Are you willing to go through a depression for the sake of fighting climate change?

About a month ago, I wrote about whether an economic depression might actually be good for us in the log run.  I don’t think that was too wacky a thought to have, because I made clear I was not rooting for a depression, only considering what benefit might be gleaned from such a hardship if it occurs.

Today at Ace’s, Kat-Mo makes the case that Barack Obama seems virtually certain to cause great economic hardship through his plans to cause energy costs to skyrocket. It’s a long-ish post, but here’s the philosophical (as opposed to economic) part:

The problem in this country is that there are too many who have a mythological view of American history. Some where, some how, people have romanticized the “sacrifices” of the depression era along with the great crime wave that accompanied it. Subsistence living on the government dole with long soup lines and 30% unemployment has turned into a national triumph when, in fact, it was a terrible tragedy. When, in fact, our great grandparents and grand parents worked extremely hard to leave that era behind and create a better life for their descendants.

People are willing to vote Obama in because he says the word “sacrifice” within soaring rhetoric, further adding to its “romance” as if accepting a government manufactured crisis “for the greater good” is the thing “we’ve been waiting for” and will somehow purify the American soul. Someone should remind our erstwhile citizenry that there was a great number of our recent ancestors in the depression era who put sawdust in their bread as a partial substitute for flour because they simply could not afford to buy the flour they needed to make real bread. One could ask exactly how “purifying” was that experience and who wants to repeat it.

I don’t think I’m guilty of that romanticization. What I hold in esteem about that era is not that it gave people the opportunity to exhibit great character. I hold in esteem those people who learned great lessons from it. I agree with Kat-Mo that a repeat would be a tragedy.

Even someone hoping for a depression because they think it would be good for the country in the long run, however, are on a better moral footing than Obama, who wants to impose this in the name of fighting climate change:

In fact, the middle class appears strangely willing to sell their votes for about a $500 tax decrease when there is every indication that he is planning to increase the cost of living by ten fold that return and allow Bush’s tax cuts to expire, effectively making that “tax credit” nil. It is political slight of hand and it is most egregious because our media and our representatives in government are willing to perpetrate this great scam for some inexplicable reason. “Global warming” is not a good enough reason to impoverish an entire nation. Ask the Europeans who are busy trying to nullify or extend any part of the Kyoto Treaty that has stagnated their industries and added to their increasing unemployment.