A Parting Insult to American Households from Joe Biden

 January 8, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Environmental zealots and meddling politicians are undermining our quality of life.

• They have given us substandard toilets
• They have saddled us with inadequate washing machines
• They have forced us to use dribbling showers
• They have endangered us with dysfunctional gas cans
• They have tormented us with crummy dishwashers
• They have moved to curtail and ban gas stoves
• They have compelled us to use inferior light bulbs

Courtesy of the Alliance for Consumers, here’s an amusing depiction of how these types of policies have increased the cost of living.

Unfortunately, Joe Biden is trying to make a bad situation even worse.

In the final days of his administration, federal bureaucrats want to make hot water heaters more expensive.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the New York Post by Ryan King.

A Biden administration ban on certain natural gas water heaters as part of the lame duck president’s climate agenda could send prices soaring for the elderly and the poor. Under the policy, new non-condensing, natural gas-fired water heaters will be prohibited for sale starting in 2029… The policy comes during President Biden’s twilight days in the White House and was quietly announced without a press release. …Customers will be pushed towards buying models that are more expensive or lean on non-instantaneous storage tank water heaters, which are generally cheaper but tend to be less efficient than the ones that are facing a ban… “Forcing low-income and senior customers to pay far more upfront is particularly concerning. DOE’s decision to go ahead with a flawed final rule is deeply disappointing,” Matthew Agen, the American Gas Association’s chief counsel for energy, told the outlet. …President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office on Jan. 20 and has expressed interest in reversing some of Biden’s climate change policies.

Trump has a decent track record on regulatory issues, so my fingers are crossed that this policy (and others like it) will be reversed.

I’ll close by observing that our leftist friends generally have two motives when pushing these types of policies.

• The first motive, which is somewhat logical though overtly paternalistic, is that people should be forced to buy energy-efficient appliances that cost more to buy but are cheaper to operate, thus presumably saving them money in the long run.
• The second motive, which is ideological, is that energy consumption is bad and must be discouraged.

I can understand the first motive, even though I don’t believe in one group of people imposing their preferences on another group of people (even though I agree it’s smart to buy appliances that are cheaper over a lifetime of use).

However, I obviously disagree with the left’s religious-like hostility to energy consumption (which leads them laughably preposterous choices).