Galston provides nonsensical cover for Bidenomics
- Peter Lorenzi
- Nov 18, 2021
- 3 min read
This (see PDF, below) is simply nonsense. Bidinflation is not transitory nor structural. It is self-inflicted fiscal foolishness. Liberal pundit William Galston -- who years ago accurately assessed the root causes of poverty in America as an absence of a high school education, marriage and even minimal employment -- can't seem to cast off his progressive blinders long enough to recognize the true cause of inflation today. You can find the entire column attached below yet the two concluding paragraphs offer sufficient evidence to assign this analysis to the trash can. Here are those two paragraphs:
"In the very long term, the fight to slow climate change could reduce energy costs, but this seems unlikely during the next two decades. Although coal has enormous negative effects on the environment, it is comparatively cheap, and the shift toward electric vehicles won’t happen fast enough to reduce demand for gasoline any time soon.
In considering the next steps, the Biden administration and the Fed should give much more weight to the evidence that emerging inflationary pressures are structural—not temporary."
Where Galston goes wrong
Terms such as "In the very long term," and "the fight to slow climate change" are immeasurable benchmarks or measures for any economic policy. What is the "long term"? Or "the very long term?" At a minimum, it means a time after all the people making these decisions are dead, so they cant be held accountable fort their mistakes. As to the fight to slow climate change, this is a meaningless cliche. "Fight," "slow," and "climate change" are meaningless rhetoric. This is one reason why I discouraged the business school from endorsing a course in rhetoric for business students. Instead, they needed critical analysis writing skills, none of which came from the writing department or the liberals arts courses. Quite the contrary. Rhetoric was embedded in the liberal arts curriculum; a separate course would be redundant.
Even Barack Obama acknowledged that green policies would cause electricity prices to "skyrocket;" his words not mine. Unlike Obama's fatuous, "If you like your plan you can keep it," in this matter he was being candid rather than deceptive. Green energy will greatly increase the cost of energy, once the carbon taxes, exchanges and electricity production costs are factored into the equation. Of course, with gasoline cars prohibited, there won't be any chance -- or need -- to buy gasoline, but energy bills across the board will "skyrocket".
Claiming "coal has enormous negative effects on the environment" -- albeit admittedly at low cost -- is a half-argument when he ignores the benefits of coal beyond its low cost, such the cheap energy that has pulled or kept tens of millions if not billions of people out of poverty. Add in the unscientific assertion without evidence of the "enormous" negative effects -- without any consideration of opportunity costs -- reduces the half argument to meaningless progressive liberal rhetoric.
Galston implies here -- and does so more directly earlier in his column -- that rising gasoline prices are the result of booming demand from a booming recovery, while ignoring the sharp limits on supply applied as part of Biden "energy policy." This is supply-shortage inflation, not demand-induced inflation. Worse, the Biden administration is claiming the OPEC cartel that Biden empowered with his curbs on domestic production while distracting the public and deflecting responsibility with the idea that domestic oil suppliers are simply gouging.
Giving "weight" to the "evidence" that inflation is structural is an extension of this deflection, a waste of time, a step backwards, and ridiculous on the surface, all intended to shift blame from the president's loathsome stances.
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