Why Democrats scare me as much about Democracy as Donald Trump

Tradeoffs. Life is a sequence of tradeoffs. I am trained as an economist, and economics is the science of tradeoffs. The most famous economists saying “There is no free lunch.” is just an affirmation of the ubiquity of tradeoffs. Harry Truman hated the concept and said he wanted one-handed economists so they could not say “on the other hand.” Any doubt about Democrats holding this position was erased by President Biden’s first act as President removing the requirement for cost-benefit analysis on new regulations.

Democrats have continued this theme and seemingly always ignore the existence of tradeoffs. Their policy recommendations are always unfailingly beneficial, and if you ignore all the secondary and consequential effects almost always are. It is a uniquely successful way of ignoring accountability. Any policy has tradeoffs, some obvious, some not.

Commentators repeatedly observe that the current time is unprecedented and forecasting is hard. Of course, it is. We have one arm of the Federal government trying to tame inflation, while the Administration is running a $2 trillion deficit. Every student in introductory economics would answer that a $2 trillion deficit in an economy at historically low unemployment is inflationary. Mr. Biden apparently has never had this learning.

Personally, I have for a long time been a social liberal and fiscal conservative. There is reason to believe this represents much of the country. However, it represents neither of our political parties. Thus, the frustration we feel and see in our political system. I have voted for candidates of both parties, something for which I was rewarded in the 2022 elections: on the Friday before the Senate runoff election in Georgia, I received over 500 e-mail solicitations from both sides. However, I am finding it increasingly difficult, I admit, to support Democrats.

A current Democrat favorite is the rush to electric vehicles. Yes, an electric car does not pollute the air from its engine while it is running. However, because it weighs more, it puts more pollution in the air from its tires and wears out highways and bridges faster. Instead of fossil fuels it needs minerals, and the typical car battery requires mining 27 cubic meters of earth. That causes pollution.

Most importantly, electric vehicles amazingly enough require electricity, raw electricity known as kVA. kVA requires power plants and transmission lines. In some cases, the electricity can be…