When we first spoke about AOC last summer, she was merely a novelty.
Now she's an American Phenomenon. Why?
Because Americans are INCREDIBLY bad at Math.
Nothing she says can be paid for with money that exists. With that in mind, I think it was the very first Beacon of Speech webcast, where Ted and I discussed whether Earthlings could build a Death Star like in Star Wars.
Ted thought I was kidding, and I told him no, I read about the concept in Forbes Magazine. You could basically turn all humans on the planet into slaves and focus all of their labor and all of the Earth's resources into a common goal and build an artificial Moon.
Ted said that would never happen, but we had a good laugh at the concept of building a Death Star. In that same vein, this week Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a Green New Deal, which, if you actually read it, would approach the cost of the Death Star.
I have an Uncle Jimmy, he's a good man, but every day he takes to Facebook and rails about the evils of Trump on one hand, and how the right should fear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on the other.
Let me be clear, I'm not on the right, but AOC scares me to death. AOC should scare you too, not because of partisan politics, but because of math. I feel like you're still not listening. Imagine me standing on a box, screaming until my throat bleeds OCASIO-CORTEZ IS BAD AT MATH!
I'm going to take one single line in AOC's Green New Deal and analyze the cost.
1 SINGLE LINE
Page 7
(2)(E) Line 16
upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification;
There are 5.6 million commercial buildings in the United States. Let's be on the very conservative side and appraise the average commercial building in the U.S. at $500,000. I know you can find cheaper ones, and I think I'm using a low estimate, but work with me here. 5,600,000 times $500,000 is ....
There are 127.6 million households in the United States. The median home price in the United States is luckily a round number, $200,000. Again, using a calculator, 127,600,000 times $200,000 is.....
So it would cost, A MINIMUM, of 28 Trillion to rebuild all buildings in America, using current American technologies. But, using current home prices, New Green houses would NOT cost $200,000. I could argue that you'd need to spend twice that amount to make your new home a Zero House. All new, Green buildings could approach $50 Trillion. The Green New Deal is 14 pages long filled with other items that would minimally cost trillions of dollars. How much do you think this line would cost? Meeting 100% of the power demand in the U.S. through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources. I'm not talking about the Year 2100, when things may, or may not be, more technologically advanced and cheaper. Today.
I could argue that the entire Green New Deal could potentially run a price tag of $1,000,000,000,000,000 (or 1 QUADRILLION).
So to my dear Uncle Jimmy, you can hate Donald Trump all you like, but you can't offer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as an alternative. Not unless you want to grind the American Economy into dust.
Editor's note I: Who knows? Maybe Uncle Jimmy and like-minded thinkers are secretly anarchists.
Editor's note II: Death Star Price? $852,000,000,000,000,000 or 852 Quadrillion. (Estimated)