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Inflation Reduction Act is the Most Significant Climate Bill in US History

The bill entitled the ‘Inflation Reduction Act,’ while largely ineffective at its stated purpose, is projected to reduce CO₂ emissions by 40% by 2030. It also takes a step towards reducing the price of prescription drugs and making the tax code just a little bit fairer. To put it simply, this is a big deal.

It is far from perfect. There is no attempt to create a carbon market or put a price on carbon. The tax policy sits atop the existing complicated tax structure. The minimum tax maintains an exemption for carried interest. Carried interest is a term for income paid to investment managers like private equity or hedge funds allowing them to count their fees as investment income rather than revenue (it is, in reality, performance-based revenue). It does nothing to curb inflation in the short run; that would require passing an unpopular tax on consumption. It is the best policy that could be achieved in the Senate.

Previous approaches to climate policy have always been narrow in scope or largely ineffective. In an ideal world, a cap and trade system would put a fair price on CO₂ and a decentralized infrastructure would come up organically to promote the most innovative ideas. Entrepreneurs do tend to be more creative than bureaucrats in creating solutions, after all. Sen. Joe Manchin (D – WV) would never accept a carbon price, though, and his vote was necessary to pass the bill. Instead, this bill relies on tax credits and subsidies to achieve climate goals. In the interest of funding some of the less established ideas, a ‘green bank’ is being seeded with $27 billion. 

Tax incentives are being used liberally for both the supply and demand side. All sorts of carbon-free technologies are being somehow incentivized. Even nuclear power, long cast aside, is making a triumphant return to the table. Wind, solar, hydrogen, and various forms of energy storage get their own pots. From the demand side, buildings are given incentives to use green energy and energy-efficient design. In total, the bill allocates $369 billion to energy and climate tech.

Concessions to fossil fuel production had to be made in order to assuage Senator Manchin. Drilling rights on public land are extended and off-shore drilling is back on the table. Prices for those leases were raised, though, and a small tax on imported petroleum will be used to fund relief for communities directly impacted by fossil fuel production and use.

The bill also spans healthcare and drug costs. For the first time, some drug prices will be capped, albeit in a very limited way. Medicare is also being given the ability to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies in an effort to lower drug prices. Restrictions do exist: negotiations will not begin until 9 years after the introduction of typical drugs and 13 years for the more complicated biologic drugs. Additionally, premium subsidies for Affordable Care Act insurance policies are being extended to help those hardest hit by inflation.

Fortunately, the IRA does not just dump money into the economy; it pays for itself and then contributes nearly $300 billion into deficit reduction over the next decade. The IRS is getting needed resources to enforce the tax code, raising an estimated $200 billion. A new tax is also being established so that large corporations will have to pay a minimum of 15% of earnings reported to shareholders. When accounting for all tax revenue generated by the bill, it is expected to raise almost $800 billion over the next 10 years.

If we were constructing a climate bill for maximizing effect while minimizing economic disruption, this would not be it. It does not have nearly enough flexibility for new innovations or changing economic conditions. Carrots abound, but sticks are conspicuously absent. The tax policy, rather than simplifying our obscenely complicated tax code, sits atop it, adding another layer of complexity. Still, it accomplishes more than we could have hoped for just a few weeks ago. What’s more, it does that without adding to inflationary pressures. It’s an impressive accomplishment from a beleaguered administration.

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Justice

The Mania of the Court

The Supreme Court made several landmark decisions over the past couple of weeks that will have wide-ranging applications to both the administration and creation of the law. The court has already shown a desire to reach out for contentious cases even when the dispute has already been resolved. A case limiting the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions and another over gerrymandering of districts in North Carolina that their state supreme court declared unconstitutional (their state constitution does not allow gerrymandering) demonstrate this. It is the most conservative court in, by some estimations, at least 90 years, but it is also the most active court in what is probably half a century. This court will be making enormous impacts on our lives and laws for many years to come. Many privileges Americans have come to rely upon are under threat either from the invalidation of existing laws or the invalidation of prior Supreme Court rulings. These rights must be protected as best we can through action of the President and, to a much greater extent, Congress. It is not hyperbole to say that the fate of the American experiment is threatened. Only bipartisanship can save it. Before getting into solutions, though, we need to dive into the weeds to talk about the details of recent rulings and what they actually mean. 

