The Most Fabulous Way to Stimulate the Economy

What would you say if I told you that New York State lawmakers could amend a certain legal regulation in a way that would stimulate additional consumer spending, foster more sales opportunities for small businesses and create thousands of new jobs? What if I told you that this policy would not add a dime to the deficit; in fact, all of the sales tax on the resultant commerce, additional income tax revenue and processing fees for these new contracts would actually help state and local governments balance their budgets? According to any credible economic analysis, this policy would only foster business growth so benign that it is almost inconceivable that it could lead to negative externalities in health, the environment, culture or anything at all.

What is this miracle policy of which I speak? What could possibly put some spring into the step of this dreary, moribund economy? Well, when people think of ways for the government to prime the pump, they usually imagine burly construction workers re-paving the highway. But we should also think of the police officer who got to keep his job thanks to the Recovery Act, the sailor who is bravely serving his country in the US Navy, and also the cowboy, the Native American and the motorcycling leather daddy…

This economic miracle policy I’m talking about, of course, is legalizing same-sex marriage. Nowadays even those with money to spare are so afraid of the market that they are just sitting on it in the bank; but if there’s ever a time to splurge, wouldn’t it be when your daughter has fallen madly in love with the perfect woman and you want to give her the wedding of her dreams? ...and if your son wanted to marry someone else’s son, wouldn’t you do the same? Some people have been waiting to be able to do this their entire lives.

In this time of economic crisis let’s forget for a moment about the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment or the sexual ethics expounded by the Book of Leviticus and think about marriage solely in terms of dollars and cents. The average wedding in New York State costs around $32,000 – but in New York City where all goods and services are more expensive the figure is nearer to $37,000. However, the average wedding ceremony between two men or two women in New York State will most likely cost significantly less – circa $27,000 – largely due to the facts that 1) same-sex couples are less likely to receive support from their parents to pay for their weddings; and 2) same sex couples are more likely than opposite-sex couples to opt for no-frills City Hall marriages.

But even with the most conservative estimate that accepts continued social discrimination as a given, each and every additional marriage will nonetheless serve as a micro-level stimulus package. If the New York state legislature were to act this spring to modernize our discriminatory marriage laws, then the summer and autumn of 2011 could be punctuated by tens of thousands of additional weddings and a wave of additional commerce from Montauk to Buffalo.

At the very least, marriage equality would trim the budget deficit by adding revenues. For all of those couples who simply want to get it over with and get a City Hall marriage, in New York City it will cost them $35 for a marriage license payable to the Office of the City Clerk. Everyone who lives outside the five boroughs who wants to have a marriage certificate will have to make a credit card deduction, money order or write a $30 check payable to the New York State Department of Public Health, they will also have to pay for a $7.25 vendor processing fee, $15 for priority mail postage, and if they opt for next-day shipping the married couple would pay for an additional UPS fee of $12. With every marriage license issued, New York State would receive a bit more revenue to help mitigate our $10 billion budget shortfall.

Though it would be fair to say that a fair number of New York’s gays and lesbians and bisexuals and transsexuals would probably go for something more extravagant than a mere City Hall wedding… Seriously, if you’ve ever attended a Long Island bat mitzvah, just imagine how opulent Long Island gay marriages will be! Legalizing same-sex marriage will open the floodgates to the greatest, gayest shopping spree that New York has ever seen!


For starters, marriage usually starts with a proposal – and an engagement ring usually costs around $3,125. Jewelers will be so inundated with orders that there would be increased demand for every precious gem on the market – as well as the labor of goldsmiths, silversmiths and diamond cutters. Though the Hasidic diamond dealers of 47th Street might be amongst the most vociferous opponents of marriage equality, they would be amongst the greatest financial beneficiaries!

Then with time most of these same-sex fiancées are going to buy wedding bands and the jewelry industry would surge again (according to The Wedding Report, the average American wedding entails $3,631 of spending on jewelry for the day of the marriage ceremony).

For anything more elaborate, they are going to hire a wedding planner for $1,940…

Wedding announcements, invitations, reply cards and thank-you notes on personalized stationary will cost $1,117…

Your average marrying couple will spend $345 on hair styling, facials, makeup and spa treatment…

The best man or bridesmaid will throw down an average of $2,189 on the bachelor/bachelorette party…

The grooms will spend about $1,858 on their tuxedos…

Or the brides will spend $1,858 on their dresses…


…or the brides will spend $1,858 on their tuxedoes…

…or the grooms will spend about $1,858 on their dresses…

The sartorial possibilities are endless, and any permutation of bow-ties, tiaras, corsets and cummerbunds that the marrying couples, best men, bridesmaids and guests would buy would nevertheless serve as the greatest one-time boon to the high-end fashion industry that New York has ever seen!

Marrying couples typically spend around $2,036 on the ceremony itself; i.e. renting the location, hiring an officiate, paying for an aisle runner, a pillow box and a ketubah, etc…

They will spend an average of $1,276 on flowers and décor…

The big ticket item, however, is almost invariably the wedding reception – which costs an average of $11,863. Can you even imagine how many more job openings would be created for caterers, chefs, waitresses, busboys and bartenders?

