You may recall one of Joe Biden’s most tone-deaf comments in which he stated that Americans “have the money” to deal with the crushing inflation and financial stress brought by his policies, like inviting millions of individuals from the third world to become dependents of the American taxpayers, completely random deficit spending in the hundreds of billions, student loan taxpayer bailouts and Zelesnky’s routine allowance, and attacking affordable and established energy industries; it is this last consideration that deserves more attention today.

According to a new report out from The Heartland Institute (THI), the average American household has paid thousands of dollars more in energy costs between 2021 when Biden took office and last year; that “average” comes in at almost $2,548, which also works out to be just about $850 per year. The authors of the report also note that by now that number is likely higher, considering the cost increases incurred thus far in 2024. From the item:

Energy prices continue to surge due to President Joe Biden’s radical energy and climate agenda, according to an analysis by The Heartland Institute, a national free-market think tank. The analysis depended entirely on data from Biden’s U.S. Energy Information Administration.

In 2021, household electricity prices increased 8 percent. Electricity price increases accelerated even more in 2022, and continued to rise in 2023. Since December 2020, the last month before Biden took office, residential electricity prices have increased by 23 percent.

The authors also included a breakdown of specifics for the 2021–2023 time frame:

• Residential electricity prices have increased 23 percent

• Industrial electricity prices have increased 19 percent

• Home heating oil prices have increased 69 percent

• Oil prices have increased 52 percent

• Natural gas prices have increased 32 percent

• Gasoline has increased $0.97 per gallon, or 42 percent

While progressive Democrats would be keen to insist that these numbers have nothing to do with policy and instead reflect “supply chain issues” or “greedy corporations” and the tired “price gouging” rhetoric, that’s not remotely true—across the U.S., from the federal level to the local level, politicians and bureaucrats have enacted policies that have crippled affordable energy industries, and artificially boosted sectors that should have been killed by a free market a long time ago.

(Unless of course you want to recognize the greedy bloodsucking “green” corporations that are taking billions of our dollars to subsidize their idiotic schemes and products that benefit no one but the industry and its cronies.)

It’s all perfectly summarized by THI below:

‘Rapidly rising energy prices are not accidental. They are the predictable result of Joe Biden’s war on abundant, affordable, and reliable energy. The Biden administration has implemented dozens of policies that have caused energy prices to spike.’

They’ve told us that energy technologies like wind turbines and solar panels are cheaper, because they’re “renewable.” Let’s be clear though: Yes, the energy source is renewable (the sun is always going to shine and wind will always blow, just like the earth will always make new oil), but the machines and systems are not. Check this out, from an article out at New Scientist last month:

Electricity prices in Europe are going negative - and that’s bad

Periods of excess electricity production are on the rise thanks to the growth of renewable energy, forcing commercial power generators to sell for negative prices. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean lower household bills[.]

…

The price of power is largely determined by the ‘day-ahead’ market, a wholesale auction where electricity generators bid to supply power for the next 24 hours to energy firms and industrial users. If generators expect to have excess output, they submit low or negative bids, as fully turning off facilities like wind turbines would be less economical. This in turn causes prices to go negative, which means generators must pay to feed their power into the grid.

This deserves an entire blog, so I won’t go into too much detail, but leave it at this: Transitioning away from affordable energy to expensive energy will always yield a price increase for the consumer, which hits the average poor and middle class person and family the hardest.

Seems simple enough, but apparently there are some of us who still can’t quite figure it out...and they’re voting.

Image: Free image, Pixabay license.