The case getting the most air time right now is Dobbs vs the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. It is the case that overturned Roe. The result is, in many states, dangerous to women’s health. Women are denied access to abortions when their lives or bodily health are threatened. A 10-year-old girl was denied an abortion; can you imagine the impact giving birth would have on the body of a 10-year-old girl? Other examples abound; a woman denied critical care to save her eye and prevent possible paralysis because it could harm her 8-week-old fetus, an ectopic pregnancy that ruptured because it had to be left untreated, and women with nonviable fetuses being told they must carry the fetus, which will eventually die either in the womb or immediately after birth, to term are just a few. Parts of the US now have more extreme anti-abortion laws than any other country on the planet including Islamic religious autocracies that don’t allow women to leave the house without male supervision.

Perhaps you can say that the court is just leaving the legislative branch to do a job it should have done a long time ago; maybe, after you heard that decision, you thought the court was shrinking its own scope from taking an active role in the creation of laws. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The court overturned a New York law requiring citizens who wished to carry a gun outside their home to demonstrate a need to do so. My greatest fear with this one is the potential for overturning red flag laws using the same logic. They also recently eroded the wall between church and state with two separate rulings: Maine is now forced to pay for the tuition of private religious schools if they do so for secular schools and a Washington state football coach was vindicated in his refusal to stop praying on the field at his public school job. The ruling against Maine is particularly pernicious as it could impact states with charter schools.

Their interference in the purview of the other branches of government does not end there. The case in which they limited the EPA’s ability to regulate CO2 emissions in a cohesive way was unique in that the regulation in question was no longer active. Emissions had already dropped below the required levels. Still, the court felt the need to tell the EPA that they had overstepped with that rule. They said that because the EPA had not been given the explicit mandate to regulate those emissions, they were not allowed to do so in the way that they did (which was across multiple powerplants owned by the same company; the specifics are beyond the scope of this piece). The ruling, in effect, says that regulatory agencies may not do things they have not been explicitly told they can do. The EPA had been given the mandate to regulate CO2 in the 2006 update to the Clean Air Act, but that was insufficiently specific for the court. What does it mean? Regulatory agencies such as the EPA, the SEC, the FDA, the FAA, and too many more to list all take some liberty with their creation of rules because Congress does not typically give them specific guidelines. Congress gives them mandates and they create rules that cover those mandates; technology moves far too quickly for the negotiations involved in passing laws and legislators don’t tend to be experts in every given field. The system allows for more flexibility and speed and stability for businesses. To put it simply, the court’s ruling places the viability of our regulatory state at risk. It endangers our citizens and it damages economic dynamism.

The worst may be yet to come. The court just plucked a case out of North Carolina and placed it into the docket for their next session covering gerrymandering. The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the legislative map as too partisan and therefore not granting citizens equal protection under the law. The ruling was a victory for Democrats in the state. Unfortunately, some in the US Supreme Court have already expressed support for a fringe theory called ‘Independent State Legislature Theory.’ Essentially, it says that the courts, even a state supreme court, have no authority over elections. It says that state legislatures have complete discretion over how they elect their representatives. This could have disastrous implications. This goes back to Donald Trump’s attempt to overthrow the legitimate election in 2020; the theory his crackpot advisors used was that very one. Put simply, it would in effect mean the legislatures of the states could turbocharge gerrymandering to even more preposterous levels, bringing even more polarization to a country sorely in need of a reprieve. Brought to its extreme, it could mean states could deny their popular vote and spend their electoral votes however they wish, which is exactly what Trump was trying to do on January 6th. The primary in New Mexico nearly broke into chaos with a refusal to certify elections in a small county. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch have all expressed varying degrees of support for the theory. If I was to place a wager on the rest of the conservatives, I’d say Justice Barrett likely adheres to this viewpoint as well, Kavanaugh is up in the air, and Roberts would be categorically against it. If Kavanaugh and Barrett both fall with Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch, it would bring the American experiment with democracy as we know it to a close.

Given the lifetime appointments of Supreme Court justices and their enormous influence over American law, it is tempting to throw our hands up in despair. All is not lost, though. These recent rulings do heavily damage our republic, but they also leave room for Congress to act. A precedent for the sort of bipartisanship we need was just set with new legislation on guns. Congressional Democrats must set aside their desires for more comprehensive legislation to find common ground with their more reasonable Republican colleagues. Democrats must bring Republicans something they can sell to their constituents. Maybe they can’t entrench Roe into law, but they can likely find a place that at least protects the health of women and allows more latitude in the cases of underage girls. Climate legislation is becoming more palatable for Republicans as well; the effect it is having on rural areas is bringing them into the fold. There will be more reasonable grounds for other bureaucratic agencies. Most importantly by far, Federal legislation protecting our republic from anti-democratic forces should be achievable with messaging about election integrity even if voter ID laws are not.