More demand would be created for bakers as well, as the brides or grooms spend $469 on each wedding cake…

…$1,244 on limousine and chauffeurs…

… and of course a honeymoon, which usually rings up to a total of $5,027 (though chances are the bulk of this money would stimulate the economy of Puerto Rico or the Virgin Islands – not New York)

Subsequent growth in consumer spending would not be confined to the brides and grooms and their families. According to the Association of Bridal Consultants, married couples receive an average of 75 gifts and that the average amount of money spent on each wedding gift is $113. So for every time that a pair of men or a pair of women marry in New York, they will spur their guests to go out and spend approximately $8,475 on gifts that might have otherwise just sat in the bank and accumulated infinitesimal interest.

Out of town wedding guests are going to stay in New York hotels, and even if they are going to stay with friends for the weekend they are probably going to go out with their hosts to a restaurant on Friday night or at least stop at the liquor store and buy them a bottle of wine. No matter how you crunch the numbers, marriage equality is going to encourage people – and especially people from out of state – to go out and spend more of their money on New York goods and services.

Of course, we do not know exactly how many same-sex couples there are living together in New York because the 2010 Census which is still being tabulated was only the first census since Massachusetts’ landmark Goodridge decision in 2004, and this data only counts same-sex couples who are already legally married – thus providing an incomplete picture of how many same-sex couples there are who would be married if New York amended its family law code. So in the absence of more sound Census methodology the best we can do is refer to scientific estimates; according to a study by the Williams Institute, as of 2005 there were approximately 50,854 gay and lesbian couples living together in New York State.

However, that does not mean that legalizing same-sex marriage in New York State would necessarily result in exactly 50,854 weddings. Approximately 43 percent of those couples – 21,867 of them – have already married somewhere else. Since 2005 the population of same-sex couples has certainly risen. And there are of course a good number of couples who would prefer to marry in some other jurisdiction, to simply apply for a domestic partnership, or to not marry at all. The Office of the New York City Comptroller estimates that – based on the experience of Massachusetts – roughly 51 percent of the remaining nubile 28,987 couples would marry over the first three years after marriage equality has been achieved; in other words, around 14,783 New York resident couples would marry. After that initial surge, the rate of same-sex marriages would probably taper off significantly and eventually achieve something close to parity with the rate of opposite-sex marriages. According to the NYC Comptroller, resident weddings would generate almost $110 million in additional consumer spending over those first three years…

…and that’s only taking into consideration New York State residents; based on the experience of other states, the big money maker would be in out-of-state residents who would come from all across the country and all around the world to have their weddings in tolerant and accepting New York. The NYC Comptroller’s Office estimates that in the first three years of marriage equality, more than 56,000 couples would travel from out of state to marry in New York. Keep in mind that New York State law requires a minimum of 24 hours between the issuance of a marriage license and the performance of a wedding ceremony, so out-of-state residents would either have to make two day trips or (much more likely) stay overnight. Even the estimated 6,845 couples from mostly New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut who simply drive across the border for two day trips would bring in an additional $1 million. But those who come all the way from Florida, Texas, Japan or South Korea for destination weddings would spend almost $60 million, their guests would spend another $77 million on transportation, lodging, etc.

When you put it all together; New York residents, cross-border commuters and out of state same-sex marriage tourists would generate an additional $247 million in additional economic activity over the next three years – $175 million in New York City alone. We can only speculate as to how much long-term job creation this boom would generate; most likely, most of the additional business would probably be picked up by already-existing florists, bakers, DJs, etc. Though based on the experience of other states, the legalization of same-sex marriage would probably create a few thousand additional jobs mainly in the labor-intensive hospitality and catering businesses. But the sheer amount of consumer spending and job growth alone does not tell the whole story; for a more clear view of marriage equality’s effect on the public treasury we have to crunch those numbers a bit further.

When economists calculate the value of public policy they use the tool of cost-benefit analysis; and even the most liberal proponent of civil rights must concede that there are economic costs to granting marriage rights to gays and lesbians. Namely, firms that offer spousal and family benefits to their employees would be compelled to extend health care benefits to the spouses of their newly-married employees. The study by the Comptroller’s Office estimates that all of the same-sex married couples with one member working for a firm in New York State would cost their employers an additional $63 million in health insurance costs. However, this causes little reason to fear that businesses would flee to other states with discriminatory marriage laws in order to save on human resources; that $63 million in health benefits would be spread fairly evenly across more than 500,000 firms, unless a given business employs a disproportionate amount of nubile homosexuals then their burden would be comparatively negligible, and most small businesses would not be affected at all. In fact, most Fortune 500 companies located in New York – including Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, American Express, Chase, MetLife, Citigroup, Bloomberg LP, Time Warner, Barnes & Noble, Eastman Kodak, to name a few – already offer health benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of their employees.

From the perspective of public finance, marriage equality would not generate any additional health care costs because New York State and City agencies are already required to offer health care benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of public employees. If anything, the public sector would actually save on means-tested programs because many newlywed couples’ combined income or assets would bring them above the income and asset thresholds for many social welfare programs; e.g. the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and Safety Net Assistance programs, child care subsidies, earned income tax credits, etc. For a good number of people the legal act of marriage per se serves as a catalyst for movement from the class of welfare recipients to taxpaying contributors to the public treasury.

