The command government “economists” have been hard at work on the banks of the Potomac, Susquehanna and Pittsburgh’s three rivers.
More’s the pity, of course. But their latest continuing scam should be considered criminal.
As the Post-Gazette reports it, the City of Pittsburgh will receive $2.4 million in public subsidies to build more electric vehicle (EV) charging stations. They’ll be placed in parks, parking facilities and city streets in areas with apartment buildings, the P-G says.
“The Duquesne Light Co. and the Pittsburgh Parking Authority also will be involved in the project … designed to help freelance workers and car-sharing companies,” report notes.
“It is one of three Pennsylvania projects totaling $11.3 million announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation. The two others are in Philadelphia. The funding comes from President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law,” the P-G says. (Millions more in public dollars previously has been spent.)
The story then offers up the expected boilerplate quote from Sailen Bhatt, the nation’s federal highway administrator:
“The EV charging and alternative fueling projects receiving awards … will help deliver world-class, clean transportation systems in Pennsylvania communities,” she says. “These investments put America on a path to lead the world in zero-emission transportation technology while creating good-paying jobs and reducing our carbon footprint.”
What absolute tripe. Of course, there’s no mention that coal and natural gas typically are the source of the electricity used to charge EVs.
Taxpayers have absolutely no business subsidizing such a thing. Just as they’ve had absolutely no business having their pockets turned out to subsidize the manufacture of EVs.
Let’s take a trip back in time, to the early part of the 20th century in Pittsburgh.
As the history books tell us, Gulf Refining Co. opened the country’s first drive-up gasoline service station in 1913. On day one, the Gulf station sold 30 gallons of gas at 27 cents per gallon (that would be $8.58, adjusted for inflation in 2024).
Other oil companies, seeing the profit potential, soon entered The Great Filling Station Sweepstakes.
About the only role government played in the creation of gasoline service stations was, in the name of safety, prohibiting curbside filling stations considered to be a safety hazard.
Taxpayers did not subsidize service stations. Gasoline-refining oil companies risked their own money in pursuit of profits.
Simply put, if the marketplace was signaling there was money to be made by manufacturing and selling and EVs, and keeping them charged, the auto companies would be racing to risk their own money in pursuit of profiting from it all.
But here’s the kicker – the big kick right in taxpayers’ behinds: Automotive News reports that even with massive taxpayer subsidies, automakers lose about $6,000 on each EV they sell for $50,000.
But even that outrageous number doesn’t tell the real story. As CNN reports, “Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in [2024’s] first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 [EVs] it sold in the first three months of the year.”
Stupid is as stupid does. But when it’s not your own money, well, all sanity is cast aside.
So much for the government raiding party turning out the public’s pockets, making an “investment” to make unsustainable and unprofitable electric vehicles sustainable and profitable, eh?
What a classic government cluster cluck. And to hide the lie that EVs are the be-all and end-all to environmental concerns, even more taxpayer money is conscripted to make more charging stations more readily available.
It’s theft by deception. It’s theft by the government. With motor vehicle manufacturers an all-to-willing accomplice, before, during and after the fact that, yet again, the government command economists are taking the American people for ride – over the Red Cliffs of EV Perfidy.
Think hard about this scenario this Labor Day weekend – how the fruits of your labors are being so recklessly misappropriated.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
