Death by a thousand cuts. Or in the case of the efficiency of the U.S. economy, by at least four: energy policy, health care policy, trade union resurgence, and fiscal madness.
Start with energy. The world is awash in it. The wind blows and the sun shines, at least some times and somewhere. Oil and gas wells gush, and substantial oil- and gas-rich areas have never even been explored. Coal abounds. Nuclear power can be had at a cost. So why has Barack Obama made energy policy one of his three top priorities -- education and health care are the other two -- in a country in which inexpensive energy has produced the world's most productive agriculture, a population capable of navigating America's huge spaces in air-conditioned comfort, and permitted the substitution of energy-plus-brain-power for back-breaking labor?
One problem is that oil is largely in the hands of very bad actors. Still another is that almost all sources of energy have significant impacts on the environment: solar panels consume acres of space; wind machines are considered eye sores by those who can spot them; oil, natural gas and coal emit CO2, responsible for claims that the globe is warming; nuclear power generates long-lived and dangerous waste.
Some of these problems are soluble, although not without cost. Domestic producers of natural gas tout their product as a substitute for petrol in trucks, busses and other vehicles. Progress is apparently being made in developing cars and trucks that run on at least
partly on batteries. The efficiency of vehicles is being increased, albeit in response to inefficient government edicts rather than to more efficient price signals. Never mind that the infrastructure for these various gasoline substitutes has not been developed, and that the cost of these technologies exceeds that of the gasoline-fuelled internal combustion engine by a good margin. They must be listed in the possible column. That's the good news.
The bad news is that even if these technologies do develop, we will still need lots of oil and gasoline to fuel the existing capital stock, and that oil is in the hands of the bad guys. The Saudis and their OPEC allies control the bulk of the world's oil reserves, and use the proceeds of their cartel-based oil sales to fund the spread of radical Islam and jihadism. Hugo Chávez uses the (dwindling) receipts from his increasingly clapped-out oil industry to fund his takeover of Venezuela's private sector and his anti-American activities. Iran's mullahs survive their disastrous economic policies only because they have oil revenues with which to bribe the masses, pay for their nuclear-arms program, and fund international terrorism.
The problem of the unfortunate location of oil reserves can't be solved by research into alternatives to oil, or by conservation; as far ahead as we can see, we will need the bad guys' oil, and Europe will need natural gas from an increasingly bellicose Russia. Both problems can be ameliorated by diversifying sources of supply. Investment in the oil industries of Canada and Mexico certainly seems worthwhile for the United States, as does investment in natural gas pipelines that by-pass Russia for the EU. And maintenance of a military strong enough to guard supply routes and protect the Saudi fields from falling into even worse hands seems essential.
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