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7 comments:
1. Natural gas, not gasoline. If they were interchangeable, gasoline would be well under $3 per gallon.
2. Our laws on natural gas exports are archaic and counterproductive. We currently have an oversupply. If we could sell freely, it would help our balance of trade, and we could use that to buy something someone else has an oversupply of. Gas prices would go up some, but other prices would go down by more than enough to compensate. That's what trade does...otherwise nobody would trade. http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html
3. Your gas bill is more important than foreigners freezing?
The fact is, we need to switch over to solar, more than anything else, but to everything green and sustainable, both. This stuff is all in the past, first, but also it's also just both polluting and contributing to the carbon dioxide that's heating up the planet, whether we like or agree with it or not.
I merely stated fact here, I wasn't saying the gas bill shouldn't go up. However, if you think the money is going to foreigners freezing or not--and I'm sure you're not but that's clearly what you're suggesting--you'd be very mistaken. This money is only going to the corporations and already-wealthy.
No, the gas would be going to freezing foreigners who need heat more than money. They rely on Russia, and for obvious reasons that source is in danger. Our gas may not directly go there, but it frees up other gas in the area.
...and the Already Wealthy, like mutual fund owners and pension funds.
Before we "switch over to solar" we need to figure out how to make it work. We need significant breakthroughs in engineering. Once we figure that out the switch will happen as much as it can--more than likely slowly, and for stationary sources. Central planning won't work any better here than in Russia or Cuba.
And if we ever do get solar to work well, the Left will find something wrong with it.
If the gas frees up for the people, excellent but I think you're being unrealistically optimistic. I hope you're correct.
And yes, the already-wealthy. "Mutual fund owners" are not, statistically, the middle or lower classes, by any means.
Finally, your claims on solar, while based on truth, mostly, are pessimistic both on the improvements on technology we've made of late, as well as on the costs shrinking. Two quick, easy examples:
Cost Of Solar Power 60% Lower Than Early 2011 In US
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/10/06/2717791/cost-pv-cells-solar-power-grid-parity/
Cost Of Solar Power 60% Lower Than Early 2011 In US
http://cleantechnica.com/2013/09/19/cost-solar-power-60-lower-early-2011-us/
I had more respect for you until you ended that last comment by saying "if we ever do get solar to work well, the Left will find something wrong with it."
For starters, it's the Left who will take and is taking us there, to solar and the future and second, it's now clear you're simply, clearly of "the Right." The oh-so-wrong Right that would have us leave everything up to the unregulated free markets and corporations and wealthy.
How sad for you and for America, Americans and humanity, really.
I hadn't seen you bash the Left here, until now.
Solar is improving, and will continue to improve. The problem is that it takes quite a bit of energy to manufacture a solar panel, and that energy is rarely counted in the calculations--many of them may not last enough to recoup that energy spent building them, or the payback period is so long that spending the money on conservation--LEED buildings, better insulation, better gas mileage cars etc would save more energy per dollar spent.
I want solar to work--but it is least likely to work where and when we need it most. Basing policy on future advances is going to go as badly as Ethanol--or especially mandating cellulistic ethanol. (Oil companies get fined for not using it...even though it doesn't exist in commercial quantities yet)
The Left has a history of complaining about any useful energy source. It is clear that cheap natural gas is replacing far more damaging fuels...but since it isn't perfectly safe, the left is against new methods. Safety is important, but there's no such thing as perfectly safe.
On energy policy I'm a bit closer to the right than the left..but both sides want a top-down National Energy Policy, run by them, with plenty of protectionism and cronyism, just different details. Read up on the Jones Act's effect on refining US crude for example. There have been plenty of Republican chances to fix that in the 90-odd years since it was enacted.
"In 2012, 72 percent of mutual fund–owning households owned funds through employer-
sponsored retirement plans" "The majority of mutual fund–owning households (including both employer-sponsored and self purchased) were employed and earned moderate, although above-average, household income."
And obviously you'll have far more Network Administrators investing than Pizza Delivery Drivers, to mention jobs I've done.
The right is more limited in it's scope, and is slowly moving leftward on most of the issues where I disagreed with them in the past. The left is still wanting a government solution for almost everything--Central planning, "except this time it will work, because we are smarter than all the other places that tried it unsuccessfully".
Is there a program that you think would help people but that shouldn't be done by Government?
"The Left has a history of complaining about any useful energy source."
What sources, first, and second, if we're/they're complaining about it, it's the pollution. Now, with solar and other green and sustainable energies coming on in both technology and afforability, it only makes sense to bring them on. Corporate America will, certainly, because of the savings they'll gain but we need to take the tax deductions away from fossil fuels, especially coal and Big Oil and give and/or keep the tax deductions for green energy achievements.
That's not "central planning" at all. Central planning isn't coming to America and the Left doesn't want that.
Government doesn't need to and can't, of course, do everything as you would assume I think or want, apparently. What it can do is reign in the incredibly greedy as it should have done with, as a best example, the 2008 financial collapse by regulating the financial industry. It's not that complicated. If we--the government--also truly inspected Big Oil, we'd have likely averted the Gulf Coast oil spill. Instead, costs were set to stay low so profits could stay high and next thing you know, millions of gallons of oil were spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, as we know.
In answer to your question--s there a program that you think would help people but that shouldn't be done by Government?
Sure, there are probably lots. One that comes to mind is communications, telecommunications, for one, but that doesn't mean we don't have to regulate industries and oversee the greed of people and corporations because we do.
One of the big problems with our current tax system is that it is really hard for ordinary people to see the difference between a normal deduction and preferential treatment. This sort of complication doesn't just make corruption easier, it makes it inevitable. Most of what gets pointed to as "special breaks for big oil" are the same breaks all big business gets.
I don't think tax breaks or government backed loans and grants to renewable energy are good ideas...but if we must, at least base it on success and not just having a fancy business plan or bribing the right people.
The left does want central planning--they don't want the trouble of running the businesses themselves, but they want to meddle...then when their meddling goes wrong, blame business. (The right isn't better--they just seek power via a marginally different route)
The whole mortgage industry is government meddling from top to bottom--The mortgage deduction is a subsidy to a group that is overall wealthier than average. (and to be clear, I have a mortgage and take the deduction) Artificially low interest rates from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae created a price bubble. Government sponsored redlining destroyed values in minority neighborhoods, the "fix" made things worse by requiring loans without taking into account the ability to repay--effectively requiring predatory loans. New regulations essentially force all banks to use the same calculations when granting loans--so when the next crisis hits, it will hit all of them equally.
I suppose by some definitions it isn't central control--Instead it is uncontrolled yanking on the steering wheel while someone else drives.
... regulate industries and oversee the greed of people and corporations
That's control. Done by the feds, that's central control. And there is virtually no chance the control will only be of greed.
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