So…

• Thanks to the Democrats, we spent 800 billion on a stimulus package that didn’t work.
• Thanks to the Democrats, we allocated 92 billion of that money (meant to be spent on, well, things that would stimulate the economy) on renewable energy policies.
• Thanks to the Democrats, we’ve managed to spend only about 20 billion of that money in a year and a half (remember; this was supposed to be emergency spending).
• Thanks to the Democrats, our best-case scenario (via those mad optimists in the White House) is that the money spent netted us 191K jobs, or $105K a job.  The Department of Energy estimates 82K jobs, or $244K/job.
• And, thanks ever so much to the Democrats, “as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.”

You know, it used to be that you could count on the Democratic party to be provincial and short-sighted obstructionists when it came to putting the brakes on international trade, sure – but at least they used to know how to be competent provincial and short-sighted obstructionists.  This is embarrassing.

If you’re wondering what happened, the problem is that ‘green’ technologies are notoriously more expensive than ‘non-green’ ones.  That’s because ‘more expensive’ and ‘less efficient’ are more or less synonymous in this context: if the ‘green’ solution already is a clearly superior option, generally we would have already started using it.  You would think that this elementary observation is, well, elementary: but apparently it comes as a continual unwelcome surprise to environmental activists and the legislatures that deign to listen to them, as anyone familiar with phosphates and dishwashers could tell you.  In other words, it’s expensive to ‘go green’ – so if you want to keep competitive, you need to find a place to reduce costs elsewhere.  And that’s where the rest of the planet’s ability to make some things more cheaply than we can comes into play.

You should not be surprised by this.  Contemptuous of the Democratic party’s inability to function, govern, and/or set a coherent set of policies – but not surprised.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.