If some of this scares you, you are not alone. It is of paramount importance that we protect the vote. Without it, we will no longer have a democracy. We will be subject to the whims of powerful people. The midterm elections this fall could well determine whether or not we will have a legitimate presidential election in 2024. It sounds dramatic, and it may not be highly likely, but every effort must be spent to prevent its mere possibility.

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Pulling Gasoline Out of Thin Air

A sweltering heatwave languishing over the American Midwest is a physical reminder of the effects of climate change. Despite the heat and frequency of ‘once-in-a-century’ or even ‘once-in-a-millennium’ weather events, we collectively continue to belch carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Few alternatives exist in the market today and no politician will plunge their constituents into darkness to prevent something that far into the future (nor should they). Today, I’d like to talk about carbon dioxide in transportation, the possibility of synthetic fuels, and how they would contribute to energy security.

The flavor of the week may be the electrification of vehicles, but that comes with its own set of issues. The most obvious is price; electric cars, even after subsidies, are frequently $10,000-20,000 more than equivalent gasoline-powered vehicles. Low power density of batteries makes them heavy as well. It makes it impossible to power anything airborne, trucks, and even trains. On top of that, the production of electric vehicles is actually somewhat damaging to the environment, partially negating their purpose. Rare earth metals are mined in destructive ways in mostly autocratic countries. To make matters worse, the supply chain is even more fraught than that of fossil fuels. China holds the largest deposits within its borders; they are not exactly friendly to the US.

The largest stumbling block to the electric car as our solution to transportation, though, is the existing stock of gasoline and diesel vehicles. Other issues could be overcome, but there are nearly 1.5 billion internal combustion engine vehicles currently in use. Humanity is not going to collectively abandon the tens of trillions of dollars of investment that they represent. Vehicles are durable goods, replaced infrequently. We do have alternatives, though. Manmade fuel is one promising example.

Biodiesel can be used in any diesel-powered vehicle on the road. One promising avenue for creating biodiesel involves harvesting algae (something that will only become more pervasive on a warming planet). The beauty of algae is that it reproduces incredibly quickly and it uses photosynthesis. This means we’d be sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to create the fuel that will later return it to the atmosphere. It’s carbon neutral. As a bonus, the byproduct could be used as a highly nutritious feed for livestock, allowing farms to spend more resources growing food for us humans.

Wait, you may be thinking, but gasoline powers my car. It powers most ICE vehicles on the road, in fact. Not to worry: gasoline can be made out of water and air. A recent pilot on a US naval vessel demonstrated the concept. Carbon dioxide is converted to carbon monoxide and electrolysis separates the hydrogen atoms from oxygen in water. After that, something called the Fischer-Tropsch process is used to combine the hydrogen and the carbon monoxide into liquid hydrocarbons (including, but not limited to, gasoline). We could use solar or wind energy to perform electrolysis and capture and convert carbon dioxide. Combining them actually gives off energy, so that could theoretically be recaptured by the grid for immediate consumption during peak hours or some other energy storage system (hydrogen via electrolysis, perhaps?).

Another perk is that those synthetic fuels could be produced in a distributed fashion, saving transportation costs and preventing future supply chain disruptions from spiraling out of control. If we can produce the fuel where we use it, we will have a much more flexible system. The key now is driving down costs.

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Climate Energy

Ending Energy Inflation Can Be Green, Too

We have a set of goods that we define as strategic and we are willing to pay more to ensure that we have access to them in case of war. There is, in my view, nothing of more strategic importance than energy, but we rely on enemies and nations of dubious friendship for one of our most critical energy sources. Russia and Saudi Arabia are two of the largest producers of crude oil. They are both run by despots. We see the fragility of the supply chain now. We are even reaching out to Venezuela out of desperation to drive down the price of oil. Instead of panicking, we should be utilizing public sentiment to push forward sensible long-term reform and taking targeted action to relieve demand pressure.

The price rises will not be stemmed by new drilling right now. It is far too late for that. Ramping up a well takes six months to a year minimally and deep-sea wells can take multiple years. We have two problems to solve, then: the immediate problem of a shortage and the longer-term problem of reliance on complex supply chains for our energy needs. 

The short term, while painful, is rather simple. Bottom line: demand needs to be tamped down. Price is the best mechanism for that. We have insufficient supply to cover the resurgent demand after years of pandemic-related dampened travel. Higher prices are cutting into the demand already, but the most effective solution would be to slap a temporary federal tax on fuel. This is, unfortunately, a regressive tax, so we’d need to offset that somehow as well.