Following that same line of reasoning, marriage equality would in fact lead to a windfall in public revenues. Marriage licensing application fees – 50,458 applications for $35 in New York City and 32,012 applications for $40 elsewhere in New York State – would total $3 million in additional revenue. Sales taxes on all of the aforementioned wedding expenditures would add $4.3 million to City revenues and another $5.5 million to the State. With all the out of state destination weddings expected to be held in the five boroughs (i.e. Manhattan) the City would also collect an additional $767,000 in Hotel Occupancy Tax revenue. If the New York legislature changed the tax code so that same-sex married couples could file their tax returns jointly, so many couples would incur the so-called “marriage penalty” by moving to a higher income tax bracket that New York State would collect $2.1 million in additional income taxes. So it would be fair to assume that New York City would be able to balance its budget with $5.1 million and New York State would be able to plug its gaping deficit with $10.6 million in additional revenues over the next three years. Perhaps if homeownership rises for married same-sex couples, the government might even take in more revenue from property taxes and related real estate transaction-related taxes (though this is purely speculative); if this is the case, New York’s gaping deficit could be trimmed even further.

For a state to maintain discriminatory marriage laws is to practice fiscal insanity – they’re leaving money on the table. Though what we’re currently doing in New York is even more self-defeating; in 2004, then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer responded to the flurry of gay marriages in Massachusetts, San Francisco and New Paltz by issuing a memorandum stating that New York – though we do not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples – would give full faith and credit to the same-sex marriages issued by other jurisdictions. From the perspective of social justice, this might be a pragmatic step in the right direction, but from the perspective of economics it’s the worst policy imaginable as it assumes all of the costs but reaps very few of the benefits. Suppose there is a lesbian couple from Schenectady composed of a pharmacy worker and her unemployed wife and they decide to get married in Northampton; they might add to the health insurance costs borne by New York businesses, but all of the economic activity and tax revenue generated by their wedding would be enjoyed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. In other words, New York is exporting our gay marriage jobs to Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, the District of Columbia, all ten provinces and three territories of Canada, Mexico City, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and South Africa.

Civil unions – another modest half-step towards social justice – are even more limited in their economic stimulus potential. In New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, Delaware and Hawaii where the state issues civil union licenses to same-sex couples, businesses pay ever so slightly more in health insurance costs. But the wedding planners, hoteliers, caterers, florists and diamond cutters of these states have experienced only minimal business growth because hardly anyone throws down $37,000 to celebrate their daughter’s civil union – filing for domestic partnership feels as special as a trip to the DMV.

Likewise, it seems that the only way for a state to reach the maximum fiscal benefit is to establish complete and utter marriage equality under law. When the Comptroller’s Office did its cost-benefit analysis of legalizing same-sex marriages, they calculated that the government of New York State would come out of the red by collecting roughly $8 million in more taxes and saving $100 million on welfare programs, while the City would collect an additional $7 million in taxes and fees and have only negligible fluctuations in spending on anything at all. And though the health insurance costs and the benefits of additional sales will for the most part be paid by different firms, the private sector as a whole would grow on a net basis by $184 million throughout New York State with $142 million of that economic growth in the City.

Marriage equality should also make the New York economy more competitive in the long run by keeping our state among the forefront of social progress. Let’s say that the Acme Widget Company of Des Moines is planning on expanding to the East Coast and has to decide between two potential sites for their new bureau; one in Albany and the other in Hartford. The board of directors might reason that, ceteris paribus, it would be in their best interests to open the new bureau in Hartford because a lot of gay people would prefer to live in a state where they can raise a family, and Connecticut’s inclusive marriage laws might help them to attract a more competitive pool of employees. The most well-dressed, highly productive members of the labor force want to live and work in a state where the law treats them as first-class citizens – why wouldn’t we do everything we can to make them want to live and do business in New York?

The fact of the matter is that gay families are great for the economy; they’re hip, they’re ahead of so many market trends, they are more likely to have two incomes and less likely to have children – and when they do have kids, it kind of has to be the result of a thoroughly-planned, well-thought decision. Families headed by same-sex couples are more likely to pay taxes for schools and less likely to have kids to send to them - but when they do, wouldn't you imagine they would be the most meticulous parents?

To put it more blunty, it is in the direct financial interest of every state, county and municipal government with revenues dependent upon property taxes to attract families with two moms and two dads, because when gay people move into a neighborhood the value of real estate rises. If you’ve ever been to Hudson, New York, you would see before your eyes how an influx of gay antiques dealers, innkeepers and restaurateurs took a rusting, depressed Upstate town and gave it a makeover into a relatively-booming Mecca for weekenders and gentlewomen farmers!


So when the the New York State Senate takes up the same-sex marriage bill, do they really want to take this opportunity to uphold our state's long proud history of welcoming immigrants of all cultures, stripes and hues, upholding the rights of refugees who fled violence and repression... and, by the way, effortlessly improve the state's fiscal standing?

Or will they reject it out of some combination of bigotry, malice or cowardice?
After almost every state in the region has steadily progressed towards marriage equality, do they want New York to be the state that balked under pressure from the Paladino Republicans and the "Christian values" wing of the Dixiecrats? What Grinch of a statesman wakes up, puts on a suite and tie, and stands up before the body public to say "Actually, I object to these tens of thousands of New Yorkers from wedding"? If lawmakers in Albany won't welcome their sisters and brothers in the very state that invented Liberation, they’re going to settle down in Massachusetts or Connecticut and take their money with them.


Unfortunately, the numbers don’t evince that legalizing same-sex marriage could be the silver bullet which singlehandedly digs this state us out of this deep recession; to do that, we might have to end the war in Afghanistan, curb the cost of health care by establishing a public option, invest $800 billion into modernizing our energy infrastructure, shift the tax burden from the wages of the working class to the estates, trusts and dividends of the super-rich, found a market for carbon permits, abolish mandatory minimum sentencing and legalize marijuana…

Nevertheless, even if legalizing same-sex marriage would only promise to increase the New York state private sector by roughly $184 million in additional commerce, cut the state deficit by $108 million and create roughly 2,000 additional full-time jobs, that sounds to me like a substantial first step towards economic recovery. Legalizing same-sex marriage might not be more than a modest reform, it might not be the superlatively most comprehensive strategy to vitalize business growth – but you must admit that it would certainly be the most fabulous way to stimulate the economy.

