What applies to university education applies just as well to frantic energy regulation.
"Families and taxpayers can't just keep paying more and more and more into an undisciplined system where costs just keep on going up and up and up," said US President Barack Obama in a July 24 speech in Galesburg, Ill.
He was talking about the costs of attending college. And he was right. A college education is diminishingly affordable. The system increasingly relies on unevenly distributed grants and scholarships that are unlikely to keep pace with costs growing at rates the president estimated at 5-7%/year.
Indeed, families and taxpayers can't support such a system indefinitely.
Obama's speech was about his intentions for the "cornerstones" of the middle class, which he listed as: "Job security, with good wages and durable industries. A good education. A home to call your own. Affordable health care when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you're not rich. Reducing poverty. Reducing inequality. Growing opportunity."
That all sounds appealing. But as Obama outlined parameters for what he'd do FOR the middle class, he also hinted at what he'd continue to do TO the middle class on energy.
Among other goals of his administration, the president said in Galesburg, "We need to combat climate change."
The policy elements of that program are clear: destroying the economics of coal use through regulation, raising the costs of oil and natural gas to reduce consumption of them—especially of oil—and escorting noncommercial energy into the market with subsidies and mandates.
This is not a program friendly to the middle class. It's a program certain to raise the costs of energy and to require increased taxation. And, with one energy mistake after another made to combat change in a climate destined to change no matter what the government does, it's a program out of control.
The costs will prove unsustainable. Like education, energy regulation is fast becoming an undisciplined system that families and taxpayers can't afford.