The simplest solution would be to include a booster for the earned income tax credit payable monthly to people who are projected to receive EITC money (monthly, because they can’t afford to wait on a tax return). We’d have to expand eligibility a little bit as well, but not significantly. Most higher-income folks have the option of working remotely now and those that don’t also aren’t spending a very high percentage of their budget on gasoline.

The long term is multifaceted. Existing infrastructure promotes the burning of fossil fuels, which are both damaging to the environment and rely on the supply chain that currently snakes across the globe. About 1.5 billion internal combustion engine vehicles blanket the earth. Almost 275 million of them are in the US. Given the investment they represent, they won’t be going away any time soon. Battery electric vehicles, while promising in some ways, do not give us a magic wand to take ICE vehicles off the road. In many cases, BEV production is just as damaging as the lifetime of an ICE vehicle because of the strip mining used for some of the rare earth metals used in large quantities on BEVs. 

The difficulty of this problem should not weigh us down with defeatism; instead, we must recognize the full extent of what must be done if we wish to truly strive for greatness. Burying our heads in the sand, whether in denial of climate change or of the difficulty and cost of solving the crisis, solves nothing. Accepting the facts on the ground narrows our focus. It is through constraints that the most brilliant ideas spring forth.

There are many, many solutions to the numerous problems presented by climate change. Scientists all over the world are trying to figure them out. If we are careful, many of them will surface and their mutual existence will drive down prices and emissions through competition. The key is supporting nascent markets. Carbon pricing will be necessary. We will have to pay for results, not for methods. Grants and loans are great, but they need to be applied in ways that do not crowd out other solutions. The outcome we want is abundant energy with low emissions. Let’s start there and let the market sort out the rest.

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Nuclear is Exploding in Popularity

After a multi-decade winter, nuclear power is starting to heat up. Countries that had previously been actively cutting nuclear plants are beginning to reverse course. COP26, the global environmental conference, had leaders talking about how they could bring it back. The future appears to be small, modular reactors that don’t face the same sort of opposition as the big ones and have much lower regulatory costs. At the same time, the growing presence of wind and solar in the grid is driving home the variability of that source and the fragility of the supply chain for fossil fuels is becoming glaringly apparent (look no further than rolling blackouts in China because of coal shortages or eyewatering price increases for natural gas in Europe). With all that in mind, I thought it would be a good time to touch back on the benefits of reactors.

Nuclear is by far the most reliable source of energy while also delivering electricity at lower cost than any other source at the moment. Let’s return to Europe for an illustration by comparing Germany to France. Germany has achieved a great deal over the past decade in the implementation of wind and solar, but they still are paying nearly double for electricity and emitting far more CO2 per unit of energy created. Why? Germany cut out all nuclear energy production after the Fukushima disaster while France keeps nuclear for over 70% of its energy production.

Nuclear has a bad name because of Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. Two of those events, though, were much less significant than is widely believed and the third happened at a Soviet powerplant that doubled as a uranium enrichment facility. Three Mile Island, despite gross mismanagement, released enough radiation to give people in the immediate vicinity about as much radiation as a chest x-ray. It was, despite the widespread panic, a non-event. Fukushima released even less radiation than that and there would have been no issue at all if they had followed American or French safety protocols. There are detailed records of complaints of lax safety standards well before the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that sparked the leak at Fukushima. Chernobyl’s meltdown was, however, a real disaster by any definition of the word. It caused an exclusion zone that will not be lived in by humans for generations. The cause of that disaster involved some of the mechanics of the core, which was only designed that way in the interest of creating enriched uranium for usage in the manufacture of bombs. It would not have been replicable in any powerplants ever used in the US.

For an example of successfully implemented safety standards, we have 6,000 combined nuclear reactor years in the US Navy aboard ships with precisely zero incidents of failure. People are able to work in close proximity to extremely powerful engines with no ill effects because of the efficiency of nuclear. By contrast, fossil fuels cause millions of premature deaths every year by damaging the lungs of everyone in a huge radius and cost hundreds of billions of dollars in damage in the form of climate change.

If it is the cheapest form of energy, it’s environmentally responsible, and it’s safe, why are nuclear power plants becoming uncompetitive in the US? Obtaining a permit and building the powerplant might be prohibitively expensive, but surely if running the powerplant was cheap, they would continue to maintain existing plants. Unfortunately, annual regulatory costs PER PLANT range from $7.4 to $15.5 million. Most of this is spent on paperwork compliance. Essentially, we are regulating our best form of power out of business out of needless fear.