Long Live the Existing Homes Tax Credit!

I will concede to my Republican friends that there are tax cuts which serve as such a strong incentive to potential consumers that they do stimulate economic activity. I will agree that Congress ought to extend these tax cuts in order to help small businesses weather this deep recession, to create jobs and to reduce the federal deficit – and that it is imperative that they extend these tax cuts as soon as possible so that they don’t expire with the coming new year. In fact, I think that these tax cuts ought to be made permanent.

I’m not talking about the Bush tax cuts, of course. Across-the-board reductions of the income tax rate for the very richest households are amongst the most ineffective job creation policies imaginable because they are absolutely unconditional to any sort of consumer spending, business investment or other job-creating activity. Moreover, these sorts of tax cuts are even more ineffective when they are showered upon those millionaires and billionaires who respond to incentives the least and are more likely to save their tax windfall than to spend or invest it. This is why few economists unaffiliated with the Heritage Foundation or Regent University will tell you that extending the Bush tax cuts to the year 2021 actually amounts to a cost-effective policy to promote economic growth – the CBO estimates that every $1 of the Bush tax cuts has generated only a piddling 40 cents of additional economic activity.

To find such solid growth-oriented and fiscally responsible tax incentives that are targeted towards the most incentive-responsive sectors of the economy, you would have to look at the understated Obama tax cuts embedded in the 2009 stimulus package. Among the most cost-effective growth-oriented policies conducted in recent years have been the extension of the Existing Homes Tax Credit tucked into the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This unarguably pragmatic plank of the stimulus package combined Keynesian spending in the form of $5 billion of grants to low-income homeowners and it increased from 10% to 30% for the cost of energy-efficient insulation, windows, roofing, heating, ventilation and cooling systems and with a maximum tax deduction of $1,500. Because these particular tax incentives were tax credits completely conditional on very specific species of investments, the Existing Homes Tax Credit was specifically-targeted to stimulate economic activity.

The Existing Home Tax Credit was a primary reason why my family decided to splurge $13,120 renovating our house with a new set of windows. In all honesty the Obama tax credit wasn’t the only reason why we made this large investment – also, I was really, really cold. You see, our home and all of its original windows were built in 1972 – a year when the Vietnam War was a-raging, Don McLean’s “American Pie” was at the top of the Billboard charts, Richard Nixon obliterated George McGovern in his re-election campaign and five Cuban men were arrested in an elaborate plot to bug the office of the Democratic National Committee. 1972 was also mere months before the OPEC embargo on the United States, the mother of all oil crises and the classical era of energy conservation.


38 years later the seals on our windows had broken, the wood frames had warped and in many places the entire panel had fallen off its tracks. In my room the windows had degraded so badly that I literally could not close them. My room had always been drafty through high school and college; in the summer this was never really so bad, but it was always a bit uncomfortable when the outside temperature had fallen below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that my body is still struggling to adjust from the sweltering Malian Sahel, I felt that I could now submit to my father a quite-valid request to crank up the thermostat.

“For such an admirer of Jimmy Carter, you of all people should put on a sweater…”

“I am wearing a sweater – and a polar fleece and a jacket and a scarf and a hat. And when I sit in my room I can see my own breath. With all due respect to President Carter, our house in Vista is situated in a different climatic zone than his peanut farm in Plains, Georgia…”

And we agreed that maybe there exist even more effective, cost-efficient methods of heat retention than polar fleece. My dad and I gave an ample examination of each and every one of our house’s 25 windows and came to the conclusion that they were all past their expiration date. Every window in our house was broken beyond repair; the seals were broken, the cavities between the panes were full of condensation. The worst culprits were the bay windows along the wall of our dining room. Our heat vents were blowing 30 percent of our hot air right out the window! And likewise, since heating and cooling constitutes roughly half of our home energy consumption, at least $50 of the $341 we spend a month on our electric bill was being completely and unnecessarily wasted – we were throwing at least $600 out the window every year!



The root of the problem was in the fact that the original windows built in this house were made with wood frames. Wood can be fine for flooring, paneling, trim and furniture, but it is in many ways an archaic building material for window frames because wood warps, it cracks, it eventually decays and rots no matter how much protective varnish you paint it with. Even in a climate spared of termites, wooden windows are not meant to last much longer than a single generation in America (33 years in my family). If people want to live in homes made of wood that’s fine, but so long as the United States’ official housing policy is to promote home ownership, then we Americans have to grasp that home ownership entails the responsibility of conducting necessary maintenance, repairs, and gradual modernization – and if we are going to own houses made out of organic materials like wood then we have to continue more regular upkeep than we would if our houses were made solely out of concrete, brick, plastic and steel.

And just as it makes only perfect sense for our every next car be a hybrid or an electric, it’s time to make sure that we not let this crisis go to waste either. If we have to replace our windows, we are going to replace them with the most effective, the most durable, the highest quality windows on the market to cut down on the amount of energy we consume for heating and cooling. Maybe our Ben Affleck-aged, 2,400-square-foot house is too outdated to ever be LEED-certified, but we can at least remodel and renovate it into something that is significantly more energy-efficient, something that requires less consumption of fossil fuels and reduces our overall carbon footprint.

