With the U.S. economy apparently (gee, you think?) in the crapper, several politicians are falling all over themselves (and falling all over others -- example, see McCain followed by Clinton, somewhat countered by Obama on the idea of a gasoline tax holiday) to come up with ideas to help out the U.S. consumers (read that as: VOTERS) by putting more money into their pockets (see economic stimulus bribes, I mean prebates...) or by letting us keep more of the money we make (again, see that proposed gasoline tax holiday).
What the politicians seem to be missing is the idea of finding things to spend money on (i.e., stimulate the economy) that will have long term positive effects on the economy as a whole.
I've heard Obama give lip service to the idea of investing in infrastructure rather than simply wasting money on stimulus payments to consumers that will simply be spent on goods that are imported from China (and similar places). It is possible that Hillary has made similar arguments, and perhaps McCain has as well, but I don't claim to have actually heard either take such positions. Such are the positions that we should be working towards though.
Taking money from future tax payers is a fairly stupid idea (no, I don't need the broken record Clueless Old Liberal making an appearance here to claim "I told you so" or "I've been saying that for forever" -- we all know that it's a bad idea and don't need a bleeting sheep to remind us of that), or at least it's pretty stupid if you aren't going to invest the money in ways that will have long term positive effects that will benefit both current and future generations to a fairly equal degree.
With that truism out of the way, I'm back to blather on about what we really should be doing to stimulate the economy -- investing in infrastructure, especially infrastructure that provides long term benefit to the majority of the citizens of the U.S.A.
The type of investment I'd like to see, besides simply building more roads to help ease congestion and get everyone to and from their destinations more quickly and efficiently (potentially saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of gallons of fuel) is something bigger, grander, and much more of a necessity to everyone -- electrical power generation.
For those that haven't had the fun and experience of it, many electrical bills in this country have been on the rise. Electrical power generation costs, at least if you believe the companies in the business, is much more expensive than it used to be. Fuel costs are up, labor costs are up, and costs in general are up. Nah, we aren't supposed to notice that the profits are up as well; we're just supposed to see the costs and accept the bills that are shooting up by leaps and bounds.
What if we could do something about it though? How about the idea that the U.S. government takes *our* money and the money of future generations and invests in generating power to supply the needs of a good percentage of the citizens in the country?
What I'd dearly love to see is that Uncle Sam takes a few billion dollars and builds some new power plants. Specifically some new nuclear power plants. Plants as in multiple. More than one. Maybe 3 or 4 of them, spread throughout the country, added to the power grid to help provide for the power needs of as many potential customers as possible competing against other power plants to sell power to customers that need it to power their needs in their homes and businesses.
Normally I'd be one of the people that would tell you that the last thing I want is for the government to involve itself in business of any kind. We don't normally need the government competing against other business interests, but these aren't normal times and in the wake of Enron and the failed electrical competition system in California and later Maryland (which seemed not to have learned from the mistakes in California), I'm thinking it's time to throw those keep government out of business thoughts away and bring on more competition. Fact of the matter is that the likes of Constell Energy are in no way going to make themselves more efficient and bring their prices down, or even consider switching to more green energy solutions, unless they have competitive reasons to do so. That being the case, lets have the government come in and force the competition issue by having a few power plants built and run by the government added to the grid.
I know there are still ways that the energy market could be manipulated, including having current power plants taken offline in the name of maintenance and retooling. Nope, not going to let it happen, or at least not in ways that would keep energy prices for consumers higher. Nah, instead step up regulatory oversight and inspections at the current plants and require approval from government overlords to permit any shutdown or throttling back of any current power generation. Approval that isn't so easily granted, and can't be so easily worked around. Require private power plants to provide at least 90% of their potential capacity unless emergency maintenance is required or unless regularly scheduled and approved well in advance maintenance is required. Schedule that maintenance so that no more than a small percentage of the potential power generation capacity is allowed to be offline at any point in time and better yet require that any power plant that is taken offline sacrifices their existing contracts and for a period of at least 2 years they must sell at least half of their capacity at prices that are no higher than 90% of the average market price at the time they are brought back online. Putting in such penalties would prevent manipulation of the energy production in favor of higher profits for the owners of the power plants and keep the Enron style manipulation of the marketplace at bay. No more would we see power plants scaling back their power generation because of 'routine maintenance' that just happened to be called for after the owners of the plant received calls from their sales teams saying they could raise their prices much more if the commodity was just a bit more scarce.
