I hear it all the time: "the reason for this economy and its being turned on its head is greedy owners/landlords/wage thieves." In fact, the government has so indoctrinated people to this line of thinking that they have somehow managed to absolve themselves of any and all guilt within the process. Harry Houdini himself would marvel at their display of escapism.
Yet, there is an unavoidable parallel between the EPA's involvement in our economy and the economy trending toward the rich. No, that's not hyperbole. As the EPA surges and courses its parasitic tendrils through the economy in the name of "eco-justice," it ever widens the divide between those who can afford to live well and those who cannot.
Here is a reality check for some of you, everything we have, do, eat, build, wear, or use is created by energy. Seriously, unless you are lying naked on the ground (not advisable in public), something you are using consumed power for you to be able to use it. I dare you to take a look at yourself right now. Maybe you ARE indeed wearing 100% natural fibers, but did you raise the sheep yourself in a powerless environment? Did you hand spin the wool to the make the thread? Did you weave the cloth by hand and then design, cut, and assemble it by candlelight? Oh wait, even a candle emits CO2, so we cannot use that, so only during the day when the sun was out?
No?
Well then, you, my friend, are the beneficiary of energy. The lights your seeing with, the computer/phone you are using to read this, the clothing you wear, especially if it is a man made material, that watch, your wedding ring, and let us not mention your shoes with their rubber, latex, nylon laces, faux leather, and other things that all take energy to manufacture.
The breakfast you ate? Did you grow it? No? Well it arrived at a store for you to find it by... ENERGY! Oh wait, you also used energy to go the store to buy it in the first place, and then to see it, to have it refrigerated, heck, even to check out. Oh, and by the way, the cart/basket/reusable bag you used, yep, energy.
How people have become so disconnected from the reality of our energy dependence is beyond me.
So, enter the EPA. The group that finds every way to make energy as expensive as possible. Cheap sources of energy that everyone can afford? Nope, we cannot use those.
The ONE form of renewable energy with the ability to recycle its own used fuel and power cities at a fraction of the cost and size of others (nuclear)? Nope, not that one either.
How about clean coal where the carbon is returned to the ground from which it was pulled, surely that would be ok even if it is more expensive and hurts the economically disadvantaged? Not just no, but heck no, if the EPA got its way.
No, the EPA wants us to hang our hats on the single most expensive energy sources available.
Like solar, which still has some of the highest equipment set up costs and only actually converts 30% of the energy that hits it which is why they take up MILES to make one solar plant which still cannot even generate a fraction of the energy that a coal plant can, let alone a nuclear one.
Or wind, which requires back up fossil fuel generators, deicers flown on helicopters, oil for lubrication, and so many other things that actually make it energy negative when all production costs are factored in. Yep, you actually lose economic power by using this form of energy.
So, let's use hydroelectric, right? A PROVEN green source of energy with a long track record of success even if it is not available to everyone. No, you might kill some sub species of a sub species of fish that is so small you might never have known it existed.
I mean, hey, if that is your thing, that is your thing, but remember, the rich can afford luxuries like paying higher costs on EVERYTHING in the economy. The poor cannot.
That is the hardest thing for people in the lower socioeconomic strata to comprehend. Despite the government promises that the rich will pay for it all, THEY are the ones who end up paying for it as the price of everything around them rises (hello inflation) and the rich just pass on their expenses by increasing profit margins on their goods to absorb the hit and it is the poor who suffer a loss of the quality of life. (Have you read about the record oil company profits?)
If the rich were truly going to pay for it, then we would see the wage gap closing, and would have seen it for a while now. Yet they never do, and their lobbyists in Washington make sure they never do.
Why do unskilled workers have to work in fast food restaurants instead of factories that used to provide living wages for the bulk of the American population?
Because between the unions, and more so the EPA, we have squeezed the owners to the point where it makes no sense to make anything in America anymore. So they build factories in China, Mexico, India, Taiwan, and Kazakhstan and benefit from NO environmental regulations and lower wages to their employees.
And before you feel some sense of moral superiority over the "healthier environment" or "saving the planet," remember NOTHING IS REDUCED, NOTHING IS CHANGED, IT IS STILL HAPPENENING, IT IS JUST HAPPENING SOMEWHERE ELSE. Like in China, where an oppressive communist regime benefits from our refusal to manufacture anything anymore.
Yet that is how people today think. If I cannot see it, if it is not happening in my back yard, then it is not really happening and I do not have to worry about it.
Every energy policy put forward by the liberal agenda only further drives up the cost of energy. Every coal plant they shut down slides that much more economic power into the hands of the rich who can afford the more expensive energy.
Every assembly plant that they shut down in the name of "green sustainability" is that many more people competing for the lowest wage jobs that were intended for entry level workers not to sustain a family. Competition for these jobs only suppresses wages further and further.
Every EPA rejected fuel refinery could have made gasoline that much cheaper in America, and would have made a lot more high paying oil jobs as those fields in Texas and Oklahoma would be profitable. Everyone has to get to work, and higher gas prices hurt the poorest people the most.
So go ahead, cheer the EPA. Hold your "green outs" and whatever else you want.
But let us be clear about who is REALLY paying for it. It is not the rich, it never was.
It is the POOR, and it always will be.
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