YOU CAN SUBSIDIZE SOME OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME; YOU CAN SUBSIDIZE ALL OF THE PEOPLE SOME OF THE TIME ...
OR, WE CAN'T ALL BE ABOVE AVERAGE
A few years ago there was a guy named Garrison Keillor who was much beloved by National Public Radio audiences (he later was canceled for being insufficiently wonderful, but that’s another story).
Anyway, Keillor spun tales of a fictional Minnesota town named Lake Wobegon, “where all the children were above average.” Ha ha. Get it?
The joke, of course, is that everybody can’t be above average. If there weren’t people below the average it wouldn’t be the average.
They seem to have forgotten this over in Great Britain. Through the utter incompetence of politicians, the United Kingdom now has incredibly expensive electricity rates. Currently the charge is 28 pence per kilowatt-hour. It will soon jump to 52 pence, or 61 U.S.cents.
I checked, and out here in Texas where liberals say everything is run by morons, I’m being charged 14 cents. About 75% less.
Britain’s problems are manifold, but most of them are self-inflicted. Wanting to have power generated by rainbows and unicorns is one of them. Windmills are great until the wind stops, and solar panels are great until it’s nighttime. At which point you have to fire up those nasty old gas or coal-powered generators to make electricity. You know, the same generators you had to have spinning the whole time in case the wind stopped or the sun went behind a cloud.
Who would have ever thought that it got cold in Europe?
Then there’s that war with Russia, which the U-S and Europe had to jump into because Ukraine seemed like such a nice bunch of people. Neither the U.S. nor Britain had a treaty that required us to get involved; we just wanted to be nice, and hey, the whole war was only going to last a month or so until Russia realized it couldn’t win.
That was half a year ago. The war continues.
Which now presents a problem. Europe and Britain, due to the genius of their leaders, are almost completely dependent on natural gas sold to them by Russia. In this war, they picked the other side, the one with Ukraine. So now Russia is cutting back on the gas it delivers to its enemies and having “difficulties” delivering what it’s supposed to. Winter approaches. Who would have ever thought that it got cold in Europe?
Which leads to the problem: power is now so expensive in Britain that a lot of people need help paying their bills. Which then leads to this headline on the BBC News site: “Energy bills: Middle earners will need help with rising prices too, says chancellor.” (Their chancellor is like our treasury secretary/budget director.)
The average energy bill in Britain is expected to jump to over $4,000 a year in the next few months. Well, no problem, according to British Broadcasting: “The government has already said that all households will get a £400 rebate ($472) on energy bills, with low income and vulnerable households receiving an additional £650 ($767).”
Politicians and bureaucrats find it easy to forget the truths behind all this: yes, you can help all the people pay their bills—for a limited time. Yes, you can help some of those people all the time—but you can’t help all the people all the time.
The limit is right there around that average. If you give money to more than half the people and charge the bill to the rest, more people who were above average will need help, and then people who had been further above average—until the whole thing collapses from dead weight and dumbness.
The collapse cometh. Europe and Britain are getting close. We, led by Joe Biden (or whoever is leading Joe Biden), aren’t far behind. Makes you wonder what the average lifespan is for a society that dies of stupidity.