Hillary’s Big
Tell
The View from the Middle
Just out of curiosity,
I looked up the definition of a “Freudian Slip” the other day, and here’s what
I found. It is “An unintended error in
speech or writing that reveals a person’s real intentions - OR – When a politician
accidently tells the truth and reveals his or her true motives.” OK, I added the “politician” part, but it
really makes sense doesn’t it. And my
timing was impeccable, because Hillary had a whopper of a slip earlier this
year.
Here’s what Hillary
said, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of
business.” She didn’t say that the coal
business was dying of natural causes.
She said that, “We are going to put coal companies out of business.” Oops, the truth slipped out. And I know it's the truth because that
statement is very consistent with what Barack Obama has been saying for years.
Mr. Obama said, “If
someone wants to build a coal powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because
they are going to be charged a huge sum for all of the greenhouse gas that’s
being emitted.” He has also said, “Under
my cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”
Notice that neither
Hillary nor the President said that coal companies would go out of business
because it is getting too expensive to get coal out of the ground. They implied that they would destroy them
through governmental regulations, fines and taxes. The good news is that at least the truth is
out, and now we can deal with it.
Hillary Clinton will try to destroy the coal business, and eventually
the oil business if she gets the opportunity.
Should we be doing that? The
short answer is “No”!
First, we should be
thanking God that he has blessed the United States with the bountiful recourses
we have. We have more coal than Saudi Arabia has oil.
We have more oil than all of the Middle East countries combined and natural gas
may be our most abundant resource. Thank
you, God, and these are the resources that have fueled our industrial growth
for at least the last 200 years.
I’m also a big fan of
renewable energy, especially the sun.
Did you know that the sun puts down more energy in an hour than the
world consumes in a year? But
unfortunately, we haven’t figured out how to effectively and efficiently
convert that power to a usable form.
Today, solar power only accounts for about 1% of the US electrical
power. I’m confident that we’ll figure
it out, but it’s not ready to shoulder the power needs of our country
today. So how should we proceed?
There is a natural process
called “creative destruction” that has fueled capitalism from the
beginning. Creative destruction is the
ceaseless churning of the free market as old businesses and industries are
replaced with new more productive and efficient ones. The really good news is that our total
society benefits through better products, shorter workweeks, better jobs and
higher standards of living. The fundamental
role of government in this natural process is to stay out of the way.
But that’s not what
Hillary and Barack Obama want to do.
They want the government to step in and destroy entire industries with
no realistic plan on how to replace them.
Let me give you an example of how creative destruction should work. Back in 1768 Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot built the
first car. It was powered by steam, and
at that time, virtually everyone in America got around by horse and buggy. Over a hundred years later in 1886, Karl Benz
made the first gas powered car and the horse and buggy were still king. In 1908 there were only 8,000 cars in the US
and there was only about 144 miles of paved roads, and the horse and buggy was
still dominant.
Today, there are almost as
many passenger vehicles as people in America (256 million in 2013) and we have
over 2.5 million miles of paved roads, and the horse and buggy have been
relegated to hobby status. Slowly, over
those 248 years, people who make cars slowly replaced the people who made
buggies. Today there are many more
people employed by the auto industry, at relatively higher wages, and society
has benefited tremendously from this transition.
What if our government had
decided to place its heavy hands on the horse and buggy industry back in 1768 by
over taxing it, over regulating it and applying punitive fines to it with the
intent of destroying it? Even if their
intent were to accelerate the development of the automobile, it would have had
the opposite effect, because that industry was not ready to satisfy the
transportation needs of our country.
What if they had done it in 1886?
Same affect. What about
1908? Same. We would have only retarded the development
of the auto industry here and thus around the world.
With a wisdom that ran
from Washington to Lincoln to Wilson to FDR, our government allowed the auto
industry to develop at its own pace.
That is what we should be doing with the energy industry.
We will eventually figure
out how to convert solar and wind energy effectively and efficiently, but we
can’t do that today to satisfy our energy needs, even with massive subsidies. Punishing or destroying fossil fuel
industries will not get us there faster.
In fact, it will probably retard the progress and punish the average
American through job losses and higher energy costs.
As usual, my recommendation
is for the government to get out of the way and let the natural creative
destruction process do its job. Put
money into research (NASA, MIT) instead of subsidies (Solyndra), which we can
do at a fraction of the cost to encourage the process, but most importantly,
GET OUT OF THE WAY!!