The bright spot in this mess is a new(ish) form of nuclear reactor. Small modular reactors are designed to be manufactured at a factory and sent to their new site to be put into commission. Costs are dramatically lower because after one unit is licensed, subsequent licenses should be much simpler. There are also economies of scale resulting from the construction of the reactors in a designated plant; equipment used to build the reactor can be reused many times over. Some are even designed to house the nuclear waste as well; they are placed in the ground, plugged into the grid, and burn fuel until they no longer work, at which point they are self-contained waste containers.

The future could be bright – both literally and figuratively – if we allow it to be. The inflation of energy costs over time is one of the great tragedies of our time and can be laid almost exclusively at the feet of regulation without thought to the burden placed on producers. Deregulated markets will help create healthy competition among producers, but leaving existing regulatory burdens in place would prevent nuclear from competing on even grounds. France provides us with a way forward on nuclear. We can make it distinctly American with some healthy competition by utilizing our deregulated grid and encouraging more development.

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Uncategorized

Infrastructure: the Right Move at the Wrong Time

After ups and downs and what appeared to be a vanishing likelihood of success, the House passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill the Senate negotiated. It will be signed by President Biden in a matter of days. Included in the $1 trillion package is a wide variety of upgrades and renewals. They include:

  • Roads and Bridges: $110 billion
  • Public Transit: $39 billion
  • Passenger and Freight Rail: $66 billion
  • Electric vehicle charging stations: $7.5 billion
  • Internet access: $65 billion
  • Grid modernization: $65 billion
  • Airports: $25 billion
  • Water and waste: $55 billion

Much of this is vital to our future competitiveness and some will help expand opportunities for people from all walks of life. It should be a cause for celebration. Yet, the timing is a cause of consternation for economists. The supply chain, already groaning under the weight of restricted supply and booming demand, could well crack and send the price of raw materials skyward. The claim of 2 million good jobs sounds great on its face, but, at a time when employers are struggling to fill empty positions, the federal government will be strangling them. 

To illustrate the effects of the $1 trillion flood of infrastructure improvements on the economy, imagine you have just planted a garden. Tiny green shoots are sprouting from the ground. They appear delicate and you wish to help them grow into something sturdier that will one day bear fruit. Mulch has helped your plants grow in the past, so you decide to add some of that to your soil. There’s only one problem: you have added too much at the wrong time, piling the nutrient-dense material over the sprouts. The plants will suffocate or rot under the weight of all that organic material. Rather than helping them grow, you have killed them.

Pouring all that money into today’s economy is a little bit like that. Perhaps we can entice some people to come back out of retirement (there was an enormous bump in retirement last year, helping to trigger this labor shortage), but, on net, we are adding more openings to an economy that already has the biggest positive gap between openings and unemployed ever. Meanwhile, supply chain issues for everything from beef to copper are well documented. Investments in durable goods by firms, long languishing, are currently exploding. Plopping a federal-government-sized gorilla on the scales will exacerbate that problem. With CPI at the highest level in more than 30 years, we cannot afford to do that. 

Homebuilding is declining again, not because of a lack of demand, but because builders are simply unable to procure the supplies they need to build the houses. We want to nurture private industry and infrastructure is essential to that in the long term, but if we plow into this too quickly, we will tear up the soil and render it barren. Instead, the Biden Administration should create a plan that involves easing into this bill. Let the economy breathe for another six months to a year before doing anything. Perhaps it would even help to tap the brakes a little bit.

Some higher taxes on spending could help stave off just enough of the buying frenzy to allow supply chains to catch up. Incorporating prices on carbon may not be the most popular thing politically, but it helps achieve the goal of lower emissions and the stimulus of the freshly passed infrastructure bill will help offset any pain. If it is sold as a way to give money back to the middle class via an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit and a permanent addition of the expanded Child Tax Credit, it will become much more palatable. One thing is certain: if care is not taken, inflation will spiral out of control.

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With Pricing Pressures Mounting, Large Stimulus Could Be Disastrous

Inflation has been a common theme on here these past few months, and it is with good reason. Global supply chains have not been repaired yet; instead, the pain has become more acute with shortages in many core areas. Meanwhile, despite higher unemployment, firms are having an extraordinarily difficult time filling positions. Piling more demand into the economy at this time could put us in a precarious place. Think of it as a bathtub with a faucet that is pumping water just a little bit more quickly than it is draining. Eventually, water will spill over onto the floor. It’s here that the analogy fails because we cannot simply turn the faucet off, either. Sudden hawkish moves in monetary policy can bring an economy to its knees. Large shifts in government spending aren’t much better. We have gotten a preview with deficit ceiling brinkmanship in the past as the federal government shut down. The good news is that we still have time to do something about it. 

