Writing more checks will accomplish nothing
Posted: Friday, January 25, 2008
Our ever-watchful national media tell us daily about the current energy crisis - you know, high oil, natural gas and climbing gasoline prices, urgent demands on supply by so-called emerging countries like China, India, Bangladesh and Indonesia, manipulative speculators, and environmentalists who say poking holes in the ground for our domestic petroleum is sinful.
Well, adding all the dreary news together on a bitingly cold January day when the furnace is running nonstop is not something to brighten our outlook. Oil keeps flirting with a $100-a-barrel price while our rulers, the politicians, scold us for using too much of it. You may know the temperature in Washington, D.C., where pols spend much of their time almost never falls below pleasingly brisk.
So telling Iowans to turn down the heat in January is like shutting down air conditioners in July, banning booze in the '20s and ordering all cars to get 50 miles per gallon. These ploys won't work. Mandating cars that will get 50 miles to the gallon might be practical in San Francisco, but not here where there's a lot of space between things.
As an old codger, I can tell you what you already know - that we never thought about energy. If you personally had energy it meant you still had some get up and go in your body. We called it pep, coincidentally the brand name of a cereal then on the market. I didn't like Pep but had plenty of energy anyway.
In the old days, cars of the 1930 and 1940 vintages got lousy mileage. World War II gas rationing cut us, I recall, to about three gallons a week with an A-card. In the 1930s during the Depression and later during the war ordinary people didn't go anywhere so gas mileage didn't matter much. From my hometown in western Minnesota it was about 90 miles to beautiful Fargo. But there was absolutely no reason to go there unless you had to experience the thrill of taking the elevator to the top floor of the Black Building to view the splendid studios of the town's only radio station, WDAY. One trip in a lifetime was enough for that.
On 20-below winter days when the car wouldn't start, you either walked to the store for groceries or ate canned goods done up the previous summer when the living was "easy." Well, not so easy because pulling the shades, not turning on an air conditioner, was the only heat stroke preventive.
Coal, now demonized for supposedly dooming us to death by global warming, at one time was our only efficient fuel for heating, cooking and taking occasional winter wash-tub baths. There were no electric water heaters. North Dakota anthracite coal was best for the furnace because it burned slowly and productively so there lingered in the morning just a hint of warmth. First up had the irksome job of rekindling the embers.
It seemed like a miracle when we had a machine called a stoker installed on the furnace. All you had to do was fill the stoker bin at night with coal broken to walnut size pieces and let a thermostat tell the auger when to feed more fuel to the fire. Electric and gas cooking stoves finally replaced the old wood- and coal-fired ranges and, miracle of miracles, a white box called a refrigerator kept food from spoiling and ice cream semi-solid even on 100-degree summer days.
Progress had made our lives easier. Nobody thought about energy until some folks claimed we'd gotten too much progress for our own good.
In pre-rural electrification days, farm wives had a tough time with the old ways - blast furnace heat from a kitchen cookstove stocked with corn cobs and coal to get August breakfasts, lunches and dinners on the table. If we were visiting a farm home, I was usually the one ordered to fetch more cobs when the fire died down and the roast beef was still red in the middle. Farmers lived too close to their livestock on the hoof to consume bloody meat. There was no air conditioning on their John Deeres and Farmalls.
After the war (World War II) the 1930s Depression began to lose its bite and living eventually got easier. Roosevelt's programs helped a bit, even in my hometown.
The real revival of the economy came not from government giveaways, though, but from the economic boost of returning servicemen who demanded and won benefits such as free college educations, jobs, housing, cars and loans that in subsequent years made our energy economy the envy of the world.
And so it is now as we dread the possibility of a recession, government scrambles to head it off with old nostrums. Washington tells us they will write checks, maybe as much as $500 per family, to head off the bad times so many of us lived through as young people. The real solution, however, will not come from federal checks. Lower taxes for those who actually pay them would help turn things around, but it will take a while.
As in the past, pols are always eager to write more checks, aren't they? That, in the end, will accomplish virtually nothing. What's needed is what made us great in the first place: Better education to help us compete with low-wage countries, the discipline to reign in spending and the good sense to actually exploit our abundant resources rather than to lock them up forever.
Dean Krenz is a former publisher of The Journal.
