Quote of the day - on that stupid green deal idea again

From Randall O'Toole at The Antiplanner:

Ocasio-Cortez points out that, “The interstate highway system has returned more than $6 in economic productivity for every $1 it cost.” Yet this is because the interstates replaced slow, expensive transportation with fast, economical transportation. Her plan would replace fast, low-cost transportation with slow, high-cost transportation. Airfares today average around 15 cents a passenger mile Amtrak’s Acela charges an average of 90 cents a passenger mile. Slower, high-cost transportation will result in negative economic productivity for every dollar spent on it.

O'Toole points out that the Ocasio-Cortez schemes would require at least $60 TRILLION in government borrowing (or, as she suggests, simply printing the money) even without factoring in inflation risks.

This is the sum of green economics - it is about making us poorer (this is its specific aim but the greens always wiggle round this essential truth of their ideology). This might be justified at the margin - accepting a lower rate of growth in order to reduce our GHG emissions - but the Green Deal doesn't do that at all preferring to replace transport efficiency with inefficiency and private initiative with the biggests ever splurge on taxpayer funded boondoggles in the whole of history (or at least since the pyramids bankrupted Egypt).


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