My dad decided to go with the recommendation of one of his friends and hired Thermo-Tite Windows – a small business of a few dozen employees based out of Port Chester, New York which sells the highest-graded window available on the market to private homeowners. Apparently, we learned that when we are buying new windows every 38 years or so we should ensure the quality of the products we purchase by checking the window performance rating issued by the National Fenestration Rating Council.

Every window worth its weight in sand should be affixed with an NFRC rating label detailing the following:

• U-factor - which measures how much energy material conducts.
• solar heat gain coefficient - which measures how well a product blocks heat cause by the sunlight.
• visible transmittance - which measures how much visible light comes through the glass.
• condensation resistance –which measures the window’s ability to resist condensation on the interior surface.

The problem with our 38-year-old double-paned windows was that all that sat between those panes was gas composed of the natural ratio between nitrogen, oxygen, water vapor, carbon dioxide and argon found in Earth’s atmosphere.


“What is argon?” you might ask. Argon is a noble gas, element number 18. People usually do not give it much notice unless they are either engaged in the business of poultry asphyxiation, graphite production, titanium processing, filling up fluorescent light bulbs or windows. But people should give this noble gas the credit that it is due. Coming in third after only nitrogen (78.09%) and oxygen (20.95%), argon gas constitutes approximately 0.93% of the volume of Earth’s atmosphere; coming in fourth is the most prevalent greenhouse gas – carbon dioxide – which constitutes a mere 0.039%. Argon gas exhibits certain properties which allow us humans to utilize it in our manufacturing of windows in a way that reduces the prevalence of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere.

In vintage Genesis-with-Peter Gabriel-Era windows like the ones we had in our house, naturally-occurring argon gas usually constitutes only 0.93% of the insulation. That’s a terrible waste of that fraction of that millimeter of space between the two panes of glass that could be easily filled with a plurality of argon gas – which conducts heat less efficiently than nitrogen or oxygen. When the Mason family’s climate-controlled home interior is set to 68 degrees and the portion of the atmosphere directly adjacent to the windows is 34 degrees, the basic laws of thermodynamics entail that heat will gradually transfer from the portion of the atmosphere inside our house to the atmosphere outside of our house. Hence despite the fact that we were setting our thermostat and consuming enough energy to heat the house to 68 degrees it felt closer to 58 or even 48 right next to the windows.

Now in the 2010s the Thermo-Tite Window Company is mass-marketing double-paned windows with enhanced argon content of the slight cavity between the two panes. Gaseous argon allows for significantly less heat conduction than gaseous nitrogen or oxygen – so the greater the ratios of argon to nitrogen and argon to oxygen in a given gaseous mixture, the slower it will conduct heat. Compared to windows filled with naturally-composed dry air, this argon-enhanced double-pane window reduces heat conductivity by roughly 30 percent.



In a temperate climate like New York, most families consume approximately 864 kilowatt/hours of energy and spend $95 month air-conditioning their home from May through August. Since heat can also be conducted from the hot summer air outside through your windows to the air-conditioned interior, windows like my old Thermopanes with a high U-factor are wasting about 30 percent of that energy or $29 of their monthly electric bills on air-conditioning which also effectively is lost through the windows. And those are only the economic windfalls of the windows’ reduced heat conductivity!

Argon-filled Thermo-Tite Windows also receive such high performance ratings from the National Fenestration Rating Council because of their solar heat gain coefficient, their visible transmittance, and the windows’ condensation resistance. These factors are also beneficial to my household’s bottom line, because homes are also inadvertently heated by the sunlight which passes through the double-paned windows – so windows marked by higher solar heat gain coefficients and lower visible transmittance are heated by unwanted solar radiation during the months when families are cranking the AC. A New York household that uses a central air conditioner 8 hours a day could reduce the amount of heat coming into their house via solar radiation and reduce the amount of energy that their air conditioning system needs to bring the house to their designated temperature.

In layman’s terms, Thermo-Tite’s windows are framed with special insulating fiberglass which reduces the chance of condensation forming on the inside of the two panes. Thermo-Tite’s silver oxide-coated windows reduce the amount of solar radiation that passes through the glass panes and argon cavity – and this reduces the amount of energy consumed on cooling houses in the summer, which is much less than that lost by conduction but a considerable amount of energy nonetheless. With such slight technological improvements in manufacturing these windows from making the frames out of durable steel, plastic and fiberglass instead of wood, coating the glass with silver dioxide and filling the space between the two panes with concentrated argon gas, we can prevent so much wasted energy consumption on cooling by about 30 to 35 percent. In New York we consume a much greater percentage of our annual energy bill on heating than cooling in comparison to a household in Texas or Arizona, but over the months and years the costs add up nonetheless.

Altogether, New Yorkers typically spend 50 percent of their overall utility bills - roughly $4,000 - on heating and air-conditioning. So if there is any way that we can reduce the amount of energy we consume on heating and air-conditioning our homes – even by just a fraction, it can eventually adds up to hundreds if not thousands of dollars in savings every year. That means that if the average family in New York were to replace their outdated air-filled double-paned windows with energy-efficient argon-filled double-panes, they could save an average $600 each year on their electric bills. So by investing in more energy-efficient windows and reducing their consumption of fossil-fuel-generated electricity, that average family in New York would save themselves the equivalent of their much-heralded rebate from the 2001 Bush tax cuts every single year from now until they move out of their current home.

