boost the federal deficit. Keynes recommended running fiscal deficits during recessions and paying down that debt during expansions. That hard won wisdom has been successfully used many times.
Massive debt was incurred – correctly – during the Great Recession. Now we should be paying it down. Ahead lies another recession (timing and size unknowable). More importantly, we will run massive deficits as the Boomers retire from Social Security, Medicare, the various Federal pension plans, and the inevitable bankruptcies of corporate pension plans (the Federal Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s multi-employer plan will go broke by 2026). America can easily manage this demographic transition by borrowing, assuming we do not run up too much debt now.
Building uneconomic infrastructure.
Programs like the GND tend to result in massive construction of uneconomic infrastructure as everyone jumps on the gravy train. Enthusiasm and dreams provide opportunities for tapping the taxpayers for billions or more.
Worse, many of the Greens promises are based on flawed accounting. Most seriously, they calculate the cost of wind and solar (intermittent sources) without including the cost of upgrading the power grid to handle their fluctuations – and the back-up power sources required when they falter. The physicist and energy expert Robert Hirsch described these problems 13 years ago (“Electric Power from Renewable Energy: Practical Realities for Policy-makers” in The Journal of Fusion Energy, gated) – and Greens often ignore it today.
Words to fear.
“It’s inevitable that we’re gonna create industry and it’s inevitable that we can use the transition to a 100% renewable energy as the vehicle to truly deliver and establish economic social and racial justice in the United States. This is going to be the Great Society, the moonshot, the civil rights movement of our generation. That is the scale of the ambition that this movement is going to require. …
“It’s important to also talk about the fact that this is not just an economic solution is that this is how we this is the mechanism through which we can really deliver justice to communities that have been underserved. The water in Flint is still dirty. We’ve got children that are that are choking on the smoke in California. …Children in Puerto Rico are choking on the fungal spores because we have not recuperated from the crisis, and the mold from the floods is taking up all of these people’s homes. Those injustices are concentrated in front-line communities and indigenous, black, and brown communities. They’re the ones that experience the greatest depths of this injustice.”
. . . . . – Ocasio-Cortez during a panel discussion with Vermont senator Bernie Sanders and activist Bill McKibben (See YouTube).
The size and scope of the Green New Deal has grown over time, becoming a Trojan Horse for a panoply of Leftist dreams. They plan a restructuring of America’s economy and society, fueled by what they see as limitless government spending. They have dreamed about this moment for generations. The proposal combines commonsense infrastructure upgrades (never done because not a priority for either party), speculative drastic changes to the energy infrastructure, and a growing list of social engineer programs.
They are offering all good things, promising that it won’t cost the public a dime. Experienced people see this as a once per generation pot of gold. Unsurprisingly, the polls show strong bipartisan support.
History is littered with similar stories. Most end badly. Her analogy to the “moonshot” is apt, as Apollo was twenty billion dollars burned for almost no benefit to America. Enthusiasm for the GND reminds of Athens just before it launched the Sicilian Expedition. Its people saw the fantastic benefits of success but closed their eyes to the cost – and the risk. Like most such projects, it ended badly.
Listen to Ocasio-Cortez. Hear the certainty in her voice. What is its source? Not her personal experience with public policy, social or civil engineering. But with ideology. She and her cohorts will roar ahead with the enthusiasm of fanatics. Many or most of the GND’s designers are professors. My guess is that this will be another big bold Leftist experiment in social engineering – with us as lab rats – and will end as badly as the others.
“I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.”
– William Buckley on “Meet the Press”, 17 October 1965.
Trust me!
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- Who lies to us the most? Left or Right?
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- Visions of America if the Left wins.
This appeared originally at Fabius Maximus 21 January 2019.
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