8/26/2010

The Stimulus package was really just a giant social engineering bill

We know that this bill didn't create net new jobs. Apparently, the Democrats always believed it was a way to do a lot of social engineering.

But in the words of Vice President Joe Biden, Obama's effusive Recovery Act point man, "Now the fun stuff starts!" The "fun stuff," about one-sixth of the total cost, is an all-out effort to exploit the crisis to make green energy, green building and green transportation real; launch green manufacturing industries; computerize a pen-and-paper health system; promote data-driven school reforms; and ramp up the research of the future. "This is a chance to do something big, man!" Biden said during a 90-minute interview with TIME.
For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet. . . .

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2 Comments:

Blogger Nucleus said...

John, I read this article with interest yesterday. Two things on VP Biden's "Fun Stuff" clearly sounded good to me: The Race to the Top grants, and the feds cutting back on their energy usage; although I wonder if they are spending more than they will save on there.

The question I have for the economist is, could any of the rest be useful? If we could increase battery energy density by an order of magnitude that could make for really useful and practical electrical cars. The fed getting involved in what appears to be venture capital seems strange to me. Why isn't there private capital for these ventures?

Hans

8/27/2010 6:30 AM  
Blogger Martin G. Schalz said...

An obvious lack of understanding that they work for us.

"— That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

So much for 'We the people', eh?

8/27/2010 11:20 AM  

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