Let’s back up for a second. Supply chain strains will eventually catch up to demand, right? Why are so many people worried about a temporary price increase? Short answer: the length of the backlog is just too long. It will be years before chip supply catches up to demand. Inventory of raw materials critical to production – such as copper – are back on their lows. Despite the solid levels of demand, industrial output is flatlining. That is sending price increases up the supply chain and those prices, unlike commodity prices, are sticky (in other words, they don’t tend to change very often).

Producers, already dealing with pricing pressures from raw materials, are having an increasingly difficult time finding workers as well. When surveyed, contractors complained of being unable to find skilled workers. Part of the problem is that skilled tradespeople are an aging group. Many elected to retire last year during lockdowns and the numbers just didn’t exist to replace them. Eventually, more people will be trained in those jobs as wages rise, but there is no hope of doing that without firms increasing wages as they compete for workers. Wages are also the most ‘sticky’ price in the economy. On one hand, this is good because we want the working class to be better off. On the other, wages are the spark that starts the fire of inflation. The higher wages need to come with excess capacity for production so the higher levels of consumption can be borne by the rest of the economy. As we just discussed, though, we do not have much spare productive capacity because of existing supply chain issues. 

OK, so we’ve established that prices are increasing and that it is now much less likely to be temporary. The danger, then, of passing a multi-trillion dollar (15% of GDP) spending package under the guise of infrastructure, is becoming clear. By injecting enormous amounts of cash into the economy now, we are filling the bathtub past the brim and the water is spilling onto the floor. The economy can no longer handle the extra cash (or, as you may see on CNBC, ‘excess liquidity’). The government would be giving consumers more than they could spend without breaking supply chains. At the same time, we’d be bidding on raw materials for physical infrastructure against private companies looking to expand their own capacity. With that competition from the government, producers will have a much harder time getting their products in the hands of consumers, who will have to pay yet higher prices to obtain scarce goods and services. This could quickly get out of hand, and suddenly inflation could be hitting an annual rate of 10%.

Nipping spiraling prices in the bud now would be far better than trying to fix it later. If inflation does spiral out of control, the Federal Reserve may have to quickly hike interest rates and the government will undoubtedly have to cut back on spending. Although debt will shrink relative to GDP, costs of servicing the debt will skyrocket with higher interest rates. Some of the items in the ‘Build Back Better’ plan are important to the long-term growth of our country’s economy, so we do not want to abandon the idea altogether. Instead, we could scale back on the immediate implementation of the bulk of the items and place them over a large timeframe. Infrastructure improvements are needed, but they are long-lived. We can postpone their implementation for a year or two. Other things, such as student debt forgiveness, should be flushed down the toilet. By directly taking away an expense for a significant portion of American households, we’d be causing a bout of inflation. Instead, we should immediately end the moratorium on those payments. It would help reduce the velocity of money (how quickly dollars make their way around the economy – high velocity is like a game of hot potato with money) in the short term and ease supply constraints. 

The path ahead is treacherous. Congress is not known for its farsightedness and delaying a spending package means that elected officials would have a harder time touting their successes to their constituents on the campaign trail. If the wrong things are cut – such as job training – we would handicap ourselves in the future – throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. However, this is too important not to do now.

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Uncategorized

Runaway Energy Prices Expose Global Supply Issues

Year over year price increases for fossil fuels range from double to nearly septuple. Quite suddenly, the world does not have enough energy supply to meet demand. The terrifying part is that there is no solution for the immediate term. A convoluted amalgamation of contributing factors have all come together to spark this mess with a common thread of COVID dislocation and climate change. It comes from both supply and demand shocks, making even medium-term solutions difficult.

Producers of fossil fuels, perhaps fearing a plunge of demand last year, abruptly cut back capital spending. The US has roughly 430 active oil rigs now, but pre-COVID that number was more than 50% higher. It was down to 250 last spring. Mother nature decided to help things along with Hurricane Ida – Gulf production is still down. It is much the same story everywhere. Chinese production of coal plunged last year and still has not recovered while their factories are humming along at larger rates of production than ever before. 

