Liberal childishness
Much of what we are told we must do is patently impossible. There is no way we can replace all of our automobiles with electric vehicles in the time allotted. Nor are we going to eschew airplane travel or consuming hamburgers.
As for the cost of this nightmare, no precise figures have been attached to it. Given the scope, however, this will be in the tens of trillions of dollars — and that is a conservative estimate.
So where will these dollars come from? You guessed it; they will be commandeered from the wealthy. Their marginal tax rate is to go up to between 70 and 90 percent. Unfortunately, this will not be enough to pay for the entire Green Dream. The rich are rich, but not that rich.
What is worse, once the wealthy are stripped of the incentive to earn more, they will stop investing and thus cease creating new jobs. How do we know this? Because is happened before — during the Great Depression. Having never studied history, of course, the young do not realize this.
Nor will confiscating everything the wealthy own do the job. This would be a one shot deal that could not address a longterm program. The middle classes are there- fore left to pick up the tab. Their taxes will have to skyrocket.
One left- wing commentator declared that this prospect is not alarming. He compared what will be needed to what was done during World War II. At the time, the proportion of the national income spent by the government doubled. This enabled us to mobilize to defeat the Nazis.
Why then, we are asked, shouldn’t we do the same to save the planet from overheating? This is described as a comparable emergency — only it is not. AOC may insist that the sky will fall in a dozen years, but the government’s recent climate report only suggested that the GDP might lower by 10 percent in a century.
So for this we are supposed to destroy our civilization? Needless to say, the young do not remember that during WWII there was strict rationing? Few private automobiles were produced, while meat, butter and eggs became luxuries. Is this belt-tightening necessary for a phony emergency — especially when there are superior alternatives?
To top off this Green irrationality, even if the goal of zero-carbon emissions were met, it would do no good. With China and India increasing their carbon footprint, the overall level of pollution will rise. Global warming would consequently continue despite the United States having voluntarily chosen collective poverty.
So why did so many Democratic politicians jump on the Green New Deal bandwagon? Didn’t they realize the dire — even laughable — implications of the program? Apparently many presidential aspirants did not. They heard what sounded like a winning political slogan and decided they did not want to be outflanked by the opposition.
They were vulnerable to this foolishness precisely because their liberalism is grounded in socialist fantasies. Socialism is utopian. It does not accurately assess the future, but hides it behind a screen of impractical aspirations — just as children do.
Where then are the grown-ups? Where are the adults who understand there are limits to what we can achieve? If we are to improve our lives, we must deal with the world as it is. Many liberals have evidently decided reality is too harsh for them to accept. Too bad!