Jan29
The Climate-Change Cure
on January 29, 2013 at 10:08 am…is like taking chemotherapy for a cold:
I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation, any more than people in 1900 should have borne sacrifices to make people today slightly richer. Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich who receive subsidies for wind farms, which produce less than 0.5% of the country’s energy.
As Glenn often says, the poor don’t have the juice (literally, in this case). It’s always about the juice.
I cannot see why this relatively poor generation should bear the cost of damage that will not become apparent until the time of a far richer future generation
Careful, by that logic we shouldn’t do anything about the national debt — leave it for a richer future generation to sort out.
Or why today’s poor should subsidise, through their electricity bills, today’s rich
Or why today’s poor should subsidize, through regressive taxes and spending cuts, low marginal tax rates and generous deductions for today’s rich? Check out Bobby Jindal’s tax plans for LA.
As Glenn often says, the poor don’t have the juice
The poor definitely don’t have much political power. How might we change that? Encourage (or mandate) higher voter turnout by the poor? Reduce the importance of money in politics? Can you imagine what sort of policies the US might pursue if its poor had political power in proportion to their numbers?
The Left’s favorite economist, Keynes, said, “In the long run, we’ll all be dead.”
By that reasoning, why should we care about anything that will happen after we’re gone. It isn’t as if our grandchildren ever did anything for us. Borrow money from future generations and blow it on ourselves! Screw the environment! It’s all about me, me, me!
But some of us do have grandchildren that we care about. We worry about the future we’re leaving for them, with trillions of debt that will never be repaid, a government that’s eroding essential freedoms in the name of progressive ideology and the willingness to cripple major segments of the economy based on little more than pseudoscience and political expediency.
If they ever find out what a mess we’ve made of things (and that’s no certainty given the dismal state of education in this country), they’re going to curse all our names.
We worry about the future we’re leaving for them, with trillions of debt
Don’t forget that the debt in question will be both owed by, and owed to, our grandchildren. And yes, leaving all of them an obligation due to some of them may, if that obligation is too large relative to the size of the economy, impose deadweight costs, just to move the money around.
But as the writer points out, that future generation will be much richer, with resources we can hardly imagine. If they’ll have no trouble paying to adapt to a world that’s 4º warmer, they’ll certainly have no trouble dealing with our relatively puny debts.
If they’ll have no trouble paying to adapt to a world that’s 4º warmer, they’ll certainly have no trouble dealing with our relatively puny debts.
Oh, of course. Climate change has to be worse than any amount of debt. The mythology is self-evident.
“…a world that’s 4º warmer…”
Which will happen in about 7 centuries at the current rate of climb. I think they’ll be OK.
“Don’t forget that the debt in question will be both owed by, and owed to, our grandchildren. ”
Still laboring under the delusion that when future generations pay themselves back, they will be rich off the higher interest money they pay themselves, eh?
Spoken like a true lefty who thinks wealth…… just……appears.
Hey, looks like you’re in the “do nothing” camp. Welcome aboard, Jim!
No, just pointing out that Rand is being inconsistent. I’m inconsistent too, in the opposite direction (i.e. I think we should worry about our current level of carbon emissions, not about our current level of debt). In my defense, I think there’s more reason to be concerned about leaving our grandchildren a carbon-heavy atmosphere than there is to worry about leaving them a pile of paper IOUs that they owe to each other.
So if you’re okay with being inconsistent, why point it out? You’re inconsistent all over the place, especially the part about caring about inconsistencies.
No one is “for” pollution and opposition to ideologically based green policies does not mean a person wants to destroy the world. Giving money to Democrat crony companies and paying carbon indulgences wont solve anything.
Except that “climate-change” isn’t even a cold — it’s Munchausen by Proxy.
WB Titus.
The poor definitely don’t have much political power.
Are you kidding? Individually not, but collectively they’ve given us your messiah.
Don’t forget that the debt in question will be both owed by, and owed to, our grandchildren.
No. If that were the case it wouldn’t be a problem. The fact that you and others believe this is the problem.
Maybe Jim’s grandchildren are the Federal Reserve and the Chinese. Did you consider that angle?
Or ink suppliers.
Wow, I agree with Jim on something!
Okay, I’m lying, but he has a grain of truth in there: the argument that national debts are “stealing from our grandchildren” is bunk.
The argument that debts are bad because future generations have to pay them back presupposes that anyone can be or should be forced to pay back the debt of another. I don’t believe that, do you?
Our grandchildren will have no more obligation to pay back national debts than we do. What does that mean? It means that this debt is not yours and mine, it’s the government’s. We should advocate (and agitate) for the government to pay back it’s debt, and stop the ridiculous spending that caused it, because of the horrible effect it is having on our economy and the economy of our grandchildren.
Ultimately, we should advocate (and agitate) for the end of governments in general, or at least their massive reduction to something less offensive, because of the increasing detrimental effect that they are having on our lives and will have on the lives of our grandchildren.
(Or, at least, your grandchildren, I’m not having any.)
“We should advocate (and agitate) for the government to pay back it’s debt,….”
Only problem with that is that the government has no money of it’s own – it takes it out of the economic system.
“….and stop the ridiculous spending that caused it, ”
Couldn’t agree more.