Let Them Buy Electric Cars!

President Biden channeled Marie Antoinette yesterday:

"For the hundreds of thousands of folks who bought one of those electric cars, they’re going to save $800 to $1000 in fuel costs this year,” Biden said, referring to the $112,595 electric Hummer pickup he test drove at a General Motors factory in Detroit earlier this month.

The least expensive new electric car is the 2022 Nissan Leaf, with a starting price of $28,375. You can get a used Leaf cheaper, but they're still more expensive than comparable gas-driven cars. But not many people currently suffering from high gas prices will come out better, since trading in a gas-driven car will bring a new, higher car payment no matter what.

Another issue is vehicle range. Available models start at about 100 miles, which for many commutes is a single round trip. Recharging can take from 30 minutes to 12 hours, so you can't just swing by the corner gas station to fill up. Longer trips other than commutes are problematic. Conversion just isn't a practical option for most people given current costs and technology..

Beyond that, there are other questions like the need to upgrade the electrical grid if significantly more people are charging those electric cars. If that isn't done, the grid becomes less reliable, so that there are tradeoffs in social costs as well as family budgets. These issues can't be dismissed with a wave of the hand.

But there's a bigger question here -- what is the formal cause of President Biden's remarks? In Aristotelian terms, what's the plan behind them? Joel Kotkin has the most insightful take I've seen so far, which matches my own view that Marx had nothing to say about climate change or gender dysphoria, and he didn't think the Lumpenproletariat was a reliable working class ally:

[U]nlike the social democracy movements that followed World War Two, the New Socialism focusses not on material aspirations but on climate change, gender, and race. While the old socialism sought to represent the ordinary labourer, many on the Left today seem to have little more than contempt for old working-class base and its often less than genteel views on issues such as Critical Race Theory.

Yet perhaps the most critical difference between traditional socialism and its new form relates to growth. The New Socialism’s emphasis on climate change necessarily removes economic growth as a priority. Quite the opposite, in fact: the Green agenda looks instead towards a shrinking economy and lowered living standards, seeking to elevate favoured groups within a stagnant economy rather than generating opportunities for the general population.

. . . But there can be little doubt that the biggest change is taking place on the Left. Historically, the British and Australian Labour Parties, the French Socialist Party, America’s Democrats and Canada’s Liberals evolved from a strong working-class base. But in recent years, for both economic and cultural reasons, these parties have become dominated by professionals, academics and government workers increasingly bent on introducing paternalistic, puritan policies.

I don't think he pays enough attention to the actual political dynamic. Most "professionals, academics and government workers" are still middle class -- they're computer programmers, community college instructors (increasingly untenured), administrators, and paper pushers. They have to fill the gas tanks on their older cars like everyone else. They're faring no better than UPS drivers or construction workers, unionized or not.

There's a separate class of elites, the Dr Faucis, Speaker Pelosis, or Al Gores who fly to climate conferences on private jets and go blithely unmasked at lavish parties. (Why didn't Prince Charles ride to Glasgow on the all electric royal train, by the way? Why doesn't Biden tell the secret service to get him an electric presidential limo?)

The current de facto policy objective is actually to punish the working and middle classes by reducing their liviing standards, subjecting them to ever increasing levels of crime, and implementing pansexualist policies that, via discouraging marriage, allowing men into women's toilet facilities, and allowing men to compete in women's sports, reduce the status of women.

Kotkin concludes his piece by hoping the left can rediscover its working-class roots, but the utopia envisioned by the current elites has nothing to do with traditional leftism. The policy the elites seem to be aiming at is a new aristocracy that consumes the resources of subordinated, demoralized middle and working classes.

President Biden is fully on board with this -- this isn't a cognitive issue. His refusal to answer questions even from a generally sympathetic press is an inevitable passive-aggressive strategy forced on him by his insistence on continuing unpopular and unworkable polcies.