Washington Governor Jay Inslee is out with what he is calling an Evergreen Economy Plan.
It is an effort to launch a new multi-trillion dollar central planning program in America.
It is endorsed by socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
But don't for a minute hold the view that this is just a plan to battle climate change if indeed such a battle is required..@JayInslee’s climate plan is the most serious + comprehensive one to address our crisis in the 2020 field.— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 18, 2019
It meets key marks:
✅ Big enough
✅ Fast enough
✅ Economically stimulating for working people
✅ Acknowledges injustice + w/ an eye to make communities whole https://t.co/C7nyEsdUxk
It is using the cover of battling climate change to introduce more government interventionism into the economy that has little or nothing to do with climate change.
The plan calls for roughly $3 trillion in government spending "in American industries and manufacturing, infrastructure, skilled labor, and new technology deployment."
It calls for the expansion of anti-labor, pro-union legislation under the guise of expanding "worker's rights":
[I]mportantly, the Evergreen Economy Plan includes new protections for American workers to ensure fair wages, safety and organizing rights. After decades of erosion of workers’ rights, America must reset the balance that has disadvantaged working people for too long. The Evergreen Economy Plan creates a foundation of strong unions, fair wages, and good benefits that lifts up every worker at every step of their career, in every corner of the economy. This includes vital support for resource dependent communities and energy workers who are today experiencing disruption in their lives as the world transitions toward more sustainable energy systems.It calls for an expansion of the government's role in the housing sector:
Increasing financial incentives for private investment in publicly beneficial green affordable housing...Increasing funding for HUD programs such as HOME, project-based Section 8, and Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) programs...It calls for central planning in the form of a national industrial policy:
Establishing a Quadrennial Industrial Review (QIR) to be conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, working with the DOE and DOD, to map strategic industries and identify sound industrial policies — including critical materials and rare-earth elements, global demands, and domestic production capacities — to support sustained American competitiveness and industrial growth that will support a safe climate.If we do accept the premise that a warming of the climate is occurring, the central planning nature of the green part of the Inslee proposal is structured for failure. It ignores completely the fact that the climate crisis, if there is one coming, would be handled by the private sector in the same way it handles many of nature's obstacles.
It is, as F.A. Hayek would put it, a fatal conceit to think that a central planning body could do better.
That said, I repeat again that it is important to understand that beyond the poorly structured central planning "green battle," the Inslee plan uses sleight of hand to introduce much that has nothing to do with battling climate change and a lot to do with bringing the United States closer in the direction of all-out socialism.
It needs to be understood that Inslee and AOC are hardcore statists who are using a modern day version of Leninist tactics in an attempt to destroy capitalism.
Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.
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