There must be a rube in the House.
A recent Republican who does not understand how the game is played – much less why it is being played the way it is played. He and perhaps some of his fellows not-yet-initiated publicly wondered why the federal government is underwriting the sale of luxury-performance cars that happen to be electric.
It is a curious thing.
They suggested rescinding the $7,500 tax inducement which the government has been using to “help” electric car manufacturers like Tesla, which sell electric cars that start around $40,000 and which emphasize not economy but performance and style and technology.
Some might look upon the robbing of Peter – who probably drives an eight-year-old Camry in need of front end work – so that Paul can drive a brand-new, $40,000 electric luxury-performance car – as somewhat obnoxious.
But not everyone.
There is, for example, Genevieve Cullen – who is the head shill for the electric luxury-performance car lobby, styled the Electric Drive Transportation Association. She practically squealed the collective indignation of her clients, who are alarmed very much by the prospect of having to make an honest dollar:
She and they “ . . .continue to believe that a reformed tax code should include a robust set of incentives to support the electrification of transportation,” Cullen wrote to House Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, who is the chair of the Ways and Means Committee – which is the government gaggle which weighs how to dispose of our means.
But Cullen is not being straight with Brady – or with the means providers (who haven’t got much choice about that).
The issue on the table is not whether Uncle should “support the electrification of transportation,” as she shysterishly misdirects. It is whether wealth transfers from working people to affluent people ought to be continued.
Elon Musk, for instance, is a billionaire. The idea that anyone who files a W2 ought to be made to fund his operations is haltingly offensive.
The people who buy the electric cars he makes – when he does actually make them – are the same people who buy BMWs and other luxury-performance cars with prices that start around twice the price of an ordinary IC-engined economy car.
Which is why the electric cars Tesla sells do not emphasize economy. That would be as obviously absurd as suggesting a diet of potato chips and grape soda sweetened with fructose for the obese. The difference here, however, is that the government is not paying obese people to eat potato chips and grape soda.
Wait, sorry.
It is paying obse people to eat those “foods.” There is no longer any such thing as “government cheese” – i.e., the basic staples which used to be provided, at taxpayer expense, to people who could not or for whatever reason would not provide the means to feed themselves. EBT card in hand – food stamps being too shaming, you know – they are now free to dine not only on potato chips and grape soda sweetened with fructose but also to sup on sushi and steaks, courtesy of the same tax mules who are mulcted to finance the purchase of luxury-sport electric cars.
One set the stage for the other, arguably.
Wealth transfers no longer hide behind even the pretense of lending a temporary and necessary helping hand to the less fortunate, to people just barely making it – whether it’s potato chips and grape drink or high-end electric cars.
The not-so-poor-anymore are entitled to eat the same food as the taxpayers who – as a result of this – can no longer afford to eat as well themselves. Similarly, the guy who is saving up to pay for the front-end work his eight-year-old Camry needs hasn’t got the money for the repairs because that money was taken out of his hide to “help” put a San Francisco Snowflake into a $40,000 Tesla.
