To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (752169 ) 11/11/2013 4:31:08 PM From: RetiredNow Read Replies (1) | Respond to We're agreed on subsidies. I don't like them either. The government has no business choosing the winners and losers. They should set the rules and level the playing field and then let the market rule. However, we've had 100 years of government subsidies of oil and coal. That's skewed the market in a very big way. The reason it is more expensive is due to Obama's war on coal. It is an artificial price determined by the government actions rather than the free market. Coal is not more expensive just to Obama's war on coal (and he is engaged in a war on coal…on that we agree). Coal is more expensive, because natural gas is cheap due to great new technological advancements in the extraction of NG. In addition, please remember that coal prices do not really include all the externalities associated with it. Just for those that don't know what externalities are, these are the costs on society at large that are imposed by the use of coal that the coal companies do not have to bear. These include waste, disease, environmental damage, and other Tragedy of the Commons activities. To understand the true cost of coal, you'd have to do a full cost accounting of that. In fact, some attempts have been made to do this kind of study (http://chge.med.harvard.edu/resource/full-cost-accounting-life-cycle-coal).
