As the summer wanes and the autumn beckons, Americans are going to have to start grappling with the consequences of some of the worst public policy prescriptions to come down the pike since the “Great Society” and the “New Deal.”
And Greater Pittsburgh will not be immune. In fact, given its long fealty to one-party rule whose public policies long have fostered laggard economic growth, substandard public schools and population decline, it will fit in perfectly with the federal government’s burgeoning and assuredly deleterious “industrial policy.”
By any other definition, it is public policy by bribe. And what’s happening with the nation’s automobile industry is the best example of the worst of it.
For you see, and as The Wall Street Journal headline succinctly states it, “Car makers back the Biden climate change agenda in return for subsidies and higher consumer prices.”
The auto industry reportedly will spend $330 billion over the next five years to electrify its vehicle offerings, with a goal of having electric vehicles accounting for up to 50 percent of all vehicles by 2030.
And it will come from picking taxpayer wallets with billions of dollars in “beneficent” federal subsidies (then charging customers premium prices).
Oh, by the way, electric vehicles (EV) are so “popular” with the motoring public that despite all the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah-ing, they only make up 3 percent of the market these days.
Which is why the feds have to bribe automakers to make the government’s vehicles of choice – never mind that manufacturers lose thousands of dollars on each EV made and consumers are not wont to embrace less reliability (whether it be because of fire, iffy range or sparse charging station challenges).
You can see where this is headed: Government subsidizes the production of EVs for which there is quite little demand. Government soon will subsidize buyers to reduce EV stockpiles. Government then will point to rising demand.
Jake Haulk, president-emeritus of the Allegheny Institute, says this grand government plan ignores two key problems:
First, “Assuming the public is more or less forced to buy electric vehicles because gasoline powered vehicles will be in scarce supply (and very expensive), the demand for electricity will balloon,” the Ph.D. economist reminds.
“That in turn will vastly increase the need to expand production. If nuclear, gas and coal plants are not permitted, the jump in output will be from solar or wind. The huge number of solar and wind farms that will be required are going to be environmental nightmares.
“Second the ecological damage from the enormous volumes of the materials needed to build the panels and wind turbines and the car batteries will curl the hair of the least green among us,” Haulk adds. “And what happens with all the dead and used up batteries? Another environmental nightmare in the making.”
That said, “the inconvenience of charge times will be a great hindrance to long road trips,” Haulk says.
As a Wall Street Journal editorial concluded:
“Auto makers have been touting their increasing EV sales and claim electric cars are the ‘future.’ Great. Then government doesn’t need to subsidize them. Steve Jobs never asked the government to pay people to buy iPhones or to finance their production.
“And CEOs wonder why Americans have soured on big business. This isn’t capitalism. It’s corporate socialism, or state capitalism. We hope these corporate titans enjoy their new government ‘partners.’”
Or as the opinion editors at Issues & Insights added:
“So, what Biden and the industry are teaming up to accomplish will not only harm consumers, who will be denied the full range of choices they have now, but also taxpayers, who will have to pay for an unprecedented experiment in industrial policy.
“And for what? What will all this disruption, inconvenience, cost and taxpayer money gain us?
“Absolutely nothing.”
It’s what We the People get when we tolerate our “leaders’” hubris in believing they know better and can command the economy to prosperity, now with public policy bribes to boot.
“Using the taxpayer to subsidize and industry that cannot make it on its own and then creating more environmental problems than it has any hope of solving” borders on being criminal, Haulk says.
“And at bottom it is all about the insatiable desire for government control — a beast incapable of learning or being deterred. Each setback on the road to electric vehicle nirvana will produce ever more draconian solutions,” he says.
Our region and the nation will pay dearly for such folly for many decades and generations to come. For once the cork is popped on such bribe-based “industrial policy,” “corporate socialism” and “state capitalism,” that cork swells and cannot be replaced easily – if at all.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitue.org).
