06.29.09 - 8:59 am

a facebook dialogue.

earl: loves that Nancy Pelosi's rational for passing an ~$1 trn annual tax increase is "This bill will create jobs. Vote for JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS." As if job creation helps the economy, as opposed to economic growth causing job creation. How again does taking $1 trn from producers and giving it to non-producers while simultaneously creating wasteful "green" energy sources help the economy exactly, Nancy?

jordan: disregarding the "green" umbrella term, what are the wasteful energy sources?
and if jobs are created, and people are being paid for those jobs while simultaneously producing something at those newly created jobs, how does that not cause economic growth via more jobs and thus more production?

earl: In a word - no. There is a reason we don't use solar/wind/geothermal/etc energy in this country - the costs associated are multiple times higher than that of coal, oil, and other current sources of energy we use.

Creating a job by government decree to produce something at a rate of two to five times current costs does not benefit the economy. ... Read MoreThe job created costs money, and that money has to come from taxation, which has to come from productive members of society. While the climate change bill will undoubtedly create millions of jobs, it will unfortunately also serve to destroy wealth due to the inherent inefficiency of these technologies.

jordan: well, then the free market, even the market we have now, should encourage other fledgling companies to outdo those inefficient technologies and thus further their advancement. im sure there are thousands of people out there who have business plans designed around out-competing the government. if someone can do it for cheaper, they will. government ... Read Moreloses, society prospers. coal oil and nuclear are efficient, certainly, but everyone knows that they need to adapt or die out as viable long term sources of energy. innovation and patience. you have to spend for that. otherwise wed still be using room sized computers that cost hundreds of dollars to run. everything is expensive until someone figures out how to do it for a little bit cheaper. so the destruction of wealth may be temporary, but the lasting influence of that patience and innovation may reward it a thousandfold.

earl: The free market already has responded to create low cost sustainable energy. The problem with government involvement is you get stuff like Jimmy Carter's "synfuel" and ethanol. After spending billions of dollars on ethanol subsidies, it actually turns out that ethanol production actually creates more greenhouse gasses than oil AND takes cropland ... Read Moreaway from food production. The US Government's ethanol mandate cost taxpayers billions, drove up the price of staple foods around the world, AND created a net positive carbon output. This bill will most likely be no better and could certainly be far, far worse, if only due to the enormous scope. I encourage you to google "synfuel" and ethanol and see the distasterous results of government meddling in energy policy. Hell, it was government meddling in energy policy that got us into this oil SNAFU in the first place.

One thing people sometimes fail to realize is that there are unseen results of every government action. While it is easy to see the visible results, such as the creation of green jobs, what is unseen are the results of money being siphoned from the private sector to the public. For every dollar spent by this bill, one more dollar will be unable ... Read Moreto be spent towards productive ends. Taking one trillion dollars out of the economy in this way is a one way ticket to economic ruin, especially with our economy on the shaky ground its already on.

brain: The problem is there is no raw increase of the amount of employment. Pelosi doesn't talk about basic economics. There will be no net increase in employment if the government subsidizes jobs. The number of jobs in a particular industry has nothing to do with how efficient the industry is. There was a study in Spain that discovered that for every... Read More green job created by the government 2.2 jobs were lost elsewhere in their economy due to the taxes. Resources are scarce. Redirecting them with central planning has a negative impact on the economy as a whole.

earl: The Pharoahs in Egypt sure employed a lot of people building those worthless pyramids too. That's essentially what this will amount to, except our "pyramids" will produce a small and economically inefficient amount of"clean"(though that is yet to be seen, a la ethanol) energy.

jordan: well i can agree that the ethanol idea sounded great at the time, and the effects are still troubling. but, coming from a lobbyist, how great does coal and nuclear sound? incredible! especially on paper! and thats the private sector and their disastrous results! so the unforseen consequences arent just a result of governement trying their hand at ... Read Morean industry. everyone is out to make money, at the expense of someone else. as for the redistribution of employment and punishing taxes on the other companies, i would imagine by your logic, eventually someone will figure out a way to do it inspite of that. its inevitable that regardless of the taxes, laws and circumstances people will innovate ways around them, right? isnt your capitalism and free market rhetoric applicable to even the restrictive conditions youre arguing against? or is the achilles heal of these ideas taxation?

