Spain’s solar experiment

Solar energy is great, right? It’s clean energy, and it’s almost free, right? Well, not exactly. There is a small market for solar energy, but the Green Nazis want to make this market into a government-subsidized market to accelerate development of the solar industry. The Left always thinks this way. You have noticed that none of the Left’s socialist experiments has turned out well. Maybe it’s different with the solar industry?

Cynthia Graber reports that solar thermal energy is “a dream come true.” Lefties like to use the word “revolution” for anything new, as if revolutions were a good thing. Breaking bad mental habits can be difficult for the Left. We need to step in and break their bad habits for them. But we digress. Anyway, Spain’s solar industry is expanding into Nevada, so the world solar revolution is under way. What could be better?

A global energy revolution would be so great, wouldn’t it?

Spain fell for the bait. Spain provided $1.6 billion in solar subsides in 2008, up from $214 million in subsidies in 2007. But the $1.6 billion was really just the tip of the government subsidy iceberg, because Spain also guaranteed higher electricity fees to solar suppliers.

Solar power in Spain “was a financial product, not an energy solution,” says Ignacio Sánchez Galán, chairman of Iberdrola.

What is the difference between a financial product and an energy solution? It’s sort of like the difference between a campaign promise and what the Democrats actually deliver. They promise lots of new green jobs, but, well, they don’t tell you how much the jobs are going to cost you, and then when you actually look at the number of jobs created, it’s a little difficult to find a result that corresponds to the rhetoric. But you know their game by now, so you’re not fooled, are you? You know that subsidies for solar power are going to work out just like every other socialist program, don’t you?

However, a sucker is born every minute, and that sucker goes to school under the control of, you know, and then they grow up and vote for, you know, and there goes all our money, down the Democratic rathole. The rathole is usually their friends’ pockets. But you already knew that.

In 2008 Spain’s solar experiment collapsed. The Wall Street Journal caught up with the reality.

The New York Times further explains that subsidizing solar industry and offering higher electricity rates to solar suppliers created “an artificial market.” Just like any government creates an artificial market any time it subsidizes projects for which it has whipped up public sentiment. Notice that the Chinese shipped solar panels to Spain because of the high return Spain’s government was offering. Isn’t global free trade great? Everybody can participate on, you know, “a level playing field.”

So why didn’t the Left’s favorite phony cliches apply to the Spanish solar experiment? Why didn’t government subsidy for green energy create a level playing field that would drive industrial development, create green jobs, and stimulate free trade to create a sustainable solar industry in Spain with wonderful clean energy for all?

Because the government offered capital investment and set production targets that were far out of line with market prices, hence the program became oversubscribed, forming an unsustainable bubble of overinvestment.

“Spain’s solar industry lost more than 20,000 jobs.”

And now you know how Green energy works. Or doesn’t work. We haven’t even discussed the details of the corruption that always accompanies every socialist program. Or the human cost in wasted work and wasted capital investment.

But, you say, despite all the wasted investment and the false promises, Spain now has a solar industry that will adjust to market forces eventually. All the Spanish government has to do to recoup its lost revenue is to raise taxes on the remaining employed workers.

Right, except Spain’s unemployment rate is nearing 25 percent, and raising their taxes will lower consumer demand and drive other businesses out of business, and the downward spiral will continue until…

Wait, don’t say until the government offers another stimulus to another industry to increase demand artificially and create more jobs because

That’s what got Spain into its solar mess in the first place.

Now you understand socialist economics. No matter what the source, no matter how good the hype, no matter how “noble” the cause, just say no to socialism because

Socialism always makes everything worse.

Socialism is a financial product, not an economic investment.

And there’s your Green Jobs lesson for today. You can feel free to apply it to everything the Democrat politicians say every time they open their mouths, because

The Democratic Party is a financial product, not a solution to anything.

You will see this wisdom expressed elsewhere in the epigram, “false problem, false solution.” First they whip up opinion around a false problem, then they offer the false solution. If you understand socialism in terms of this epigram, you can avoid being suckered by one of the oldest con games on the planet.

Feel free to apply this analysis to government control of medicine, or the carbon dioxide “problem,” or Social Security, or Medicare, or public school education, or welfare programs for the poor, or clean energy, or free porn, or free drugs, or a big payment of cash for your car, or a cheap mortgage, or anything else the socialists come up with. All socialist programs are overinvestment bubbles, with corruption for dessert.

Be free.


About The Author

I read over 500 books on the history of the New World Order, but you only need to read one book to make up for the poor education they gave you in the public schools. The Hidden Masters Who Rule the World is a scholarly history that will take you beyond all parties, all worldviews, all prophecies, and all propaganda to an understanding of the future that the global controllers have planned for us.

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