Here's How We Can Stop the EPA's War on the Poor

In his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama promoted his vision of "middle-class economics."

As part of his program, he pledged to lower taxes for working families, "putting thousands of dollars back into their pockets each year."

Alas, what his budget proposal pledged to giveth, his energy policy taketh away. The industry regulations pushed by Obama's Environmental Protection Agency, conflict with his stated budget intentions by foisting higher household energy costs that fall disproportionately on the poorest among us.

In a free market, entrepreneurs serve society tremendously by coordinating the entire market division of labor, directing scarce resources toward their most highly valued use as determined by members of society.

The price system ensures that those who produce the most demanded goods in the most efficient way will reap profits, while those who fail to do so will reap losses.

Business regulations serve to hamper this beneficent market process. Regardless of any other purposes they serve, regulations constrain entrepreneurs from arranging production processes in their best, most efficient pattern.

They necessarily increase costs of production and decrease the quantity of products people have available to satisfy their ends. In short, business regulation results in relative impoverishment.

Read the rest here at the Harrisburg, PA Patriot-News

EPA's Power Plant Rule Is Too Draconian

. . .And will do much more harm than good. That was the primary message of a panel I was a part of who sat down with some of the editors of the Harrisburg Patriot-News on Wednesday.

You can read about our meeting in the paper's very fair write-up, "Pa. industry leaders take aim at EPA's power plant rule: Six takeaways"

As the piece notes, "John Pippy of the coal alliance and Dave Taylor of the manufacturers' group visited the PennLive editorial board Wednesday, with Shawn Ritenour, professor of economics at Grove City College, to voice their concerns with EPA's plan."

The EPA wants to reduce CO2 emissions from coal-fired electricity plants by 30 percent by 2030. Doing so requires draconian measures that are not even possible with current technology.

Our main points were as follows:

• What the EPA wants power plants to do is unrealistic and unachievable and will kill off coal plants.

• Renewable energy can't replace the power supplies that will be lost if EPA's rule takes effect.

• The EPA is not giving due credit for reductions in carbon pollution made since 2005.

• The EPA regulations provide little if any benefit to the environment for way too many bucks. And that does not even consider the moral issue surrounding the encroachment of private property

• A tax on carbon pollution is not a good alternative, either. I made the point that, among other weaknesses, any carbon tax would be arbitrary and, therefore, unsuited to accomplishing what its proponents want it to.

You can read the entire piece by clicking here.