Joe Biden’s amazing climate victory
The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), a bill passed with absolutely no Republican participation, was the scaled back version of Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better Plan.” One year after the passing of the IRA, according to Goldman Sachs, it turns out that not only is inflation significantly down in the United States compared with the rest of the world, but the green portion of the bill is far, far more efficacious than its most generous supporters originally hoped it would be.
It turns out that the green portion is going to cost taxpayers more than 3 times the original estimate of $385 billion over ten years. Wait a minute, you might be saying, it’s costing the taxpayers more? And that’s a good thing? Yes it is. Permit me to explain.
The green tax incentives built into the IRA have become so popular among American businesses that they are adopting them more aggressively than originally expected. The net effect is a far more robust private sector response to climate change than was originally anticipated. This means greater tax savings to businesses with a concomitant reduction in tax revenue, a revenue reduction that will eventually be made up with improved economic stimulation.
Compare that to the nearly $2 trillion tax giveaway Republicans slipped to millionaires and billionaires back in 2017, a tax giveaway that had absolutely no climate change benefits, no hope to recover the money through crack-brained, discredited “trickle down” fallacies, nor any other kind of benefit to Americans in general for that matter. The Biden bill is saving the planet. The Trump bill saved nothing but the money of the already super rich.
Naturally these are subtleties that are hard to sell in the MAGA world, a world that thinks climate change science is a hoax and billionaires are God’s anointed. But climate change is real, of course, and the aggressive private sector adoption of green policies should be the only thing we care about. Such policies could tip the balance and turn green policies into a roaring success, potentially helping to end the existential threat of global climate change.
But there’s more. Business pursuit of green energy will stimulate the American economy in the coming years. Green energy will take the place of fossil fuels and become the only viable way forward. This will lead to fantastic green profits and a huge and improved need for skilled and unskilled labour, which in turn will stimulate the economy for everyone. Imagine a future where energy companies are suddenly the good guys!
The long term positives of the IRA are difficult to overstate. But they prove once again that Biden is a visionary. Not only is America leading the world in tackling the worldwide problem of inflation, but its aggressive green policies just might save the planet as well.
Meanwhile Republicans have no interest in tackling inflation, no interest in climate change, no interest in bringing the costs of medicines down, no interest in the price of gas, no interest in making America better for their constituents. They’re only interested in finding something, anything!, to use against the President’s son so they can “prove” that Joe Biden is somehow just as bad as their criminal lord and saviour Donald Trump. They are beyond pathetic. Republicans need to go. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.