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Starting Jan. 1 and because of a law signed by President Bush back in 2007, the trusty incandescent light bulb will be effectively banned and replaced by the expensive, mercury-filled, takes-forever-to-fully-illuminate compact fluorescent light bulb or CFL.


Reason.tv casts a mournful eye back on our 100+ year relationship with the incandescent bulb.

How can government tell me what to put in my Lite Brite?

While doing a search of what we had written previously regarding the CFLs, we noted that General Electric was very active in the lobbying effort to get incandescents banned in favor of the CFLs.

However, the dirty little secret is that G.E. lobbied for these regulatory changes contained within the 2007 Energy bill. The opportunity to mandate that consumers buy the more expensive fluorescents with the additional benefit of having them manufactured on the cheap in China was one that G.E. was not going to pass up.

So to recap: More expensive bulbs? Check. Bulbs that cost American jobs? Check. Bulbs that contain an element, Mercury, that is on every banned-list that we are aware of, including the construction program we are currently working on? Check. Bulbs that allow G.E. some back-slapping smuggery that they are doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’t, yea, for the environment? Double-check.

And don’t be at all surprised if at this very moment, G.E. is working on a patent for curbside pick-up of those mercury-containing light bulbs to be disposed of in a proper fashion. For a small fee, of course.

Corporate rent-seeking that costs U.S. jobs, decreases the purchasing power of the American consumer and is bad for the environment? Yep. Pretty much sums up the American economy, currently.