Green Economics and ‘Reducing Spending in the Tax Code’
by Christopher C. HornerBy all means, let us pursue the president’s new approach to the budget, the Orwellian ‘reduce spending in the tax code’. But, wherever will we find good examples of wasteful ’spending in the tax code’?
Hey, look here! The Feds are taking your money to create 1,000 jobs! Of course, these jobs wouldn’t exist without this wealth transfer, and are mostly temporary anyway. But, still, it’s only $2 million per temporary job. Guess we’ll make the cost up in volume.
And T. Boone only wants a billion dollars. Then he promises to quit. Really. He’ll be the first.
The Nation also joins in:
[T]he primary problem facing clean alternative energy is the ‘price gap’—they are still more expensive than fossil fuels. As I’ve outlined in these pages previously (see “The Big Green Buy”), economies of scale, along with subsidies and planning, will help close this price gap. Only when clean technologies—like wind, solar, hydropower and electric vehicles—are cheaper than other options will global capitalism make the switch away from fossil fuels.
Of course, the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind mostly doesn’t blow so windmills and solar panels require massive redundancy as well as enormous swathes of land, and wind- and solar-powered electricity are just as old as the coal-fired variety, just practical losers. Those are possibly greater challenges than a mere ‘price gap’, and indeed they make this idea of comparing renewables with hydrocarbons as if they were apples to apples endearingly absurd.
But, anyway. While ‘planning’ is euphemistic for preferences and mandates, here you also see green econ 101 amid the author’s ostentatious advertisement of having escaped brushing up on the actual experience and history of these boondoggles.
That is, uneconomic and more expensive ‘clean’ technology becomes less expensive with subsidies (which cannot continue without breaking us, just as Spain’s almost broke them; that is, they’re ‘unsustainable’).
This requires you to come to grips with the new reality, that not only is not taking more money from you in taxes called ’spending in the tax code’, but the money that is taken from you in taxes today to pay the subsidies, and tomorrow to pay down the debt incurred for today’s skyrocketing subsidies, well, that’s not really money taken from you, at all.
It went to government. Which gives it to someone else to somewhat lower the cost to you of that someone else’s stuff which also will be ‘planned’ because, well, otherwise you wouldn’t buy it at all!
This new ‘green economy’ will make millionaires of us all! Have some more free ice cream, it’s on T. Boone and The Nation.
Were all of this not stupid enough, particularly now of all times, here comes this latest idiocy you’ll soon be paying for despite sitting on the world’s largest energy resources (the kind that work, that is). And to think the greens’ and Obama’s Navy oppose drilling offshore on the grounds that the odd rig out there would get in the Navy’s way (really; but apparently not covering the entire Atlantic seaboard with 1,800 miles of windmills).
It seemed amusing at the time, when these black hole phony industries responded to the economic downturn by pivoting out of desperation to claim they were actually the way out of this mess. They really had no other option, as a broke country starts looking for the low-hanging waste to jettison first (see Spain, supra …which found itself in the Gambler’s Dilemma, having made their banking sector vulnerable to collapse, as well, if the government let the bubble fully burst).
But at the time I assumed that even Washington wasn’t that dense to fall for it.
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"If I have worked harder and built myself a good house while you have been content to live in a hovel, the tax gatherer now comes annually to make me pay a penalty for my energy and industry by taxing me more than you. If I have saved while you wasted, I am [taxed] while you are exempt. If a man built a ship, we make him pay for his temerity as though he had done injury to the state; if a railroad be opened, down comes the tax collector upon it as though were a public nuisance…. We punish with a tax the man who covers barren fields with ripening grain; we fine him who puts up machinery and him who drains a swamp. To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry…. The state would say to the producer, 'Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose. You shall have your full reward!' "Henry George
(1839-1897)
Source: Progress And Poverty (1879)
Here is 1 way to reduce spending, quit giving Russia 1 BILLION tax dollars solely for the purpose of them making arms to give the camel humpers to kill us.