Down the supply chain, we have more constraints. In the UK, a lack of available drivers for fuel trucks sparked a shortage of gasoline. Many drivers retired last year for COVID-related reasons and not enough have come to take their place. Eventually, pay will rise and that will recover, but that does not help in the short term. The British military has had to help by using soldiers to transport gas. Europe is beginning to see similar issues. Geopolitical constraints have kept Russian natural gas out of the European market and sent prices to more than seven times their levels last year and to record levels by a wide margin. Chinese powerplants – unable to raise prices because of the government-controlled economy – have shut down for lack of affordable coal. That problem, much like Europe’s, would fade if coal was free to float in from nearby Australia.

Demand for power, meanwhile, has shown real strength. China has faced rolling blackouts after impressive growth from the manufacturing sector. Rather than dampening demand, the rest of the world being unable to go out has been an excuse for consumers to spend money on goods instead, which means different parts of the world need more electricity. Closer to home, working from home has scattered many across the US and electricity consumption has been much less concentrated in typical places. Spikes in power demand when people get home from work have changed as those people have their appliances running over less predictable times. 

Simultaneously, we are shifting away from fossil fuels into renewables like wind and solar. Levels of investment into the exploration and production of those fuels is the lowest it has been in decades. Solar, wind, and hydro power sources are inherently intermittent, though. Parts of Europe that rely more on renewable power have struggled with cloudy weather and less wind than usual. Supplies of natural gas to Europe, the bridge the US is using to help us until there are better methods of power storage than currently exist, are controlled by an increasingly hostile Russia. Despite a recent expansion of production, very little is being exported to Western Europe. Many coal power plants have shut down. Europe’s best option would be nuclear power, but only France has shown willingness to use significant amounts of that. Germany shut down all of its reactors after the Fukushima disaster even after it became glaringly obvious that the root cause of that was an unwillingness to use modern safety measures.

ong_capex_Q42020

The confluence of contributing factors mean that there is no cure-all. We cannot attack the problem with a single solution because there is no single issue. Instead, many features of the current energy landscape are piling on top of one another to create this problem. A collection of solutions is needed to correct the collection of issues.

  • The natural gas price spike is a geopolitical issue that can be partially fixed over time as the US continues to grow liquefaction capabilities, which in turn will allow us to export more liquefied natural gas to Europe. In the meantime, Europe is running dangerously low on one of its largest power sources. Further diversification of supply to Qatar may help them, but they also have limited liquefaction capacity. Russia is trying to make a point that they are still relevant and, to Europe, they are. We will soon be headed into winter and the only solution that does not involve forgiving Russian aggression (in Ukraine and in assassinating people on European soil and in meddling in elections) is to reopen shuttered nuclear plants and/or coal plants.
  • In the medium term, this will continue to be an issue unless we use more market-based solutions. Governments are not able to predict future weather, future demand, or even future supply. Markets can adjust much more quickly than planning – as China is discovering now with its rolling blackouts. Putting a price on carbon via cap and trade or taxation encourages adjustment without clumsy restrictions.
  • Baseline power production is needed to cover for the inconsistent production coming out of renewable sources. Nuclear would be the best way of covering that with existing technology, but perhaps energy storage technology will be commercialized in the future. Since relying on yet-to-be-invented technology is reckless, encouraging more widespread usage of nuclear could start with lowering the obscene regulatory costs associated with running nuclear power plants.
  • While the shortage is much less acute in the US, supply chain issues still exist. One possible stopgap measure is using military logistics. Higher prices for both crude oil and natural gas will encourage more drilling, but worker shortages may still be creating resistance. Getting people back into the workforce may also help solve energy shortages.
  • Care needs to be taken to simplify the safety regulations for nuclear power producers and we need larger investments into energy storage technologies. It’s too important to leave to chance. Redundancies are better than shortages when it comes to powering our homes, businesses, and factories.
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Reflection on Two Decades Post 9/11

Twenty years ago, the worst terrorist attack in American history claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people. The consequences of that attack are still being felt. It is difficult to think of the chaotic withdrawal of the last American troops from Afghanistan without recalling the devastation of that day. Those troops never would have been in that country had the attack never happened, and now the extremist group that those troops expunged from power has reached new heights of control over Afghanistan. Foreign policy is almost never an important issue to American voters, but fatigue at the extended occupation in the Middle East likely contributed to the isolationism that is now resurgent. ‘Pax Americana’ is in decline and American hegemony is in doubt for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The greatest casualty of the past 20 years may be a cohesive American vision of itself. We no longer see ourselves as the ‘shining city on a hill,’ but, depending on your point of view, a perpetrator of great avaricious atrocities on other nations (like a widespread belief of oil as a motivation for invasions) and our own citizens (mostly race-based) or a once-great country in ruins because of declining social standards that do not meet conservative ideals of what life should be. We have forgotten the motivations we had for taking action those years ago and we are pointing fingers in every which direction. We made a classic error: we forgot about the randomness involved in reality. Sometimes you use a good decision-making process, but the outcome is still bad. Mistakes were made, but they were made when we stopped thinking about our principles and started justifying means with ends. 

