Tag: green new deal

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free trade & free markets too much government

An Ember of Hope?

EU, European Union, Italy, cars, green new deal, global warming, climate change, bureaucrats

Will the world escape the punishing “green energy” mandates?

The government of Italy is making known its unhappiness with a looming ban on sales of gas-​powered vehicles, supposed to happen by 2035. The mandate has been imposed by the European Union, of which Italy is a member.

The transition is to be attended by formal review of how things are progressing toward the goal of eliminating gas cars. One is scheduled for 2026. Italy wants it to happen sooner.

Italy’s industry minister, Adolfo Urso, has indicated that his government will soon formally request this early review. Everyone understands that this is not because the current government of Italy is in a hurry to stamp its imprimatur on the EU’s plans.

Urso says: “We believe it’s absolutely necessary to modify the direction of EU industrial policy. The automotive sector is the one where a change from the Green Deal is most required.”

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has called the decision to outlaw gas-​powered vehicles “self-​destructive.”

Meanwhile, demand for electric cars has slumped in Europe and the U.S. as the inconveniences and risks become better known. These include the cars’ still very high cost, their tendency to freeze up in very cold weather, the greater frequency with which their tires must be changed, the difficulties of recharging, the difficulties of putting out the fires when the cars catch fire.

May Italy show the way out of the debacle and let’s hope the rest of the EU follows.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Illustration created with Midjourney and Firefly

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ideological culture Popular

The Ominous Linkages

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

What does a 16-​year-​old Swedish girl have in common with a popular 29-​year-​old U.S. Representative?

Environmentalism and socialism.

The young woman is Greta Thunberg, who spear-​headed a “global movement of schoolchildren striking to demand climate change action.” The Representative is AOC, er, Alexandria Ocasio-​Cortez (D‑N.Y.), who last month launched her “Green New Deal.”

Sixteen-​year-​old Thunberg has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Rep. AOC hasn’t been nominated yet, but if Barack Obama could be awarded a Nobel merely for being elected.…

But back to that linkage: the Swedish youngster was nominated by three adult members of the Socialist Left Party; AOC calls herself a socialist.*

But what’s the deeper link? 

The solution, apparently: socialists want to destroy capitalism, or at least commandeer it; and environmentalists obsessed about anthropogenic global warming believe it’s caused by burning fossil fuels and by bovine flatulence — both made worse by capitalism, which has allowed the masses (not just the elites) to harness petroleum for power as well as raise gigantic herds of cattle for eating and milk-​production. The direct control that socialism entails serves, say its advocates, as the only way to curtail carbon emissions.

A more likely story? Socialism would make us so much poorer that it is inconceivable that most of us would be able to afford to drive cars or eat steaks or drink milk.

Regardless of their so-​called “green” policy obsessions, Ms.Thunberg and Rep. AOC are green in a more profound sense, of lack of experience — the latter because she’s young, the former because she’s a miseducated ideologue.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* It is also worth noting that the much of AOC’s much-​ballyhooed Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with typical leftist social engineering.

New Green Deal, FAQ, socialism, environmentalism, global warming, climate change,

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, Green New Deal, socialism, Greta Thunberg,

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Re-​Packaging Nonsense as Wisdom

green new deal, AOC, money, folly

When committed to folly, clever people make it look wise.

An article last week in Forbes, “The Green New Deal: How We Will Pay For It Isn’t ‘A Thing’ — And Inflation Isn’t Either,” by Robert Hockett, says that “how could we pay for it?” challenges have already been answered best by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

She demands to know why only “useful ideas,” like hers, get challenged that way. “Where were the ‘pay-​fors’ for Bush’s $5 trillion wars and tax cuts, or for last year’s $2 trillion tax giveaway to billionaires?”

Where? Here!

And anywhere there’s common sense.

Hockney has his own retort, though, retrieving from the peanut gallery of economics an idiocy called “Modern Monetary Theory” (MMT). 

“Congress will authorize necessary spending, and Treasury will spend,” he writes. Government funds are “never ‘raised’ first” because “federal spending is what brings that money into existence.” 

Look, the United States has indeed come to rely upon debt financing. But it wasn’t always the rule. More importantly, the widespread and long-​term effects are where post-​gold standard monetary creation gets tricky. 

So are MMT advocates. Tricky, that is. What they hide are the dispersed costs, many of which we pay in higher prices.

Their main “contribution” — as stated in the National Review, of all places, yesterday — is that “When a government issues its own currency, as our federal government does, it is in a financial situation different from those of most institutions or households.”

Not really. When a household writes checks it knows will bounce, it does pretty much the same thing.

When governments rely upon debt money, someone is still getting ripped off. With government, though, it isn’t the businesses holding bad checks, it is all of us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

N.B. This episode of Common Sense has been corrected from the email version: the author of the Forbes article is not the painter David Hockney.

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green new deal, AOC, money, folly

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