More money saved on utility bills is more money the pockets of consumers – in terms of economic behavior, savings on utility bills has supply-side effects on consumer spending no less than a check in the mail from the U.S. Treasury. If anything, it is more effective than the ostentatiously-marketed supply-side stimulus of the Bush tax cuts because people are less likely to notice the money saved and put it in the bank and more likely to go out and spend it on better-quality food at the supermarket, a new jacket at the department store, dinner and a movie with their girlfriend or a round of beers for all of their friends at the bar. Instead of spending money on oil imported from the Middle East, people who improve the energy-efficiency of their homes are now freed to spend that money on goods and services produced here in the United States.

A free market purist would argue that every consumer in America should simply be educated about the economics of energy consumption and the science of argon-filled windows and they should be able to decide upon such a clearly money-saving investment by their own reason and free will. Maybe my parents would have replaced the drafty windows in my room simply because it was so cold that I could see my breath at night. But what really prodded them to make this decision was the Obama administration’s $1,500 home weatherization tax credit.

After my dad and I inspected all of our broken, leaking 38-year-old windows, we did the math and calculated that to hire Thermo-Tite to replace every one of them would cost $13,120. But thanks to the tax credit, it would really only cost us $11,620 – still a significant sum, but a much more manageable one. Though we live in a relatively large 2,400-square-foot house, so we consume more energy on climatisation. by investing in more energy-efficient windows alone we should save approximately $50 month on our electric bills

Thanks to the Obama administration’s tax credit, we decided to pay Thermo-Tite Windows for $13,120 worth of argon-filled double-pane windows, insulated frames and installation. Our $13,120 went towards the windows themselves – which were manufactured in New Jersey, the Thermo-Tite company headquartered in Port Chester, New York, and the subcontracted carpenters who live throughout the Hudson Valley. And when the work was done we gave each one of the carpenters a $20 tip. The home weatherization tax credit spurred us to take $13,220 that would have otherwise laid fallow in the bank and to spend it on goods and services right here at home.

…And those window manufacturers in New Jersey and the management in Port Chester and the carpenters from Wappinger’s Falls are going to take the money they earned from us and spend it at the supermarket, at the movie theater, on Christmas gifts for their wives and their children. And that money in the pockets of working class households who need it the most is going to create more demand for more goods and more services and more jobs as it continues circulating and multiplying throughout the economy. From personal observation, I can tell you that the Existing Homes Tax Credit was the deciding factor in my family’s decision to put $13,220 into the economy – and all of this additional spending cost the U.S. Treasury only $1,500 in tax deductions. And the window-makers, carpenters and management are going to pay more income taxes, that extra money circulating and multiplying is going to generate sales taxes, thus the federal and state governments are going to reduce their deficits with more tax revenue.



The grant and tax incentive policies have received criticism over the past year as they have grossly underperformed the Obama administration benchmark of weatherizing 600,000 homes by March 2010. Vice President Biden came to in Manchester, New Hampshire to celebrate the weatherization of the 200,000th home on August 27th. At the current trajectory, the Energy Department will probably announce the 600,000th home improvement paid for with the Weatherization Assistance Program sometime in the sequel Recovery Summer 2011.



A March 2010 article by Garance Burke in the Boston Globe panned the weatherization measures of the Obama stimulus, noting that a year after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed by President Obama “the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes – about 5 percent of the overall goal – and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned.” Burke emphasized individual instances of inactivity as poster-children for the WAP grants’ ineffectuality;

“In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs.”

Burke and other critics are correct to point out the inconvenient truth that this one of the Obama administration’s signature job creation policies has lagged in meeting its expectations on time. However, they are misguided in asserting that this lag in job creation has been due to any inherent fault in the structure of the Weatherization Assistance Program or the extension of the Existing Homes Tax Credit. One of the primary reasons why the home weatherization policies have yet to live up to the Obama administration’s projected job creation numbers has been because the Recovery Act was designed so that most of the stimulus funds would be spent by the individual states – and for one reason or another, the individual states have not administered the home weatherization programs that these grants are meant to fund.

The weatherization program has underperformed nationally because it has underperformed disproportionately in states like Alaska, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina where the rock-ribbed Republican state governments are ideologically opposed to implementing President Obama’s stimulus policy. "We can't accept the bait," said Sarah Palin - then-Governor of Alaska. "It's a bribe - it's 'here, take these dollars - but you gotta grow your government.'" In addition to federal grants to pay for home weatherization, Governor Palin rejected energy efficiency grants, immunizations, air quality grants, emergency food assistance, homeless grants, senior meals, child care development grants, nutrition programs, homeless grants, arts, unemployment services, air quality, justice assistance grants and other programs allocated to Alaska. Surely if we are to caste blame for the disappointing track record of the home weatherization grants and tax credits in states like Alaska, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana and South Carolina, we should be pointing our fingers at GOP Governors like Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Haley Barbour, Bobby Jindal and Mark Sanford who have sacrificed the weatherization grants which would greatly benefit their constituents on the altars of national ticket ambitions.

Other states like California have fared so badly implementing their share of the Recovery Act’s stimulus funds because not because their Governors were more interested in political grandstanding but because their hands have been tied by sheer political gridlock. Though Governor Schwarzenegger had been an outspoken proponent of the Obama administration’s home weatherization policies in his state, California has been largely unable to implement stimulus projects because the state government is undergoing such a budget crisis has slashed public employees to such austere extremes – Governor Schwarzenegger has asked state employees to take voluntary “Furlough Fridays” – that the state can hardly cash their Weatherization Assistance Program grants let alone establish and conduct a brand new state housing program.

