President Obama’s policies have been bad for everyone, except for the handful who have profited from cronyism and those who prefer to live on welfare, but they have especially devastated poor and middle-income Americans. With a simple chart, Philip Klein explains why this is true with respect to Obama’s “green energy” initiatives.

If you are in the top income quintile, energy costs account for only 4.3% of your income, on the average. So if energy (gasoline, heating oil and electricity, primarily) doubles in price, you’re not happy about it, but you probably don’t cancel your vacation. On the other hand, if you are in the bottom income quintile, energy accounts, on the average, for 24.4% of your income. If the cost of energy doubles, the result is real hardship: your family eats lower quality food, your children don’t get new clothes, you don’t go anywhere unless you have to. That is the impact that Barack Obama has had on the poor:

Everyone knows that the price of gasoline has doubled since Obama took office. The cost of electricity has skyrocketed, too, as Obama promised it would during the 2008 campaign:

Most people think green is good but pay little attention to associated increases in costs. In 2015, it will cost between $49 and $79 to generate one megawatt hour of electricity from natural gas. A megawatt hour from onshore wind will cost between $75 and $138, and from solar photovoltaic will cost between $242 and $455.

When government drives coal-operated power plants out of business and mandates the production of “green” energy by utilities, the consumer pays the bill. This is just one of many reasons why the Obama administration, and liberal policies generally, have been disastrous for poor and middle-income Americans.