The US Economy Needs What the Phillies Have

The Philadelphia Phillies won their first world series since my favorite player of all time Mike Schmidt played third base for the team nearly 30 years ago. Looking back on the teams' success, I am struck that one of the reasons Philadelphia is celebrating today can be used as a way to help get our economy back on the path to recovery. A practice that is used in all professional sports to encourage a more level playing field for next season so that the league as a whole remains competitive and fans remain on the edge of their seats.  A practice referred to as "revenue re-cycling".

Every year professional sports leagues use "revenue re-cycling" to shift money away from the richest teams to the poorest teams in an effort to increase the overall competitiveness of the league. While these revenue re-cycling programs do not guarantee teams equal revenue, they do provide these clubs with the additional funding needed to compete at a higher level than would otherwise be possible, keeping attendance numbers from falling off dramatically during bad years.

This ability by Major League Baseball to invest in the competitiveness of its teams through revenue re-cycling is one of the reasons why the World Series has been won by eight different teams over the past ten years, and no team is able to rest on its laurels from one season to the next.  Revenue recycling in professional sports creates a focused incentive to drive competition, allowing the leagues as a whole to benefit from the results.

Using Revenue Re-Cycling to Re-Power America

This same "revenue re-cycling" program can also be used as a model for fielding new technologies to power America's energy future. Under a "cap, invest, and dividend" program that puts a price on carbon and re-cycles some of the revenues to new energy technologies, we would be investing in our competitiveness as a provider of energy solutions. Energy solutions that could be financed from future carbon revenues and used to develop new industries, grow jobs, and improve our national security.

Indeed, when considering the factors that are limiting the effectiveness of our energy economy today from; supply constraints on domestic drilling to credit constraints on new projects to price volatility uncertainty with respect to energy commodities, the need to expand our portfolio of energy solutions seems all to apparent. The more choice we have for our energy needs the less impact these factors will have on our energy prices and the more economic growth we can expect in future years.

America needs to raise the level of competitiveness in low emission energy solutions, and by re-cycling revenues from future carbon emissions into new energy technologies we can accelerate this process and provide millions of jobs for America's workers. Lets take a lesson in competitiveness from the Phillies and professional baseball and look to re-cycle revenues from a "cap, invest and dividend" program into competitive energy solutions starting today that can help re-energize our economy and reverse the funding trends set in place by the current credit crisis.