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CBO CONCLUDES OBAMA’S CRONY VENTURE SOCIALISM A FAILURE: Allow me to paraphrase the headline of this Business Insider article, titled, “CBO: Electric Cars Are A Waste Of Money:”
The CBO has concluded that electric cars are not a “smart” choice for consumers. From the report:
Because of differences in vehicle design and technology, electric vehicles cost thousands of dollars more to purchase than conventional vehicles of comparable size and performance.
Okay, the cars cost too much. What does the government do? It subsidizes the inefficiency. It pays a cash incentive for each vehicle sold. The subsidy is based on the size of the battery; it ranges from $2,500 to $7,500. But the subsidy is still not enough to make electric cars competitive:
Given current prices for vehicles and fuel, in most cases the existing tax credits do not fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an electric vehicle compared with those of an equivalent conventional vehicle or traditional hybrid.
CBO concluded:
The tax credits would still need to be about 50 percent higher than they are now to fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an all-electric vehicle.
I know that someone is thinking that gas prices are going up, and when they do, electric cars will prove to be a smart thing. I’m not so sure. The CBO provided a breakeven on this line of thinking. If gas prices go north of $6, electric starts to make sense. When gas goes to $10, all of the vehicles break even to conventional autos. The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that if gas were to go to $8, the US economy (and the rest of the world) would come to an economic halt. In that environment a fellow would be grinning if he had an electric car, but he would probably be out of work, and most of the stores he would want to drive to would be closed. What good does the electric car create for him if things go very bad? Not much.
Then tell that to Obama, Steven Chu, his Energy Secretary, Tom Brokaw of NBC, and the editorial writers at the New York Times and the Washington Post, because in 2008, they all called for higher gas prices — and Chu specifically said, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” which would have meant just those $9.00 gas prices — or more. All to allow the Obama administration to spread your wealth around like — we’ll, perhaps Obama crony Paul Holland had the most memorable analogy during the early days of Hopenchange:
In a video appearance from 2009, venture capitalist Paul Holland — who had given the maximum legal contribution to Obama, and whose companies received over 6 million in government dollars — described his feelings when heard about the billions up for grabs.
“He came in to do his talk and opened his talk with, ‘I’m Matt Rogers I am the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Energy and I have $134 billion that I have to disperse between now and the end of December,’” Holland told the audience. “So upon hearing that I sent an email to my partners that said Matt Rogers is about to get treated like a hooker dropped into a prison exercise yard.”
Holland continued: “And I had the lack of judgment to go up and share that with him and the other people who were all standing around him…Fortunately for me they all laughed and thought it was funny.”
Yeah, that’s a riot. There’s a graphic in that Business Insider article headlined, “Yes, But if Gas Goes to $8, We’re Dead Anyway.” No wonder the California economy in particular needs CPR these days.
(Speaking of which, and because I couldn’t figure out where else to hang this link, remember back in 2007, when Time was praising Arnold Schwarzenegger as a “New Action Hero” for his global warming rhetoric, which helped paved the way for Obama’s corporatist cronyism? Check out our would-be New Action Hero’s totally eco-friendly ride these days…)