Liar Liar Pants On Fire
Fast food restaurants know that government regulations relating to obesity will probably hurt them all, but given sufficient time to think, Taco Bell and Subway would eventually conclude that a ban on hamburgers was in the national interest. Likewise it should come as no surprise that Jeff Immelt, the CEO of GE, likes the idea of Cap-and-Trade:
Picking up the thread from my previous post, there is a great misconception that Big Business is somehow uniquely aligned with the GOP. If the Republican Party is at all the party of business, it is the party of small businesses, on whose shoulders the weight of government bears hardest.
This is a prime example of what economist Arnold Kling calls "progressive corporatism," which is a taut way of saying that big business quickly finds accomodation with big government. The way I think of it, they are like two teenagers who fight over which one gets the car on Friday night, while both agreeing that paying for gas is the least their parents could do.
"I think the science, as a CEO I’m not an environmentalist – just purely as a CEO that has to make a payroll – things like that," Immelt continued. "The science is compelling, so it’s a question of when and not if there’s going to be something done on carbon. Give us some certainty and let’s go."What is compelling to Immelt is that the number one effect of CO2 regulation will be to force the shutdown of billions of dollars of coal and oil-fired power plants and the construction of billions of dollars of new facilities. Large industrial power consumers will also likely be forced to undertake new "green" investments to remain viable. Whatever the Democrats' anti-wealth agenda takes away from Immelt & co. personally will be paid back a dozen times over when the force of law creates large new markets for GE's products.
Picking up the thread from my previous post, there is a great misconception that Big Business is somehow uniquely aligned with the GOP. If the Republican Party is at all the party of business, it is the party of small businesses, on whose shoulders the weight of government bears hardest.
This is a prime example of what economist Arnold Kling calls "progressive corporatism," which is a taut way of saying that big business quickly finds accomodation with big government. The way I think of it, they are like two teenagers who fight over which one gets the car on Friday night, while both agreeing that paying for gas is the least their parents could do.
posted by The Snob at
1:46 PM
2 Comments:
People in general have no idea how big GE is into LED R&D. The hold-up has been that a pure white wavelength is next to impossible to coax out of these silicon beings, let alone the preffered soft, incandesent flavor to which everyone has become accustomed. Using these in traffic lights and other colored applications saves millions yearly in electricity AND maintenance--they are virtually immortal.
I actually don't have a huge problem with government footing large bills for the development of cutting-edge technology. It is pretty much the only institution capable of deploying capital on the massive scale required for many things. However, I do have a problem with how it is being allocated today.
Apollo is often cited, along with the Panama Canal, as proof of our genius, much like a middle-aged gasbag recalling the game-winning touchdown pass he threw thirty years earlier. Well, let's look at Apollo: it cost about $125 billion in 2007 dollars over the life of the program.
Which is to say, that for what we spent to nurse GM and Chrysler along for six months, we could have gotten perhaps half of the way to landing men on Mars. By the same token, we could have said to hell with the General, and given half of that money to Tesla and other non-legacy electric car companies, or even used it to build wind turbines, preferably offshore from Ted Kennedy's compound. Any of those things would have provided a greater return on investment. TARP was bad enough but I will never forgive Bush for caving on GM.
Apollo I think managed to be the exception to the rule of government incompetence because we had one enemy (the USSR) and one very strict referee (the laws of physics) keeping everybody honest and focused. Right now with alt-energy we have neither, really.
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