However, the opposite is true in Massachusetts – which is perfectly on schedule with spending its $122 million in WAP grants by the U.S. Energy Department’s March 2012 deadline. As of May, the Commonwealth had insulated 2,845 units of private housing, employing 42 new contractors and 220 new installers. The Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development has also awarded more than $10 million to 20 local housing authorities to weatherize the state’s 50,000 public housing units and replace their outdated, inefficient heating systems – with material procurement and installation happening as you read this blog. The primary reason why the Obama administration’s weatherization grants have been so consequential in Massachusetts while they have been faltering elsewhere is that under Governor Deval Patrick Massachusetts already had a established a functioning home weatherization program of its own albeit with a much smaller budget. When the Recovery Act’s WAP grants were allocated to the respective state governments, Massachusetts did not have to waste time with HR issues and was able to hit the ground running.

The Weatherization Assistance Program has yet to meet its job creation in the immediate short run perhaps because state-administered home weatherization programs are not as “shovel-ready” as federal highway spending or aid to the states to retain public school teachers, police officers. Nevertheless, as of Joe Biden’s August commemoration of the 200,000th weatherization of a private home with federal stimulus dollars, despite the delays and setbacks experienced in some of the largest states, this program had created approximately 13,000 jobs for plumbers, carpenters, electricians, welders and other assorted craftsmen. As states are picking up the pace, tens of thousands more jobs are projected to be generated by the modest $5 billion Weatherization Assistance Program.

An unfortunate matter for the Obama administration and other cheerleaders of Keynesian spending is that there exists hardly an iota of data available on the Existing Home Tax Credit for economists and public policy experts to parse. Homeowners were only able to begin making tax deductions on money they invested in energy-efficient retrofitting beginning as of Tax Day 2010 – so it would be fair to say that with the notable exception of professional policy analysts the vast majority of taxpayers did not feel this incentive until this year. Until we have conclusive numbers from the Departments of Treasury on how many people actually took this tax deduction, we can’t really know how much it costs because its expenditure is perfectly conditional on the degree to which people respond to this incentive, until we have employment statistics through December we can’t know how many jobs it created, and until we have statistics from the Department of Energy we can’t project how much they are going to reduce U.S. energy consumption and emission of greenhouse gases.

This whole matter of home weatherization is anything but a campaign of feel-good activism – it is a serious policy to spur economic growth and recovery. As far as tax cuts go, the Existing Homes Tax Credit is remarkably cost-efficient because there are no public monies being wasted on just throwing tax cuts at everyone with the hope that some of it might stick. The carrot of the tax credit is perfectly contingent on actual spending, so if you weatherize your house and actually put money into the economy you receive a tax credit, if you don’t you get nothing and the deficit is no worse as a result. No public monies are frittered on idle speculation, stagnant saving or wasteful consumption– the cost to the Treasury of this particular tax credit is directly offset by consumer investment which stimulates demand for domestically-produced goods and services and spurs employment for working class and middle class Americans. Since home heating and cooling costs are disproportionate strains on the pocketbooks of those working class and middle class families who can afford them the least, this tax credit is remarkably progressive – while at the same it remains egalitarian as higher-income families like my own can benefit from saving on energy bills all the same.

If my parents were to live in this house indefinitely then their investment in energy efficiency would pay for itself with savings on home heating and cooling bills after approximately 19 years; assuming that my parents still live in this house into their 70s then sometime around the year 2029 they would have an additional $4,800 every year to splurge on vacation, invest on the stock market, tuck away in their savings account, or do whatever their hearts desire with the windfall of real energy savings. Though by that time they Dan and Sue Mason will more likely have sold their present house and retired to Vermont or the Berkshires; they will nevertheless benefit because they will be able to sell this property for a higher price – not because of idle speculation on the real estate market but because they have invested in the real value of their home. Whichever way you look at it, the home weatherization tax credit will in the long run foster greater savings, investment and spending on goods and services produced in America, it could help revive the real value of property on the real estate market and should be a boon to the financial interests of homeowners, landlords and renters alike.

However, like the Bush tax cuts the extension of the Existing Homes Tax Credit is set to expire on December 31st of this year. Rich Neale, a sales representative for Thermo-Tite Windows says “We’ll still have jobs here and there, but a good portion of our business comes from customers are deciding to weatherize their windows solely because of the tax incentive. We’re afraid that at the end of the year our business is going to dry up.”

As Congress deliberates on which tax cuts to extend and which to let expire, the Existing Homes Tax Credit must not be overlooked. This directly targeted tax incentive stimulates economic activity and fosters job creation more cost-effectively than blanket reductions of the income tax, capital gains and dividends tax, and especially the inheritance tax. Moreover, these tax credits estimated to be valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars and their $5 billion public spending counterparts are relatively modest and affordable. Not all tax cuts serve as incentives for private sector growth the same way, some tax cuts are simply better fiscal policies than others, and there is no compelling economic argument that the gargantuan, ineffective, regressive boondoggles of the Bush tax cuts should be renewed but the modest, cost-effective, job-creating Existing Homes Tax Credit should be allowed to expire.

From my perspective, this is a no-brainer.

