Coyote Blog

At least in economic policy, progressives like Barack Obama are deeply conservative.  They want industries, jobs, real earnings, and class positions to be stable and predictable.  No one ever believes me when I say this, but look at the policies.  Trade protectionism protects current industry incumbents and workers, at the cost of poorer future performance due to lack of competition.  Unions attempt to lock in current jobs through numerous controls on work rules, slow or stop changes in technology and work processes that have the effect of eventually castrating the company (think GM).  Socialized medicine tries to lock in the current standard of care for everyone, while reducing the possibility of future improvements.  Redistribution attempts to lock in the current standard of living for everyone while reducing the possibility of future improvements.  I discussed this more European model last week.

I like how Shannon Love summarized it in the context of Obama:

Obama has no concept of business as a creative and experimental endeavor. On some deep unconscious level, he assumes that material wealth is something akin to a natural phenomenon for which no group of humans can take credit. Therefore, he sees distribution as the only serious economic issue and ignores how politics interferes with the actual process of wealth creation.

Though to be fair, I am not sure McCain or GWB understand this either.     (or here in 2005)

I always laughed at Democrats that tried to woo me to their party.  Now I laugh at Republicans too.  MoveOn may get mileage out of attacking Bush, but he has done more for the left/liberal cause than Clinton.  Clinton had NAFTA, welfare reform, and (moderated by an aggresive Republican Congress) fiscal sanity.

I am happy to see that Barack Obama is not entirely in reality-avoidance mode with his climate policy:

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know "” Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it "” whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

To folks with any kind of background in economics, this has to be the case.  Reducing the total output of current power plants, and thereby obsoleting all that investment and squeezing supply, at least in the medium term until new capacity of other types can be built, can only lead to a) rationing through blackouts or b) higher prices to ration the shorter supply.  The cost of option a is so high that price is going to have to be the rationing mechanism.  Skyrocket is actually pretty close to what would happen to rates if Obama sticks by his plan of limiting greenhouse gasses to 1990 or earlier levels.  (His explanation is actually pretty poor for the mechanism - pass-through of retrofit costs would likely be minor to the supply / demand balancing effect of shaving 20/30% off supply in a short period of time.

I think a frank discussion of the dangers of a "pollutant" vs. the cost of abatement is a fair one.  I personally think the threat of CO2 is wildly exaggerated, and the cost of doubling or tripling electricity costs will hurt Americans far worse than a few tenths of a degree of warming.

But don't get too excited.  Obama is still living in economic never-never land on other related issues:

yes, there is going to be some increase in electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage, changing lightbulbs and more efficient appliance, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy, the economy would benefit.

Sorry, but this is way wrong.  Obsoleting perfectly good infrastructure and wholesale replacing it with trillions of dollars of new infrastructure does not help the economy any more than if a massive earthquake had destroyed the plants.  This is the broken windows fallacy on steroids.  The only benefit from all this cost will be whatever climate benefit we accrue from the CO2 reduction.  For there to be such a benefit, one must assume a) substantial future warming and b) that the current temperature happens to be the best possible temperature we could ever be at.  But that, as they say, is a whole other blog.

Barack Obama and most of the Democratic Party (as well as a sizable Lou Dobbs contingent in the Republican Party) fear trade and globalization.  But like it or not, much of our economic growth is driven directly or indirectly by trade.  In particular, even I found the export growth rates in this chart from Mark Perry surprisingly large:

Apparently from the lips of Barack Obama, via the WSJ and Tom Nelson:

"I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last
week. "The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of
federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They're allowed to
drill it, and yet they haven't touched it "“ 68 million acres that have
the potential to nearly double America's total oil production."

Wow.  I would not have thought it possible to blame government restrictions on drilling, which the oil companies have decried for years, on the oil companies themselves.  But apparently its possible. 

1.  Just because the Federal Government auctions an oil lease, it does not mean that there is oil there.  And if there is oil there, it does not mean the oil is recoverable economically or with current technology.  Does this even need to be said?

2.  The implication is that oil companies are intentionally not drilling available reserves (to raise prices or because they are just generally evil or whatever).  But if this is the case, then what is the problem with issuing new leases?  If oil companies aren't going to drill them, then the government gets a bunch of extra leasing money without any potential environmental issues.  Of course, nobody on the planet would argue Obama's real concern is that the new leases won't get drilled -- his concern is that they will get drilled and his environmental backers will get mad at him.

Apparently from the lips of Barack Obama, via the WSJ and Tom Nelson:

"I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas last
week. "The oil companies have already been given 68 million acres of
federal land, both onshore and offshore, to drill. They're allowed to
drill it, and yet they haven't touched it "“ 68 million acres that have
the potential to nearly double America's total oil production."

Wow.  I would not have thought it possible to blame government restrictions on drilling, which the oil companies have decried for years, on the oil companies themselves.  But apparently its possible. 

1.  Just because the Federal Government auctions an oil lease, it does not mean that there is oil there.  And if there is oil there, it does not mean the oil is recoverable economically or with current technology.  Does this even need to be said?

2.  The implication is that oil companies are intentionally not drilling available reserves (to raise prices or because they are just generally evil or whatever).  But if this is the case, then what is the problem with issuing new leases?  If oil companies aren't going to drill them, then the government gets a bunch of extra leasing money without any potential environmental issues.  Of course, nobody on the planet would argue Obama's real concern is that the new leases won't get drilled -- his concern is that they will get drilled and his environmental backers will get mad at him.

This photo (via Maggie's Farm) shows life in the United States during a time when the US emitted more CO2 than Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and other greens want to set as the new emissions cap.  In 1940, the US emitted about 33% of 1990 levels of CO2, vs. the green's target of 20%.