Can you believe this crap !
WASHINGTON — Russia is pulling out of a program that poured $1 billion from the U.S. government and other foreign donors into the research labs that built the Soviet Union's vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
Officials with the International Science and Technology Center are negotiating to close the Moscow headquarters of the organization, which was formed in 1994, three years after the Soviet Union collapsed. The center gave tens of thousands of experts in nuclear, chemical and biological warfare the chance to engage in civilian research and work with colleagues from the U.S. and other nations that once stood on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
The program helped pay the salaries of Russian weapons scientists who otherwise might have sold their services to rogue regimes or terrorists after the Cold War, but it long outlived the crisis that inspired its creation. Russia came to regard the intergovernmental program as obsolete as the country's economy surged over the past decade.
Russia's U.S. ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, who negotiated the establishment of the center, told The Associated Press that his country no longer needs it. "The mission has been accomplished," he said. "It is a little bit outdated."
U.S. congressional investigators concluded that U.S. taxpayer money helped Russia's weapons institutes stay in business by recruiting younger scientists and retaining key personnel who might otherwise have moved to the West — a finding at odds with the program's goal of reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/04/20/russia-ab...
And we thought ''crony capitalism" was bad, heh, heh…
Whatever we label this, it's ten times, no make that a hundred times worse…
I call it high-way robbery…
But then, I'm somewhat radical in my thinking, donchakno…
.
Well, I like the way you think, OCP…
What the others have written above sums it up for me except one thing I might add:
Phuck off ObamaJad.
"… expensive ‘clean’ technology becomes less expensive with subsidies". Yea, subsidies from taxpayers.
What an oxymoron. Good grief. How stupid do they think we are ???
Ethanol pumping up food prices 2/14/2011 11:28:23 AM
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/201...
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light." George Washington
Oh, I know I'm on a list…
I've already had my HSA visit….
Honesty will never be a problem for this administration.
"[T]he primary problem facing clean alternative energy is the ‘price gap’—they are still more expensive than fossil fuels. As I’ve outlined in these pages previously (see “The Big Green Buy”), economies of scale, along with subsidies and planning, will help close this price gap. Only when clean technologies—like wind, solar, hydropower and electric vehicles—are cheaper than other options will global capitalism make the switch away from fossil fuels."
Is it any coincidence that Obama's policies and actions seem to have been with this very thing in mind? Cap and Tax, drilling moritoriums, EPA/CO2 regulation, refusal to provide support to uphold stability in the middle east, subsidizing oil exploration and production in other countries… He's going to artifically make fossil fuels too expensive so that the "green option" is the cheaper option. The president's politicized agenda in practice. I can't wait until 2012. I need to find a widget that has a countdown somewhere…
Isnt it great that we are subsidizing these economic failures in the name of green.
Can we allow these failures to just collapse, stop subsidizing them and actaul go to sources that work and are far more affordable such as drilling on land and off shore, go for natural gas to and actually make us independent once again.
Then again, this administration doesnt want the people to have affordable power and must rely on the government for everything.
These idiots just never give up, no matter how many times the lunacy of their ideas and position have been proved. So called "green" economies have been tried and failed as the article points out. But to liberal/progressive/enviro-nuts it must be due to them not being allowed to do enough of it yet. I suppose being bald has it's advantages, at least I'm not pulling my hair out in frustration.
Looking at that photo, one thing is certain – A brilliant career as a scarecrow awaits That One after the people humiliate him out of office next year…
I knew he had value somewhere.
As a Union Electrician, the wind turbine generators are an expensive toy! Maybe it would be a good back-up power system for a farmer, but Most of the big farms have a diesel engine generator for backups systems.
The economy sucks because of the Way the Fed. Reserve Bank put our nation into debt, with interest.
All of the other issues we discuss from time to time about economics, take us "off course" from the Root or Heart of the problem…the privately-owned F.R.B.
