As I pointed out in the post below this one, “the economy” cannot be separated from security and foreign policy issues. Security and foreign-policy disasters can easily lead to economic devastation, and voters would do well to bear this in mind.
But in this post, I’d like to talk about the economy per se. This is the first part of a long post; it will be extended within the next couple of days.
I think that an Obama administration, combined with a Democratic-controlled Congress, would do grave and long-lasting damage to the American economy. Several specific points:
1)Energy. The Democrats, and the vast array of “activists” whom they enable, have demonstrated hostility to all practical forms of energy production and distribution. This is not just a matter of oil & gas drilling: as we have discussed many times on this blog, the U.S. electrical system faces a problematic future. There is every likelihood that, under a Democratic administration/Congress:
a)The building of new coal plants would go from “difficult” to “impossible”
b)The building of nuclear plants would continue to be virtually impossible
c)Even the building of new natural-gas-fired plants would be severely delayed by environmental lawsuits and regulatory maneuvering based on the CO2-is-a-pollutant theory.
Solar and wind, beloved of Democrats, have their uses, but they also have their limitations. I see no evidence that either Obama or the Dem Congressional leadership has any interest in understanding the technical and economic factors that govern the extent to which these technologies can be practically employed. The intermitant nature of wind and usable sun, the difficulty of storing electricity, the supply-chain constraints which govern the large-scale introduction of any new technology–there is much less interest in these things than in the glib repetition of catch-phrases. And even the use of environmentally-blessed technologies will be greatly inhibited by environmentalist protests against the transmission lines required to connect these systems to the cities that need their power. These activists would, of course, gain great impetus from a Democratic administration.
Obama talks a lot about the middle class. The existence of a large and affluent middle class is enabled by widely available and reasonably priced energy, especially electricity. If electric rates are driven up by a factor of 2X or 3X, as is entirely possible with Democratic policies, there will be not only a direct effect on consumers, but an effect on virtually all workers as U.S. businesses–especially manufacturing businesses but also things like data centers–become less competitive.
Lenin once remarked that “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification.” Our present “progressives” seem more interested in de-electrification. Where the New Deal (and the Soviets) wanted to build hydroelectric dams, today’s “progressives” are, for the most part, more interested in destroying them.
Remember, electrical infrastructure is a long-leadtime item, and if we dig outselves into a deep hole in this matter, it will take a long, long time to dig ourselves out.
No one should kid themselves that because gasoline prices are on a downtrend at the moment the gas-price problem is solved. Even if economic stagnation in the U.S. persists for a long time, a recovery in the Far East will drive demand–and, absent new supply, prices. Drilling in the U.S. is important not only for gasoline and diesel supplies but for supplies of natural gas–this commodity also comes from wells, and often from the very same wells that produce oil. This is something that Nancy Pelosi, with her apparent belief that natural gas is not a fossil fuel, does not appear to grasp.
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