earl: I dont really understand what you're trying to get at, but I certainly don't consider what we have in this country to be anything resembling free-market economics. Things would a lot different in a truly free economy where private property rights are respected. For instance, someone wouldn't be allowed to pollute anyone else's property. At all. At least not without paying the person what that person feels is fair for the defilement of their land.

ben: Truly free markets fail to account for common goods, only privately held ones...in a free market economy we'd have the air quality of L.A. in 1970, or Beijing today.

brain: There are negative externalities with many human behaviors, but government intervention almost always fails to accomplish what they claim they can accomplish. PS what disastrous effects has nuclear power had forgetting the government run Chernobyl?

earl: historically, the worst stewards of the environment have been governments, the Soviet Union being the worst of them all. Only in a government-run economic system are people allowed to pollute other people's properties. The EPA decides how much pollution is "ok" for a factory to emit, and the people who may be unfortunate enough to live near that ... Read Morefactory have no recourse. If we lived in a free society that respected property rights, and someone opened up a factory that covered your land in pollution, you would be able to sue that person for damages to your property. The idea that air pollution would be worse in the absence of government, as well as the idea that regulations MUST come from the government (and not voluntary interactions) is patently false.

oh, it also serves to mention that the Federal Government is the 5th largest producer of CO2 in the world, behind the United States, Japan, the EU, and China. If you want to seriously reduce CO2 emissions, one has to look no further than dismantling the federal government.

jordan: well, i would imagine they certainly have a recourse! people sue all the time for damages incurred while living under conditions deemed ok by the EPA. then there is a big class action lawsuit, the companies involved and the EPA get a wagging finger and settle with the victims financially. but as with any establishment, government or not, everyone ... Read Moreskirts by as long as they can until they get caught. the EPA does it and so do the companies that lobby the EPA to ease up on their restrictions so they can pollute more. as far as voluntary interactions, i do feel a single authority on pollution would better serve a population than a few hundred or thousand citizens involved in individual financial agreements with polluting corporations. it would be one thing if the companies would agree to maintain pollution at X for indefinite amount of time instead of at X for the lowest bidder. they would simply buy off the suitors and then not be liable for any lasting damage after the contracts end.

as for nuclear power, its extremely short sighted to say there are no disastrous effects. im quite sure the spent uranium rods piling up deep underground all over europe will one day have a use or disappear safely. but, in the meantime we certainly do have plenty of room to store them all, right?

earl: im by no means advocating nuclear power. first of all, its not an "alternative" energy source since a huge amount of oil is required in the extraction of uranium, as well as building nuclear power plants, but the truth is the same can be said for every single form of "alternative" energy.

www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net spells out pretty much ... Read Moreeverything you need to know about alternative energy and something called "peak oil theory". a good read will change your worldview regarding energy policy in its entirety.

jordan: good discussion. i will read both the comic and the site. and come at you again with more liberal propaganda!

earl: The comic book is of special note because it was written by Irwin Schiff, father of economist Peter Schiff (one of 3 people to call our little recession as early as 2006). Irwin is a man in his 80s currently serving a 15 year prison sentence for the (non-)crime of telling people that the income tax is unconstitutional.

brain: The physical mass of nuclear waste is negligible and properly stored there is no environmental impact. Lead acid batteries are more dangerous, poisonous and take up more space than spent nuclear fuel. Spent rods can also be reprocessed. They have an enormous amount of energy left in them. Jimmy Carter banned reprocessing in the US due to what ... Read Morewas considered potential arms threats. The french reprocess their spent fuel, making their waste storage even smaller than ours. There is plenty of room. Prepaid cell phones are probably a larger threat than nuclear waste, but nuclear energy sure does sound evil, doesn't it?