The problem started with their very lst deal with the U.S.A. They made us a loan, with interest…there was no money in circulation to pay off the interest…So, they made another loan…the same thing happened again…So, do it again and repeat.
Interest causes inflation. And sure, there are other causes, but that is the Prime One.
Then, came the Marxist, Graduated Income Tax, to TAX THE RICH…
This all started in the early 1900's, as most of know, with the New Progressive Party becoming more influential.
The Civil war caused a war debt. Usually the loser pays. Now, Lincoln was approached by the East Coast Bankers to obtain a loan from them. He refused. Then, he created the GreenBack Dollar as a monetary instrument which was used to pay off any debts. oops, then he was killed.
There was book written called "Trees". I am not sure you can get a copy anymore. However, it tells about the first settlers and how hard it was for them to live under all the trees. It was awful. This is what the greenies want us to go back to. I would like to move them all to a place where there a lot of trees and see how long they last.
That is something very similar to what I saw when I was in New Mexico and west Texas. There were miles upon miles of windmills and they just never ended. The greenies and others really have no idea how much land this green energy actually requires.
And as you can guess on top of that, not all of them were running either. Then in something else related, is that Cali has many solar panels, but they are not connected to the grid do to the eco-idiots.
I'm reminded of the old SNL skit for the First Citywide Change Bank – a bank that only makes change….
(see the clip here) http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/firs...
The rep taks about how all they do is make change, and they can make change for all denominations and currencies.
When asked about how they make any money at this, he replies:
"Volume." (A.K.A. – economy of scale)
Saw it on Greta a few nights ago. 8000+ pages of jibberish tax code. It was printed on paper that stacked 4 feet high. Hell what's a few more thousand that no body's going to no what's in it? If Senators couldn't find hidden gotchyas in the Obamacare bill that they had to pass to know what's in it- I wonder how much is in our comprehensive tax code?
It's all got to be thrown out and never revisited. What a shame our county's gotten to this.
The Inflation Tax,
by Ron Paul
"All government spending represents a tax. The inflation tax, while largely ignored, hurts middle-class and low-income Americans the most. Simply put, printing money to pay for federal spending dilutes the value of the dollar, which causes higher prices for goods and services. Inflation may be an indirect tax, but it is very real — the individuals who suffer most from cost of living increases certainly pay a “tax.”
Unfortunately no one in Washington, especially those who defend the poor and the middle class, cares about this subject. Instead, all we hear is that tax cuts for the rich are the source of every economic ill in the country. Anyone truly concerned about the middle class suffering from falling real wages, under-employment, a rising cost of living, and a decreasing standard of living should pay a lot more attention to monetary policy. Federal spending, deficits, and Federal Reserve mischief hurt the poor while transferring wealth to the already rich. This is the real problem, and raising taxes on those who produce wealth will only make conditions worse.
Borrowing money to cut the deficit is only marginally better than raising taxes. It may delay the pain for a while, but the cost of government eventually must be paid. Federal borrowing means the cost of interest is added, shifting the burden to a different group than those who benefited and possibly even to another generation. Eventually borrowing is always paid for through taxation.
The third option is for the Federal Reserve to create credit to pay the bills Congress runs up. Nobody objects, and most Members hope that deficits don't really matter if the Fed accommodates Congress by creating more money. Besides, interest payments to the Fed are lower than they would be if funds were borrowed from the public, and payments can be delayed indefinitely merely by creating more credit out of thin air to buy U.S. treasuries. No need to soak the rich. A good deal, it seems, for everyone. But is it?
The “tax” is paid when prices rise as the result of a depreciating dollar. Savers and those living on fixed or low incomes are hardest hit as the cost of living rises. Low- and middle-incomes families suffer the most as they struggle to make ends meet while wealth is literally transferred from the middle class to the wealthy. Government officials stick to their claim that no significant inflation exists, even as certain necessary costs are skyrocketing and incomes are stagnating.
