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GREEN ENERGY TRIUMPH: $11,000,000.00 SPENT PER JOB CREATED
The environment is very important to us at Against Crony Capitalism. We believe in a cleaner planet, we are fans of trees, we like vast expanses of rain forest, we like environmentally friendly materials and energy. But in order for something to be considered truly sustainable it must be sustainable economically. Does the market want a material or form of energy at a cost which makes sense? If the answer is no, if a project is not economically sustainable, it should not be done. Pouring mounds of taxpayer dollars (which are taken from the productive part of the economy) into untested technologies and markets created by government fiat is just poor stewardship. It’s a bad use of money.
I would love to teleport myself all over the planet. If I convinced the president that teleportation technology was the direction the economy should go in maybe I could get every engineering firm in America a billion dollar grant to work on the project. “Jobs” would be created in the short term, which would make the politicians happy. But in the end I’ll bet that for all the money contributed to making my dream a reality, it would yield about as much as if one sought to squeeze blood from a turnip.
That’s basically what the President and his advisors sought to do with “green energy.” The had a Utopian vision and because the economy was vomiting on itself, the Keynesian economists advised that it was time to build pyramids. Why not green pyramids? We kill 5 birds with one stone. We employ a bunch of people. We create markets where before there weren’t any. We deal a major blow to the oil and gas industry which we don’t like. We look smart and forward thinking. And we can focus the make work jobs in electorally important states. Win, win, win, win, win.
But it didn’t work out that way. As was predicted by those who believe that top down economic planning tended pretty much always to end in disaster, the “green jobs initiative” has indeed proven a disaster. And with this report from the DOE this appears empirically true.
It is interesting that the most “sustainable” energy technology to come out of the past 5 years has been fracking, which was developed in spite of government efforts. Our carbon emissions are now on a sharp decline due to the ramp up of very economically viable and relatively clean, natural gas.
And for anyone keeping score, The Sierra Club was for natural gas for years before it was against it.
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For every household in poverty $61K is spent on means tested welfare.
The Poor Aren’t Making Money Off Poverty Programs So Who Is?
We have stated before that some form of societal safety net is needed. How it is administered now, via massive waste and bureaucracy is a travesty and tragic. It should be a source of shame for the nation.
But there’s a lot of money in welfare, just not for the recipients it seems. There are lots of programs deployed at relatively high cost, but solutions always seem to be in short supply. Could it be that solutions eventually reduce federal flows of cash to established bureaucracies which would like to keep the tax funded flow growing? It’s a very cynical question I understand.
(From the Weekly Standard)
“According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795,” the Senate Budget Committee notes. “If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.”
This dollar figure is almost three times the amount the average household on poverty lives on per year.”
(Weekly Standard, 10-26-2012)
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International News • Average amount spent on rent in the UK is 38% of net income
By Tricia Phillips 1 Comment 30 May 2012 00:00
High rents forcing thousands into debt
A Rightmove report revealed the average amount spent on rent in the UK is 38% of net income
ONE in three tenants say they have to cough up more than half of their take-home pay on rent.
A Rightmove report revealed the average amount spent on rent in the UK is 38% of net income and six in 10 predict their rent will rise during the next 12 months.
This comes hot on the heels of a warning from debt charity the Consumer Credit Counselling Service that high rents are forcing thousands into hardship.
More than 10,000 people asked the charity for help with rent arrears in 2011 – a 27% increase on 2010.
Kay Boycott from housing charity Shelter said: “These figures paint a worrying picture of the rising numbers of families facing a monthly battle to keep a roof over their head.
"High unemployment and rising living costs continue to take their toll.”
http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/personal- … ebt-853504
Statistics: Posted by yoda — Wed May 30, 2012 9:45 am
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