By a simple vote, the Santa Barbara Board of Supervisors decided to raise the cost of government by $300 million. No new services, no better services, nothing but an increase in the cost of government. What they did not care about was the added cost to families and businesses. All of this to meet the canard of a Green Agenda.
“Let’s talk about another example of the fatal conceit of these supervisors. These same three progressive supervisors just adopted the county’s climate action plan on a 3-2 vote. While the county counted the costs of this plan on their own operations (over $300 million), the cost associated with forcing farmers – and everybody else for that matter, including you dear reader – to go all electric was purposely not considered in their deliberations.”
This is a global scam. Costing trillions and forcing more people into poverty—with NO help to the climate. But the Board members feel better about themselves.
When Money is No Object
by Andy Caldwell, Santa Barbara Current, 9/15/24 https://www.sbcurrent.com/p/when-money-is-no-object
The great economist, Friedrich Hayek, warned us about the “fatal conceit” of central planners who demonstrate “how little they know about what they imagine they can design.” This quote explains the agenda of CA progressives which has been delivering one fatal blow after another to our economic freedoms resulting in sky-high inflation, debt, and deficits, not to mention the impacts of crime, energy costs, artificial water shortages, and the like.
Progressives in California have created myriad laws, regulations, and mandates, aimed at controlling fossil fuel production, the water available to farmers and urbanites, limits on greenhouse gases that affect manufacturing, industry, and transportation, along with restrictions on how electricity can be generated, not to mention controls on land use and marine resources. There is not one area of our lives that they are not trying to plan (read: control), even though politicians making these decisions know virtually nothing about “what they imagine they can design.”
The latest example has three Santa Barbara County Supervisors (Das Williams, Joan Hartmann, and Laura Capps) considering a proposal to raise the minimum wage for farm workers up to $26 per hour. Let’s point out the obvious: none of these supervisors have ever been involved in farming. In fact, as far as I know, none of them have ever worked in the private sector. Hence, collectively the supervisors have zero first-hand knowledge of the cost of land, labor, fertilizer, farm equipment, water, electricity, fuel, trucking, or any of the other inputs a farmer must pay out to bring a crop to market. Additionally, they have never bothered to calculate the cost to farmers and ranchers having to do with their policy failures that serve to undermine flood control protection, weed abatement, frost protection, and fire prevention.
Unfortunately, much of this collective ignorance is willful. That is, the county has collected zero data on the profit margins of the various crops grown in our region, or the cost of the regulations, mandates, and fees they themselves have imposed on the private sector because the supervisors believe their social justice and environmental agendas are worth every penny of other people’s money. Contextually, our county supervisors don’t pay their own staff a minimum wage of $26 per hour, but somehow, they believe farmers could possibly raise the minimum wage some 60% for their workers. How is the $20 minimum wage working out for the fast-food industry and its customers?
Most people in America are struggling mightily with food prices, which have never been as high as they are today. Why are food costs so high? Our local farmers are being asked to cut back on water, fertilizer, and herbicide uses. They are forced to replace all their equipment with electric vehicles, and their labor costs are already the highest in the nation due to current minimum wage laws, along with limitations on overtime. Then there are the regulatory limits on production facilities which led our largest winery producer to move to another county. Incidentally, did you notice that our county supervisors are suing a farmer for a flood that damaged homes, even though the homeowners themselves are suing the county because they believe the cause of the flood was the failure of a county-owned flood control basin?
Let’s talk about another example of the fatal conceit of these supervisors. These same three progressive supervisors just adopted the county’s climate action plan on a 3-2 vote. While the county counted the costs of this plan on their own operations (over $300 million), the cost associated with forcing farmers – and everybody else for that matter, including you dear reader – to go all electric was purposely not considered in their deliberations.
Why not?
The problem here, despite the warnings of Britain’s late, great, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, is progressive politicians don’t think they will ever run out of other people’s money!