The transfer of wealth comes as savers and fixed-income families lose purchasing power, large banks benefit, and corporations receive plush contracts from the government — as is the case with military contractors. These companies use the newly printed money before it circulates, while the middle class is forced to accept it at face value later on. This becomes a huge hidden tax on the middle class, many of whom never object to government spending in hopes that the political promises will be fulfilled and they will receive some of the goodies. But surprise — it doesn't happen. The result instead is higher prices for prescription drugs, energy, and other necessities. The freebies never come.
The moral of the story is that spending is always a tax. The inflation tax, though hidden, only makes things worse. Taxing, borrowing, and inflating to satisfy wealth transfers from the middle class to the rich in an effort to pay for profligate government spending, can never make a nation wealthier. But it certainly can make it poorer."
July 18, 2006, Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.
It is a fraud and will starve the poor. This is something a dictator will do to his or her people.
The thing to remember is that our elected officials do not write these bills. They sponsor these bills that bureaucrats wrote. That is a Ponzi scheme if there ever was one.
Liberalism – destroying nations and economies for centuries
"I do not think it is an exaggeration to say history is largely a history of inflation, usually inflations engineered by governments for the gain of governments."
Friedrich August von Hayek
re: "What an oxymoron."
I don't think you know what this word means.
That's right… Wasn't Obamacare written by a felon in a jail cell? At least that's one rumor I've heard..
Maybe you should also stop subsidizing oil and gas.
According to an article in the Oil & Gas Journal, the study found that eliminating tax deductions for intangible drilling costs and for US oil and gas production expenses would "shift the average break-even points for US oil and gas development from $47/bbl and $5.40/Mcf, respectively, to $52/bbl and $6/Mcf."
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post...
Good grief Horner. Thanks for ruining my morning coffee. At least we got a fat rally to sell into.
I think we should bulldoze downtown LA just in case a future earthquake will rattle the old Arco Towers. Since all the housekeepers are now living in West LA life will continue normally anyway.
The Top Five Environmental Disasters that Didn't Happen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67dcK5sjHsE&fe...
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light." George Washington
It didn't take me long to see that ethanol was just plain old stupid and destructive. You're burning your food for fuel! WTF!
How about this idea, no more subsidies for anything period. The government should not subsidize anything at all.
Besides, gas and oil is still plenty here, if we get rid of the red tape and be able to drill where needed. Then subsidies wont be needed on something so cheap and plentiful.
As a word of advise, try to aviod biased sites, like what you posted there. Try to find an unbiased source based on facts.
It's purely the logic of failure.
They are such ideologues that they have not thought for one second about the systemic repercussions of their agenda.
For every supposed job that will be created by this voluptuous 'green' economy, how many already existing jobs will be killed?
With the intermittent dependability of these sources of energy, how will we be able to fully power whatever manufacturing is left in this country?
Who is going to be motivated to go to work if all our earned money (you know, the money left after Uncle Sam takes his share) is going to be spent on the 'necessarily skyrocketing' costs of energy?
It's all sabotage.
Talking to the Enviroloons is futile.. file this under.. If only they could:
The first lady will announce tomorrow, with her ever present mom attached.. I mean at her side her new “Fitnergy Program”.
Mrs. Obama nearly gushed with excitement over her new program that will take effect immediately across the nation in every household and business (except for those that have already received waivers that were never released to the general public). The new program will be exercise bikes hooked up to electric generators that will power your home. When asked how practical this program will be Mrs. Obama appeared confused and started mumbling something about why we hated her husband. Afterward she explained that; all we would have to do to generate enough electricity to operate a mid sized refrigerator is two people riding the Fitnergy bike for a total of 14 hours non-stop. Just think what a family of 4 can do!
Clean energy is an oxymoron, so are green jobs, and smart liberals to.
Afterall, no form of energy is clean. Green jobs are just a worthless title for pointless expensive jobs. And smart liberals dont exist.
So how long will it be? How many more seemingly idiot statements like this Soetoro garbage here will people endure before they figure out that what they think are their owned dollars representing wealth are actually federal reserve notes, bills, representing debt that they don't own at all?
