“Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousand fold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine – the special pleading of selfish interests.”
– Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson (1946)
Henry Hazlitt (d. 1993) was born on this day in 1894. As has been done with other great classical liberal thinkers at MasterResource, this post celebrates Hazlitt’s birthday by applying his thinking to the current policy debate.
Specifically, Chapter 14 of Hazlitt’s book Economics in One Lesson, “Saving the X Industry,” despite being published in 1946, enlightens the current discussion about the wind production tax credit, which is set to expire at the end of this year unless Congress extends it.…
Continue Reading“It is well known that Texas is undergoing a major challenge in maintaining resource adequacy due to improper price signals; less well known is that a significant portion of the problem can be laid directly on the doorstep of subsidies for wind generation.”
The federal Production Tax Credit (PTC), which currently provides a $0.022/kWh subsidy to qualifying renewables, is set to expire at year-end. Just the prospect of expiration has dramatically slowed new construction of industrial wind capacity, despite a raft of other subsidies to politically correct energy. [1]
The Texas Public Policy Foundation has released a new paper looking at the effect of the production tax credit both on taxpayers and consumers. Bill Peacock and I found that PTC continuance puts the Texas electricity market at increased risk of price spikes and blackout by discouraging the construction of new reliable, on-peak generating capacity.…
Continue Reading“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do to foist onto consumers … 20 to 30 percent higher energy rates in an opt-out program. If people want to spend more money … to buy green energy … that is terrific…. But to coerce them into doing it in an opt-out program … is the wrong approach.”
– Mark Farrell, San Francisco Supervisor, 2012 (quoted below)
Thousands of San Francisco residents may be sucked into a green energy plan that will raise their electricity rates 77 percent without their knowledge or consent. Beginning next spring, half of the city’s 375,000 residential ratepayers will automatically be enrolled in CleanPowerSF – unless they take action to opt out of the program. Eventually the entire city will be enrolled in the program unless they choose to opt out.…
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