After building a few publicly (through the U.S. government) built and run power plants added to the grid, have the government continue building a few more power plants and have those power plants auctioned off to power generating companies, with a few restrictions on the auction. One, the potential buyers must accept that higher level of oversight and inspection, and two, the auction winner would in large part be determined by the price that the new owner would be contracting to charge for their product for the first 10 years of their ownership of the plants. Allow for reasonable inflation so that the price isn't fixed for the duration of the 10 year contracts, and of course also factor in the bid for taking ownership of the power plant, but again weigh the bottom line bid for the plant along with the conditionally contracted prices that would be charged for the output from the plant and choose a new owner based on which owner would provide the most competitive prices to their customers.
Why have the government build these new plants and why have them be nuclear? Well, I'm not saying all of them have to be or should be nuclear based. I would like to see about a half-dozen new nuclear plants though, mostly because the technology is there to use, it's fairly green and environmentally friendly and doesn't add to greenhouse gases so there's no need to worry about hearing complaints about destroying the environment because of power generation. Yes there are concerns about where to dispose of the waste products from such plants, but then again there are nations (such as France) that run power plants that are very efficient and produce very little waste (see this wikipedia article for more information on types of nuclear power plants that produce much less radioactive waste that must be disposed of). We can do that here in the U.S.A. if we choose to, and we should choose to. We shouldn't let concerns about another Three Mile Island happen because we can and should require that the plant be staffed by people that are trained by the government, tested by the government, regulated by the government, and left to do their jobs as safely as they can. Yes there would still be some risk, but the risks would be minimized and must be accepted so that we can wean ourselves off the dependence upon oil and coal, both of which are burned and do produce greenhouse gases as byproduct, both of which are very dirty and one of which helps fuel the bank accounts for people that would do us harm if left to their own devices.
Beyond building that first half-dozen new nuclear plants, I'd like to see the government building new wind turbine power generation stations/plants, and new solar power plants where possible. In those cases build 'em with government funds then sell them in a manner similar to what I've described above. Sell them off to businesses that will sell their products to customers and compete against existing companies so that more and more competition can take place in the electrical power generation marketplace, and along the way allow some of the oldest coal and oil fired plants to be retired as enough new capacity comes online to replace the output from those plants. Provide some money to retrain the workers that had been working in the coal and oil fired plants so that they can take jobs in the new plants or so that they can take jobs overseeing and inspecting the new plants.
Basically declare war on dirty power and start investing public funds in alternatives -- including nuclear -- that can be brought online asap to take care of current needs and continue to invest in researching and developing new sources of energy for the future.
Yeah, there are more issues out there. Concerns over having insurance available incase there are problems with the plants means that we should have the government set aside a few more billion dollars to have available to pay off anyone that might be harmed by anything that goes wrong at the power plants. Then there's also issues with where to build the plants -- we need to clear the decks and wipe out as many of the roadblocks as possible that would prevent building these plants. Build them where there are minimal concerns of earthquakes, hurricanes or tornadoes and other natural disasters that might strike them, and don't accept or allow the building to be stopped because of NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) worry warts that don't want the plants built near them. If necessary make use of emminent domain powers to buy the property to build on and pay off the people that don't want to live near the plants. Give them fair market prices for their properties and send them on their way if they just don't want to chance living near the power plants that are built, but don't let those people stop the progress we all need.
There would also be environmental concerns, worries over building plants and roadways that would potentially displace wildlife that might be endangered. We shouldn't marginalize those concerns, but at the same time we have to make efforts to provide for future needs while balancing out those environmental concerns.
Am I talking about a ton of money? Not really. It would be a drop in the bucket compared to what we've spent on other things, and a lot of the money could be scrounged out of wiping out as many earmarks in the budget as possible. Trade those earmark funds for funds to build roadways and power plants in key places where there'll be as much public benefit as possible (for the roadways) or where job creation would benefit communities (for the power plants). Consider the alternatives: leaving things as they are means more time wasted in traffic on roadways, higher electrical prices and continued depedence and reliance upon oil that comes from countries with large populations that don't just depise us but downright hate us or power that comes from coal which requires miners to place themselves in harm's way. The money we'd waste on those things, along with the natural resources that we would waste, should more than pay for the investment I'm talking about here.