Read the currency in your pocket folks "federal reserve note". You only borrow them, you don't own them. Government doesn't own them either, a private banking cartel does. We are "allowed" to use them and that allowance comes at a HUGE cost.
What is the number one cost in our national budget? Ah yes, INTEREST! Sure social Security is huge and so is Medicare, but at least people get something, besides the shaft, for that expenditure.
We have to tell the fed to go pound sand and we have to force Congress to Do it's assigned duty (which is not delegating away every responsibility assigned to it in the Constitution)!
Could not have put it better myself. And I can put things pretty well, if I do say so myself.
I'm somewhat radical in my thinking, donchakno…
You think you're radical, you should see the looks I get when I start spouting off on libertarianism.
America elected Obama once didn't we?
Yes, let's all support the Gangrene Economy!
Obama says ''Americans are slugs, pour salt on them''.
Inflation can happen over a long period of time, however, this one is being forced on us.
)
Trouble is, the price of petroleum energy won't stay falsely high once he is out of power, and the high prices of the alternatives we are offered will not be lowered enough to be economical. Once he is gone and the democrats are out of power, oil will be even cheaper, and we will have just pissed our prosperity away making Obama and his cronies rich and not done s**t for the environment or to help our energy problem.
We need to drill now, drill everywhere and actually start more production. The price of oil will come down with the FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT that we are starting to increase our own production, as OPEC knows if we have additional production they can't run the price up too high.
It doesn't make sense to fund our enemies and terrorism either. Lets have the jobs and royalties going to Americans and increase our prosperity. Let's have those good paying jobs here in the USA and royalties helping to lessen the deficit. Only common sense, unless the plan is to force everyone to purchase extremely costly energy from your corrupt and lying buddies…..
The "greenies" are deranged and irrational and normal common sense people should be completely skeptical of anything they have to say. They have made I believe 26 alarmist predictions and NONE have been right.
Pass this report on to all as the MSM won't report the truth if it opposite to their agenda of One World Communism.
http://www.heartland.org/environmentandclimate-ne...
http://notrickszone.com/2010/08/03/climate-scanda...
This is what really pisses me off. The government and the Federal Reserve are partners in stealing the modest wealth I have accumulated in a life time of work. They are printing worthless money, watering down the value of my retirement, and splitting the theft between them. Then that is not even enough, after investing 15% of my earnings in social security and medicare for almost 40 years, when it comes time to pay, because they spent the money instead of investing it and now don't have it to pay, they first steal my present retirement from me by creating inflation, even stealing more than the amount I will collect on social security, and then DEMAND WE TAKE CUTS in the amounts promised to "save" the program. These politicians and bankers need to be put in prison, or maybe just hung so the taxpayers don't have to support thieves for the rest of their lives!
Just like their more expensive green products. They simply do not work.
It all started with the Jimmy Carter "1977 Community Reinvestment Act," that meant to put people into costly high ended homes, that really couldn't afford public housing. The CRA lay dormate, but then again picked up steam and accelerated in the 90s by Bill Clinton. Then in 1999, they repealed the Glass Steagle Act, and passed The Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB), also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, of which summed up into deregulating the banking business and allowed them into "hedge funds, derivatives, and default credit swaps. The housing market expanded and Wall street purchased large blocks of bundled sub-prime mortgages from Fat Fanny and Bloated Freddie and sold them domestically, and world wide. When these sub-primes adjustable mortgages rated marvels matured and kicked in to pay off…they instead didn't. They reversed with the people defaulting and walking away leaving a massive financial mess, All of this democrat, commie social engineering crap has backfired, and have placed our nation into a horrible debt, and unemployment. Sad to say, nothing has been fixed yet.
Industry Statistics Compiled on Anniversary of BP Oil Spill Highlight the Importance of Sen. Vitter’s Challenge to Obama Administration
http://netrightdaily.com/2011/04/industry-statist...
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light." George Washington
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