Why do you suppose there isn't a big market for, say, solid gold kitchen counters? Well, the most obvious reason is that the counters would be far too expensive, so it's not surprising that few if any manufacturers offer counters in solid gold. In a free market, that's the natural result when there are high costs and lack of demand for something.
But where expensive alternative energy such as wind and solar power is concerned, the free market is badly distorted by federal government subsidies. Seeking to prop up those inefficient sectors of the energy industry, Congress underwrites all manner of wind and solar projects -- sending the bill for that to taxpayers, while increasing our national debt.
So it was interesting recently when a Danish wind energy company acknowledged it would have to lay off 1,600 workers in the United States -- on top of already-scheduled layoffs -- if Congress does not extend special tax breaks for wind energy.
The company, Vestas Wind Systems, got more than $50 million in tax credits from the U.S. government in 2010. But its sales have been poor, and it has repeatedly lowered its sales and profit forecasts.
It was candid on the company's part to admit that many of its employees are sustained not by the success the company may have had in the free market but by the infusion of market-distorting subsidies. In other words, many of its workers are being propped up by your tax dollars because there is not enough of a market for the business's products.
Far from being a reason to extend wind power subsidies, that market failure is a reason to cut the subsidies off. Indeed, they never should have been provided in the first place.