RW4115

Constitutional conservative, free speech absolutist.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@Holden_Culotta

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@GovTimWalz Nope.

[Vince Mpls @vincempls]

The Mayor of St Paul arriving to work this morning.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@annbauerwriter “Walking into the restaurant requires you to wear a mask, but once seated you can take it off. “

[Handre @Handre]

The Cash for Clunkers program, which Congress passed in June 2009 and burned through its $3 billion budget in under two months, destroyed functional wealth on a national scale, and somehow they called it "stimulus."

The mechanics were simple: trade in a working car, receive up to $4,500 toward a new one, and watch government employees pour sodium silicate into the old engine to make it seize permanently. Around 700,000 vehicles got crushed. These were not rusted-out death traps. The eligibility rules required the trade-in to be drivable and insured. You were watching the state systematically annihilate usable capital because Keynesian demand theory told it that destruction generates recovery. Frederic Bastiat explained why this is wrong in 1850, in an essay short enough to read on your lunch break. Congress ignored it.

The ripple effect hit people the government never mentioned in its press releases. Mechanics lost repair work. Used-car dealers watched their inventory evaporate. Low-income buyers who depend on the sub-$5,000 market faced prices that jumped roughly 10% in the years after the program. Free market economists call this "seen versus unseen." Politicians only showed you the gleaming new Chevy Malibu driving off the lot. They never showed you the single mother in Akron who needed a $3,000 Corolla and found nothing affordable left on the lot.

Even the environmental justification collapsed under basic scrutiny. A 2009 study by Resources for the Future calculated that the program cost between $237 and $365 per ton of carbon dioxide reduced. The voluntary carbon credit market at the time priced a ton around $10 to $20. The government spent up to thirty times the market rate to achieve an environmental outcome the market was already pricing far more efficiently.

This is what central planning always does. It takes your money, destroys real assets, and transfers wealth from the poor to auto manufacturers and their financiers. The program's designers received awards. The Akron mother paid higher prices. The engines sat crushed in junkyards. Nobody in Washington answered for any of it.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@keithellison We know what you’re obsessed with.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@keithellison Sure pedo lover…

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@peggyflanagan Your current boss, that you have helped all along the way.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@FrancescaHongWI For communism?

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@JoaquinCastrotx They are there with their parents… you forgot the little detail.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@hakeemjeffries Living in a blue state, the Democrats want to raise property taxes, state income taxes, and car tabs fees. Strange definition of affordable.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@GovTimWalz Shut up

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@NickKayal The aged well.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@AngieCraigMN Gwen is dumb as a post.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@jean_pins @AngieCraigMN @peggyflanagan Medicare has premiums and co-pays. Medicare is not free.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@AlexaBliz_ 49

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@AngieCraigMN Cheaper car tabs… but the DFL wants to quadruple them.

Cheaper property taxes… but the DFL wants to raise them.

Cheaper State income taxes… but the DFL wants to raise them.

[Coddled Affluent Professional @feelsdesperate]

I'm not a dogmatically libertarian account, but it's hard to overstate how much of a win bananas are for capitalism.

At about $0.65 a pound you can purchase enough bananas to fill your daily caloric needs for $5 or less.

It's an extraordinarily logistical/ technological/ commercial feat that you can chop bananas off a banana plant in Central America, load them into cargo ships bound for the US, move them through distribution along a tight timeline, and have them sitting in your supermarket across the country nearly ready to eat at this extraordinarily low price point.

Capitalism works so well, so seamlessly, in so many domains, that we just take the genius of cooperation, signaling, and efficiency that capitalism creates for granted.

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@EndWokeness Why 30%? Why not 100%?

[RW4115 @RWichmann4151]

@jaketapper @adamhousley “Rules for thee but not for me.”

[Electroverse @Electroversenet]

The world has spent $7 trillion on wind and solar. That global fleet produces an average of around 630 GW.

The same $7 trillion could have built roughly 1,400 modern nuclear reactors, producing around 1,400 GW on average -- so more than twice the power.

Wind and solar generally last around 20 years (a lot less by some estimates), whereas nuclear plants can operate for 80 years or more.

Over 80 years, wind and solar must be built four times -- a cost of $28 trillion to maintain 630 gigawatts.

The same $28 trillion spent on nuclear would deliver roughly 5,600 gigawatts -- nearly nine times the power.

Also, nuclear produces this regardless of the weather, whereas wind and solar require 24-7 backup (usually gas, not included in these calculations).