Cap and trade bullshit
- Thread starter papajohn56
- Start date
That's interesting. I thought it was the 9.4% national unemployment rate.
What's great about Barack Obama is that he is going to be an example of the greatest false advertising campaign in American history. Nothing is going to "change" or improve under his Presidency given his track record thus far as president. In fact, by most measures, things have gotten worse. And given that the Democratic "leadership" in the House and Senate is incompetent, the general US population is going to see what happens when lefties get all the control.
Haha, nice.
Obama: I have to use the men's room.
Jefferson: #1 or #2?
Obama: #2
Jefferson: Bad news, I used the rest of the toilet paper.
Obama: No problem. I'll just use that document you were talking about earlier. What was it called again?
Jefferson: THE CONSTITUTION?!?!?
Obama: Ya, that's the one. Be back in about 15 minutes.
It doesn't matter who gets elected, seriously. Thinking that a politician can "save the world" is like hiring the guy who molested 3 kids from your son's school as a babysitter.
Politicians are here to rape you anally. I stopped living in denial a long time ago. I mean yeah, you're gonna get loved tenderly by the officials but it doesn't mean that you can't be happy or make lots of money.
Capitalism isn't perfect but what alternatives do we have? Communism? People who make lots of money get to pull the strings, that's basically all there is to it.
1) Decide that you wanna become a politician
2) ???
3) Push the "right" agendas after getting elected
4) Profit
This veered off into a side discussion of which (if any) party is to blame, but I'll be the spoiler to the party on the initial points.
First, I also think that cap and trade is a flawed concept, mainly for the reasons bprimeelite pointed out. I don't like it. But ...
I grew up in Germany, came to the US as an adult and have been living here for about 5 years. What I noticed almost right away is an awfully thoughtless and wasteful behavior towards energy here, coupled with an incredible sense of entitlement to cheap energy rates.
Examples:
I worked in an office where it wouldn't even cross peoples' mind to turn off their desktop computer incl their monitor in the evening, not even on a Friday. Result: the computer sits there the whole weekend drawing screensavers. And all for what? to save the 2 mins it takes to boot up on Monday morning?
A friend forgot something from the store and we also want to get a DVD from Blockbusters there. When we leave the place, the TV is left on along with the surround sound system and all lights in two rooms and the kitchen.
It takes 8 mins (I timed it once) to walk to the store. He drives. Of course. When I propose walking, I get a look as if I came from Mars.
We buy one item in the store, in a container that has already a handle built in. The check-out clerk automatically wants to put the thing in plastic bags. Not one, but two - because it's so heavy. I say I don't want bags, I can just as well carry the thing with its own handle. The clerk takes the bags he already has in his hands, crumbles them up and thows them in the trash. I say "The idea was to save the bags", all I get is a blank stare.
At home, in the winter, the heavy vertical blinds on my window move around although the window is closed. The heat escaping through the unisolated and not tightly closing windows creates a thermal draft. But since it's a rental apt and tenants pay the energy bill, the landlord has no incentive to insulate the house properly.
Almost all self-service restaurants serve their food on throw-away plates and cups, with plastic utensils and a pile of paper napkins you didn't ask for. Hell, often even when I go to a nice bar where they charge 10 bucsk for a drink, I get it in a friggin plastic cup, as if I was at McDonalds.
Recently, I was in Roberto's Taqueria on Mission Beach in San Diego, apparently a popular spot and known for its huge portions. A couple next to us had the table full of food, probably like 3 dishes between the two of them. Of course they couldn't finish. One of the plates with literally a mountain of shreddded beef, beans, rice and cheese went straight into the trash nearly untouched.
How is that related? It takes energy to raise cattle and other ingredients, process and transport them and cook the food. And, plastic bags, cups and utensils are made from oil, the same oil as your gasoline. Demand influences price.
I could continue this list almost endlessly. Few of those scenes would ever play out that way in Germany. We also pay over $6 a gallon for gasoline and much higher rates for electricity. Did it bankrupt our country? Did it ruin our industry? No. We've been hit by the global recession like everyone else, but we're doing ok. Still number one exporter in the world, even ahead of China. High energy costs did not break our necks. And although no one likes high gas prices, people there don't complain nearly as much as they do here when prices approach the $3 mark.
I think this country has a long way to go to offset higher energy prices with less wasteful behavior and that would ultimately be a good thing.
oh here we go - obama wants to keep guantanamo open and continue indefinite detainment. ahah where is this "change"?
White House Weighs Exec Order On Detention - CBS News
White House Weighs Exec Order On Detention - CBS News
Dems are in control now. I know the other side has its downs. But I'm talking about the original ideals of conservatives. Not the two faces we have now.
We need to flush the toilet, I agree.
