Monday, August 13, 2012

A Cappy Cap Bounty

In my sincere and continued belief that the majority of liberals, leftists and socialists truly do not know the difference between a million, a billion and a trillion, I have a question:

Was any kind of preliminary assessment conducted to ascertain the potential size and impact of the theoretical "green economy" before we threw billions in taxpayer money into it?

Oh, I know, I know.  We all here at Cappy Cap know if the government throws money at it, it's by definition of free-markets not going to be efficient. I'm just practicing arguing with a handicap and using premises that the left uses to undermine their own arguments or highlight their galactic stupidity.  It's akin to Rush saying "arguing with half my brain tied behind my back."    But my question still remains

Did ANYBODY do ANY KIND of economic research to see if this green economy was economically viable?

The reason I ask is because I truly don't believe there was any, but the "green economy," far as I could tell in the past four years, was supposed to be the answer to all of our economic problems.

Housing bubble burst? 

Don't worry, with new investments in the "green economy" America will lead the world into new greatness.

Financial crisis destroyed the economy?

Don't worry, with new investments in the "green economy" America will lead the world to new greatness.

Government spending has now scared the economy into freezing, if not sending capital flighting?

Don't worry, with new investments in the "green economy" America will lead the world to new greatness.

So by implication if the "green economy" was supposed to be able to overcome all of these problems, then at least, AT LEAST the theoretical size of this "green economy" had to be estimated at over $ 1 trillion. 

So where are the numbers?  I want to see some research done by economists in the Obama administration that showed they did their due diligence and had solid numbers showing the "green economy" was the solution before they threw billions into the likes of Solyndra and shut down the Keystone pipeline.

Heck, I'll offer a bounty.  I'll buy somebody a shot of Rumpie if they can show me research DONE BY A LEGITIMATE ECONOMIST THAT SHOWED THE POTENTIAL FOR THE GREEN ECONOMY WAS GAUGED TO BE LARGE ENOUGH TO WARRANT PURSUIT IN TERMS OF FISCAL AND REGULATORY POLICY.

I'm waiting!

11 comments:

Alkibiades said...

Well, anybody in charge? Or guys like you and me. Seven or eight years ago I did a back of the envelope calculation on how much vegetable oil production for bio-diesel would be required to fuel the United States at static levels. It was pretty easy to determine that there wasn't enough arable land in the U.S. to do so and still have any land left over for food production. I had a crusader tell me that yields would increase enough to make the dream come true.

richardwrites said...

I have been following your blog for some time and was wondering if you do link exchanges?

http://ghostnation.blogspot.co.uk/

Best wishes

James Wolfe said...

If we were to shut down all of the electric power plants in the US and replace them with solar panels they would require 4937 square miles.

427,054 kW/h
Solar panels = 1kW per 7.4 acres
3,160,205 acres = 4937 square miles

Looks like we got a lot of forrests to cut down to make room for that green energy.

Anonymous said...

It is reminiscent of that nonsense four years ago about how health care reform was going to balance the books...nobody cited any believable numbers, but they repeated the story until a large number of people believed it...

Anonymous said...

By way of joke/allegory:

Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at a government facility. They go with a government official to examine the fence.
The first contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The second contractor also does some measuring and figuring, and then says I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The third contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the official and whispers, "$2,700."
The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?"
The contractor whispers back, "$1,000 for me, $1,000 for you, and we hire the first guy to fix the fence."

Takeaway: THE POTENTIAL FOR GRAFT IN THE GREEN ECONOMY WAS GAUGED TO BE LARGE ENOUGH TO WARRANT PURSUIT IN TERMS OF FISCAL AND REGULATORY POLICY.

Anonymous said...

Look at the Kyoto treaty, it's supporters never explained how handing the dirty industry in China an even larger competitive advantage over the clean industy here would reduce CO2 or real pollution.
Chinese industry pollutes more per unit of production than our clean industry.
It's pretty obvious the net result from Kyoto would be more CO2 and real pollution, not less.

Try it sometime, ask a Kyoto supporter how their favorite treaty would help the environment.

Anonymous said...

Look at the Kyoto treaty, it's supporters never explained how handing the dirty industry in China an even larger competitive advantage over the clean industy here would reduce CO2 or real pollution.
Chinese industry pollutes more per unit of production than our clean industry.
It's pretty obvious the net result from Kyoto would be more CO2 and real pollution, not less.

Try it sometime, ask a Kyoto supporter how their favorite treaty would help the environment.

richardwrites said...

Thank you captain!

Anonymous said...

Green energy as such will never pan out, because we insist on seeing it as some magic road to employment. Everyone talks about the millions of new jobs these new energy sources will create, but never addresses the fact that this means we'll all need to pay for these millions of jobs, and the underlying energy is more expensive to begin with. So you're either paying more or taxing more and subsidizing it's production

Anonymous said...

The Green Economy (just a coincedence that the initials are GE and theCEO of GE is on Obama's economics counsel?) was never anything more than an excuse to throw money at Obama supporters. The purpose of being in control of the government is to ensure your friends profit from the flow of government money instead of random other people getting it.

Anonymous said...

Of course they did no such research. Neither did Marx.
Why?
Empirical evidence was, far from being important, was actually BESIDES THE POINT.
Marxism is actually an ethical and political philosophy that people treat like an economic one (it fails on the former two grounds as well, of course).
We've all heard the phrase "necessary evil". Capitalism and all of its derivative institutions are treated as, at best, "necessary evils" by would-be socialists. That is, until such point as they decide they are unwilling to tolerate that evil any longer, and damn the consequences.