The Future is Here

Now that the clunker of a Jeep Wrangler has been traded for a hyper-efficient Toyota Prius, I’ve been in awe of modern Japanese technology. Being eternally vigilant of keeping my smug emissions to a minimum, I can only heap praise upon the ultra-light, aerodynamic, hybrid-electric which stands as the most fuel-efficient gasoline-consuming automobile ever mass-produced thusfar in the history of human civilization.


It is a pleasure to drive, the built-in GPS and rear-monitor make driving and parking incredibly easier, and with an average of 48 miles per gallon on highways and 51 miles per gallon in cities I hardly ever have to fill up for gas. When I drove the Wrangler I could hardly drive from Vista to Vermont without having to fill the tank, but on a recent road trip I was able to drive the Prius from Amherst, Massachusetts to Alexandria, Virginia – a total of 8.5 hours and 401 miles – without having to stop for gas! And if that weren’t good enough, it only cost me $29 because the Prius gas tank is so small to begin with! Forget about carbon emissions; the expense of this car will eventually pay for itself in savings on gasoline consumption!

Though it is the most fuel-efficient car on the market, the Prius isn’t necessarily the superlative most cost-efficient when it comes to fuel consumption. Though the Prius II gets 48/51 miles per gallon it costs a whopping $22,800 – whereas the Honda Civic gets a mere 40/43 mpg it also costs only $15,800. Of course, if private consumers as well as policymakers in business and government are trying to figure out ways of minimizing CO2 emissions, they should focus more on those models that can reduce fuel consumption the most cost-efficiently. Hybrid vehicles are only going to be practical solutions to the macroeconomic issues of air pollution and climate change when they are sold at a price that not just the sons of doctors and real estate brokers but also middle-class and working-class consumers can afford such an unwieldy investment.

So the other day I was driving around doing errands when I stopped in a parking garage and saw something which put my puny Prius to shame: a Tesla Roadster.

I was just dumbstruck standing there for what must’ve been five minutes admiring this beautiful, sleek and unarguably sexy car as though it were Lea Michele posing there in the parking garage in lingerie and stilettos… (drool)…

And this Jamaican delivery guy parks next to me, sees me and laughs a good hearty belly laugh, “Ho ho ho! Dis electreec ca! De man paks his electreec ca hea every day! It ees de Futah!”

“Yeah… I know…”

“You know how much money I spen’ on gas? Hundreds and hundreds o’ dollas every week! If I had an electreec ca I could deeliver my packages and not spend no money! I’d just plug eet in and feell eet with electreecity!”

And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t help but think of that Jamaican dude in the parking garage. In all probability this guy making $15,000-$20,000 a year can’t afford to go out and buy a Tesla Roadster. And he’s probably not in line to buy one of the first Chevy Volts for $32,780 or one of the Nissan Leafs for $25,280. But what if one day five, ten, twenty years from now the Volt or the Leaf or one of their progeny is produced on such a scale that he can afford to buy one?

These electric cars are being marketed as being able to run on $1.50 worth of electricity per day. If you can charge your car up at home or at the office then the cost would just be added to your overall utility bill – but a great deal of commuters who need to drive long distances every day would need to be able to recharge at private recharging stations en route. A small business owner like a package deliverer, a carpenter, a cable repairman or Joe the Plumber who drives from house to house for business might have to recharge multiple times every work day! And of course, no country has ever had a full-scale economy of electric-charging stations and we can only speculate as to how this hypothetical market is going to function.

But could the recharging of electric cars really cost only $1.50 per day – even for someone like the Jamaican delivery guy whose job consists of driving around town all day long? And wouldn’t charging a commuter fleet only be adding to the burden of our already-strained electric grids? Maybe in a market along the swaths of California, Nevada, Arizona and Texas desert that will soon be electrified exclusively with solar and wind energy a fleet of electric cars could have a miniscule carbon footprint - but here in New York where so much of our electricity is derived from oil, coal and gas of course electric cars would only have a marginal effect on reducing our greenhouse emissions for staving off the most disastrous global climate change. Electric cars could have only modest improvements on our environmental degradation in a cloudy region like New York without a massive reinvention of our energy grid - which for now remains untold generations away, so they can really only be rationally superior products in this market if they offer genuine economic benefits in terms of saving on transportation costs.

I must concede my own ignorance on the matter – and beseech you all in the peanut gallery for some answers. At the moment I’m only tangentially interested in electric cars in terms of air pollution or carbon emissions – I'm much more interested in the potential for electric cars to improve the traditional indicators in our economy. If a typical commuter who drives from, say, the suburbs of Westchester County to Madison Avenue five days a week were to drive a Tesla Roadster, a Chevy Volt or a Nissan Leaf, how much money would he be saving on gas? In the case of the Jamaican delivery guy who is driving not just as a commuter but as an operating cost of his business, how lucrative would his investment in a Volt be over the course of 10 years? Is this fuel-saving technology something that could help small businesses stay afloat in this perilous economy – and if so, to what degree? Could it help small and large firms save so much money on gas that they could actually afford to invest and expand their production and start making new hires? And considering that many of these cars are going to be manufactured here in the United States and they will be using less Middle Eastern oil, how will the growth of electric cars effect our trade deficits? Can the gradual conversion from a fleet of gasoline-fueled cars and trucks to vehicles powered by electric batteries contribute to the overall solvency of the United States economy?

If any of you can find any good data on the economic benefits of electric cars – or even just personal anecdotes or musings on your own household budget, I would much appreciate it. Here’s to making Zacstravaganza more of a two-way conversation in the new year!