Well, adding all the dreary news together on a bitingly cold January day when the furnace is running nonstop is not something to brighten our outlook. Oil keeps flirting with a $100-a-barrel price while our rulers, the politicians, scold us for using too much of it. You may know the temperature in Washington, D.C., where pols spend much of their time almost never falls below pleasingly brisk.
So telling Iowans to turn down the heat in January is like shutting down air conditioners in July, banning booze in the '20s and ordering all cars to get 50 miles per gallon. These ploys won't work. Mandating cars that will get 50 miles to the gallon might be practical in San Francisco, but not here where there's a lot of space between things.
As an old codger, I can tell you what you already know - that we never thought about energy. If you personally had energy it meant you still had some get up and go in your body. We called it pep, coincidentally the brand name of a cereal then on the market. I didn't like Pep but had plenty of energy anyway.
In the old days, cars of the 1930 and 1940 vintages got lousy mileage. World War II gas rationing cut us, I recall, to about three gallons a week with an A-card. In the 1930s during the Depression and later during the war ordinary people didn't go anywhere so gas mileage didn't matter much. From my hometown in western Minnesota it was about 90 miles to beautiful Fargo. But there was absolutely no reason to go there unless you had to experience the thrill of taking the elevator to the top floor of the Black Building to view the splendid studios of the town's only radio station, WDAY. One trip in a lifetime was enough for that.
On 20-below winter days when the car wouldn't start, you either walked to the store for groceries or ate canned goods done up the previous summer when the living was "easy." Well, not so easy because pulling the shades, not turning on an air conditioner, was the only heat stroke preventive.
Coal, now demonized for supposedly dooming us to death by global warming, at one time was our only efficient fuel for heating, cooking and taking occasional winter wash-tub baths. There were no electric water heaters. North Dakota anthracite coal was best for the furnace because it burned slowly and productively so there lingered in the morning just a hint of warmth. First up had the irksome job of rekindling the embers.
It seemed like a miracle when we had a machine called a stoker installed on the furnace. All you had to do was fill the stoker bin at night with coal broken to walnut size pieces and let a thermostat tell the auger when to feed more fuel to the fire. Electric and gas cooking stoves finally replaced the old wood- and coal-fired ranges and, miracle of miracles, a white box called a refrigerator kept food from spoiling and ice cream semi-solid even on 100-degree summer days.
Progress had made our lives easier. Nobody thought about energy until some folks claimed we'd gotten too much progress for our own good.
In pre-rural electrification days, farm wives had a tough time with the old ways - blast furnace heat from a kitchen cookstove stocked with corn cobs and coal to get August breakfasts, lunches and dinners on the table. If we were visiting a farm home, I was usually the one ordered to fetch more cobs when the fire died down and the roast beef was still red in the middle. Farmers lived too close to their livestock on the hoof to consume bloody meat. There was no air conditioning on their John Deeres and Farmalls.
After the war (World War II) the 1930s Depression began to lose its bite and living eventually got easier. Roosevelt's programs helped a bit, even in my hometown.
The real revival of the economy came not from government giveaways, though, but from the economic boost of returning servicemen who demanded and won benefits such as free college educations, jobs, housing, cars and loans that in subsequent years made our energy economy the envy of the world.
And so it is now as we dread the possibility of a recession, government scrambles to head it off with old nostrums. Washington tells us they will write checks, maybe as much as $500 per family, to head off the bad times so many of us lived through as young people. The real solution, however, will not come from federal checks. Lower taxes for those who actually pay them would help turn things around, but it will take a while.
As in the past, pols are always eager to write more checks, aren't they? That, in the end, will accomplish virtually nothing. What's needed is what made us great in the first place: Better education to help us compete with low-wage countries, the discipline to reign in spending and the good sense to actually exploit our abundant resources rather than to lock them up forever.
Dean Krenz is a former publisher of The Journal.
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Bob B wrote on Feb 7, 2008 1:35 PM:
Keith wrote on Jan 30, 2008 11:10 AM:
UBDeadThen wrote on Jan 28, 2008 9:59 AM:
"
Old Duffer wrote on Jan 27, 2008 1:51 PM:
Joe D. wrote on Jan 26, 2008 3:24 PM:
There are reasons why small, efficient, cars don't suit everyone's needs, but I fail to see how greater distances between things is one of those reasons. "