The withdrawal of our last troops from Afghan soil is the perfect analogy for the decline in American foreign policy. In an effort to fulfill a promise that was politically expedient, President Biden made the decision to leave tens of billions of dollars of American military equipment in the hands of an extremist group. We left over 200,000 eligible supporters behind because, instead of putting our ears to the ground, our leaders put their fingers to the political winds. If we had taken a principled approach, we would have kept the major airbases under our control and patrolled the skies from there until we had finished doing right by our allies. No desperate people would be clinging to the outside of cargo planes and falling to their deaths on videos all over the news. Doing the right thing improves our image for future negotiations and a constant practice of following a guiding light gives us a sense of national fulfillment.

There are steps we can take to sew the tattered flag that flies over our divided nation. The scars will remain from hard wear, but we can once again feel the swell of pride we once did at the sight of the stars and stripes lifted high. We must re-engage with the world with the goal of making the world a better place. Trump’s bullying of allies for payment as if our military was a mercenary squad discounts its value and reduces our influence. Acting out of principle and having an overarching goal for foreign policy brings allies to your side. Allies, after all, are the reason we stood head and shoulders above the Soviets even at the peak of their military might. Domestically, it means fostering a communal American spirit. Defining an overarching goal will require a level of communal American spirit that has not been seen in over a decade, but the effort would foster what we have been missing.

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Post-Pandemic Pandemic Aid

As we walked, blinking, into the sunlight, after a year in the darkness of a lockdown, our wallets seemed to open all on their own. People rushed into restaurants, bars, and retail stores. They rushed to buy a car to get to those places, sending prices skyward. Due to a lingering and generous unemployment boost, people did not rush back to work. In fact, we have a plethora of policies from several different government agencies. As the economy recovers, the need for some of these has evaporated and, in fact, they become detrimental to our economic health. 

Perhaps most glaringly, the CDC just extended the federal moratorium on evictions. That moratorium was redundant when it was created, but, at this point, it is a terrible blunder. Many of the people who are taking advantage of this policy are simply living rent-free because they can’t be evicted. It’s a punishment for landlords who often struggle to get paid through the government programs preventing eviction. It makes it nigh on impossible to evict even the most difficult of tenants. Horror stories abound of destructive behavior or tenants making their neighbors’ lives difficult. The CDC, for what it’s worth, has no business interfering in the housing market. If we want to guarantee housing for people on the brink of homelessness, there are far better ways of doing it as well.

Another bizarre decision was the Biden Administration’s move to extend student loan forbearance. The pandemic has affected different people in different ways, but most workers in white-collar jobs have been able to simply work from home. Most holders of college degrees – and student loans – work white-collar jobs. This means we are subsidizing those who are largely unaffected by the pandemic with a pandemic response policy. It simply does not make sense. 

The delta variant of COVID will likely create problems for our healthcare system due to the large unvaccinated population, but, despite fears of a retraction to a pandemic economy, does not appear to be impacting the economy. Data remains strong and inflation, while lower than the previous measure, sits at a robust 5.4%. With that in mind, the stimulus deal that just passed the Senate becomes less pressing. Still, the impact on the budget deficit is relatively minor (see below) and much of our physical infrastructure is desperately in need of an update. However, the additional spending called for by House Speaker Pelosi (D-California) et al would be exceptionally poorly timed. A large deal may make sense as an automatic measure if economic measures hit a certain level, but the economy is already running hot, and spending all our resources on pumping up a hot economy is irresponsible at best.

Some modifications to our welfare system are long overdue, but the ways in which the Biden Administration has gone about expanding the social safety net have been haphazard and have not utilized the power of markets at all. Subsidies are much less effective than cash and an eviction moratorium taxes property owners to pay delinquent renters a housing subsidy. Targeting those most in need, also important, has seemingly been completely neglected. We are at a critical juncture, so errors made now are magnified in their importance. President Biden needs to do better if he actually wants to ‘Build Back Better.’