OK..I will play along bro. If the US places caps on emissions that will make manufacturing more expensive. China and India WILL NOT put caps on manufacturing. This makes manufacturing anything in the US even more expensive than in China and India. Now, why would any company in their right mind do business in the US, when you can move your operations to China and/or India and do them for a fraction of the cost.
good luck bro
While we are on the subject HR 2454 was passed. Not surprisingly was heavily modified and added too in the wee early morning before the vote which wouldn't allow anyone to actually read the bill.
John Boenher (Ohio) actually had to stand up and started reading it out loud for an hour because that was the only way anyone would even know what the fuck was in it. Not that he came close to covering the whole thing.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzT3alD0_U"]YouTube - JOHN BOENHER SPEECH ON CLIMATE BILL[/ame]
We are so fucked.
John Boenher (Ohio) actually had to stand up and started reading it out loud for an hour because that was the only way anyone would even know what the fuck was in it. Not that he came close to covering the whole thing.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jzT3alD0_U"]YouTube - JOHN BOENHER SPEECH ON CLIMATE BILL[/ame]
We are so fucked.
Let's add insult to injury:
White House won't rule out taxing health benefits - USATODAY.com
He wants to tax your health insurance benefits to pay for other people's gubmint aid.
White House won't rule out taxing health benefits - USATODAY.com
He wants to tax your health insurance benefits to pay for other people's gubmint aid.
Correct
Recession drops energy price. Now price of gas in US is cheaper than subsidized prices in Indonesia. At least for a while.
People no longer have money to burn.
As for affiliates, don't worry. There is always something to sell. Like e-books on how to survive financial crisis. Who care it works. We make the money someone else deal with the legal issue.
Is this the peagou tax? It's a good tax. Rather than taxing income governments should tax polution and land. Those who create negative externalities or use positive externalities (like road, public school), should pay for it. Those who receive negative externalities or produce positive externalities should be compensated.
Now, the problem with externalities is that government rather than the market decides what is externalities, whether it's positive, or negative, and how much it is. So it's not governed by price mechanism.
But, still better than taxing income.
Since everyone ignored this post I'll comment on it. I live in the UK and I agree with a lot of what you say, the US wastes an extreme amount of energy (the fact that plugs are only 170V wastes energy).
HOWEVER, the fact that energy here in europe its so FUCKING expensive just proves how much money we hand over to our shitty governments. So many taxes from petrol to electricity and alcohol. Americans have got it easy, but not for long of course.
Disposable place settings are cheaper (in energy) to produce, and they don't require sanitation or cleaning, and they can't be used as weapons, or shatter and cut someone.
IIRC, Brown bags have a higher energy cost to produce than plastic bags.
If one wants to be intelligent about the economy and human action, it might be wise to make two logical progressions when you are thinking. That is to say, analyze the cost against the lost potential of incurring that cost. Or look at what is SEEN and what is UNSEEN.
IIRC, Brown bags have a higher energy cost to produce than plastic bags.
If one wants to be intelligent about the economy and human action, it might be wise to make two logical progressions when you are thinking. That is to say, analyze the cost against the lost potential of incurring that cost. Or look at what is SEEN and what is UNSEEN.
Also, waste can be corrected with efficiency. It shouldn't be addressed by making everyone poorer and forcing them to give up their quality of life.
Certainly not while it makes the fatcat politicians and their special interest buddies rich. That's straight up thievery, not social engineering (neither of which I am a fan of).
Certainly not while it makes the fatcat politicians and their special interest buddies rich. That's straight up thievery, not social engineering (neither of which I am a fan of).
Cap and trade is about making polluters either:
- pay for the damage they are doing to the environment (i.e. us people who have to breathe in the pollution)
- or reduce their emmissions (in this case they may be able to profit by selling off the pollution permits they have).
This way, if it really is very hard for them to avoid polluting, fine. They pay for the privelige. If they can avoid polluting fairly cheaply, they avoid polluting and sell their permits to someone who cannot easliy avoid polluting.
It worked very well with Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)pollution. Power companies with coal-fired power stations siad it would be very expensive to cut SO2 pollution. When faced with the choice of buying pollution permits or just cutting their pollution, they decided just to cut the pollution. The cost of SO2 pollution permits has gone way down now. No-one wants them because it is actually so cheap to avoid polluting anyway. In other words, the power companies were bluffing when they said it would be so hard to cut SO2 pollution.
- pay for the damage they are doing to the environment (i.e. us people who have to breathe in the pollution)
- or reduce their emmissions (in this case they may be able to profit by selling off the pollution permits they have).
This way, if it really is very hard for them to avoid polluting, fine. They pay for the privelige. If they can avoid polluting fairly cheaply, they avoid polluting and sell their permits to someone who cannot easliy avoid polluting.
It worked very well with Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)pollution. Power companies with coal-fired power stations siad it would be very expensive to cut SO2 pollution. When faced with the choice of buying pollution permits or just cutting their pollution, they decided just to cut the pollution. The cost of SO2 pollution permits has gone way down now. No-one wants them because it is actually so cheap to avoid polluting anyway. In other words, the power companies were bluffing when they said it would be so hard to cut SO2 pollution.