If you think that life in Germany and the Netherlands is so great, why don’t you move there? I completely disagree with your assesment of them. I had an engineer friend turn down a really high paying job offer in Germany. He was psyched about it until he visited Germany and found out how much he would be paying in taxes. You can have his job.

I don’t understand your comment about high fat diets in America somehow being linked to the oil industry……….Help me out here?

It is not government’s job nor should it be to make sure that companies are acting in their best interest. It is the responsiblility of the people who own and are invested in those companies. That is why capitalism works. Companies are supposed to act in their own best interests. That is the only way that capitalism works. Governments sticking their noses in is what screws things up. When companies make drastic errors in risk judgement, they go bankrupt just as you and I would. Our government should not interfere with the market’s ability to fix itself.

Oil is the primary source of energy because it is cheap. It is in the best interests of companies and consumers to use the cheapest source of energy. There are plusses and minuses to each one. It is in both the long term and short term interests of doing so. Think even longer term than what you are assuming and you will see why.

Our capitalist country allows people to decide for themselves how long term or short term to think. I agree that people should think long term. However, we must have the freedom to choose that for ourselves. Our economic model only becomes rusty when government starts to think that it can plan better for the future than the private sector can. This is the fallacy of socialism. People in government act in their own self interests as time has proven again and again and again and again. They do not act in the interest of the people. The only time they do that is when their interest happens to be aligned with the interest of the people. This is the very basis for why the founding fathers created a system of checks and balances. They understood that power corrupts. Once people get into power they will exhaust all reasonable means to stay there even if they have to lie, cheat and steal to do it. That is why policians should all have term limits. It takes away their ability to serve a lifetime in office. If they were truly interested in our best interests, they would serve one term, vote in our best interests and get the hell out of office voluntarily. Instead, they position themselves according to polls, they play politics, they lie, they twist words, they become corrupt.

Sorry to wander off on a tanget.

America is addicted to oil. The right way to fix the problem is to move to a cleaner domestic energy source like natural gas. This is a no brainer in my book. I think that moving to natural gas provides a common sense alternative to foreign oil. It is smarter than moving to a ridiculously inefficient wind and solar program immediately. Wind and solar are worthy long term goals. They are not short term solutions though. We should move immediately to natural gas and begin slowly phasing in more and more wind, solar, bio-diesel and nuclear over time. That makes the most sense. Instead of shipping a billion dollars to the middle east every single day, we wold be spending that billion dollars here which would employ a whole lot of our friends and neighbors. That benefits us all. Why aren’t we doing this? It is insane not to.

Politicians tend to resist any significant change in economic development if it involves raising consumer prices or raising taxes of any kind.

Look at energy costs to households in Germany or the Netherlands and will you will see a marked difference compared to the US. Yet the standard of living is higher in both Germany and the Netherlands. These people work less hours per year, spend more time with their families, travel more and enjoy higher quality foods and services.

America is based on a high fat diet provided by fast food restaurants fueled by oil.

There are enough lobbyists in Washington that there will be no material change in our oil policy until the free market prices oil out of reach for the average American consumer. It will likely take another price shock to get the consumer to shift away from oil.

If a politician were to try to advocate say a $10 or $15 a barrel of oil tax to help boost government investment in solar, wind, E85 etc. the public would attack those politicians even though probably it would be to America’s benefit in the long run.

Yes, renewable energy grows an economy. Over the next 5 years watch Germany continue to grow its economy (in spite of Greece and Spain…), export more advanced technology equipment and invest in advanced physics research. While the US will invest less and less in education, technology research and will pay more and more for imported oil.

Bad policy that does not address the long term issues of the economy will ultimately lead to endemic economic failure. Corporate leaders only appreciate their board of directors agenda for short term profit growth and have no comittment to long term issues of economic stability.

We have an outdated, rusty economic model that will continue to advocate short term profit with no long term vision for economic sustainability.