According to a new study, the Green New Deal’s implementation would cost the average American family a quarter of a million dollars during the first five years. The costs are even higher for Americans living in Alaska. The study did not even take into account significant parts of the Green New Deal, since they are impossible to calculate. After all, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hasn’t even introduced an actual bill, but only a resolution calling for future bills. It’s less a concrete plan and more a worldview statement justifying hundreds of future laws.
The study, jointly co-authored by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Power the Future (PTF), analyzed the additional electricity demanded for various projects like decarbonizing the economy; the costs associated with shipping and logistics; the costs of new carbon-free vehicles; and the costs to retrofit every building in America. Just these four types of costs would add up to more than $250,000 per household in the first five years, a conservative estimate.
“The Green New Deal is a radical blueprint to de-carbonize the American economy by refashioning how we grow food, move people and goods, source and distribute electricity, and build the structures where we live, work, and play. Our analysis shows that, if implemented, the Green New Deal would cost for American households at least tens of thousands of dollars annually on a permanent basis,” CEI President and CEO Kent Lassman said in a statement.
“Perhaps that’s why exactly zero Senate Democrats, including the resolution’s 12 co-sponsors, voted for the Green New Deal when they had the chance,” he quipped.
“Economists and experts have been warning us for months about the devastating effects of the Green New Deal, and now we have the numbers to prove it,” PTF Executive Director Daniel Turner said in a statement. “This study only calculates a fraction of the cost of Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez’s radical plan, which amounts to a socialist free-for-all with no regard for the American taxpayer.”
“No family should be forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars in the first year alone to fund AOC’s ideological wishlist. Thankfully, Americans see through the Green New Deal and are beginning to fight back,” he added.
CEI and PTF analyzed the estimated costs for households in five states — Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. In every state except Alaska, the Green New Deal would cost a typical household more than $70,000 in the first year of implementation, approximately $45,000 for each of the next four years (adding up to $250,000 for the first five years), and more than $37,000 each year after that. In Alaska, the average family would pay more than $100,000 in the first year, $73,000 for the next four years, and more than $67,000 each year afterward.
A state-by-state breakdown of the costs of the Green New Deal over the first 5 years and afterward.
“Most provisions of the GND are so broad and open-ended that the list of potential programs necessary to implement the program is limited by the capacity of legislators to imagine a new government program,” the study notes. “Therefore, it is impossible to calculate the whole or maximum cost of the GND. However, other parts of the GND are more precise, sufficiently so that an approximate minimum cost estimate is available.”
In order to estimate those costs effectively, CEI and PTF chose five diverse states in different parts of the country with different climates and population density.
While some have falsely argued that government printing money can offset the costs of the Green New Deal, this study makes the real cost concrete for every family. Most families cannot afford to pay an extra $70,000 in one year or half a million dollars over the course of five years. But even these high estimates are underestimates. The Green New Deal may sound nice, but it’s simply unaffordable — as well as being impossible.
And where would this money go? To prop up a Green Industrial Complex and the likes of Al Gore. So much for helping the poor.
Many Democrats running for president have endorsed the Green New Deal. Others, like former Vice President Joe Biden and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), have released extremely similar policy plans. Debate moderators should ask these Democrats about how they would pay for it, and why they think it’s a good idea to saddle a quarter of a million dollars on the backs of the average American family.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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