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Should Taxpayers Back Cars Only the Rich Can Afford?
theodp writes "The NY Times questions the $400M in low-interest federal loans requested by Tesla Motors as part of the $25B loan package for the auto industry passed by Congress last year. 'The program is intended to encourage automakers to improve fuel efficiency, but should it be used for a purpose like this, as the 2008 Bailout of Very, Very High-Net-Worth Individuals Who Invested in Tesla Motors Act?' Tesla says it is assembling about 15 cars a week and has delivered about 80 of its $109,000 base-price Roadsters to date, many of which have gone to the Valley's billionaires and centimillionaires who are Tesla investors as well as early customers. We discussed the company's financial difficulties last month."
If you used that same gallon of gasoline to power a generator to charge your electric car, you wouldn't get any more efficiency--the opposite, in fact, due to losses in the conversion and storage process for electricity....not that they're so vastly more energy-efficient than gasoline cars (because holistically, they're not).
That is simply incorrect.
Even if 100% of the energy for an electric car is produced by oil burning power plants, you are much better off efficiency-wise than you are with an ICE-powered car. This is considering all energy losses involved, from the transportation of the fuel to the losses in the power lines to the inefficiencies in the batteries and motor. Large-scale generators are just that much more efficient.
Do two minutes of research next time before you post. Please. I have seen this myth debunked so many times, and I cannot believe it's still being repeated.
Something like a 25% efficiency is the maximum possible allowed by thermodynamics.
Not really. Combined cycle gas turbine plants can generate electricity at efficiencies close to 60% (and even higher if the waste heat is used for cogeneration). However, most electricity is still produced in older coal plants with efficiencies closer to 30%.
Monopolies are created by governments. In a free market, the free flow of capital allows the emergence of new competition whenever an existing business is inefficient.
Natural monopoly, network effects, and economies of scale. Read them, then see if you can still say that with a straight face.
Yes, obviously. You can confirm this by perusing the constitution. You will not find any authority given to the federal government to spend tax money on promoting technology other than to grant patents.
Yes, but then there is plenty of scope for this sort of spending to fall under the general welfare clause, and thus be permissible. It is a question of exactly what constitutes the "...general Welfare of the United States", and that is certainly not the clear cut black and white argument you suggest. Spending such as this has been deemed to fall under the general welfare clause for quite some time, with no successful challenges made. You're welcome to try and challenge it, but I suspect you'll fail. Furthermore, even were you to succeed, I expect that congress would have little trouble passing a constitutional amendment the next day to explicitly grant the power for spending along these lines; there's certainly sufficient support. For all intents and purposes it is constitutional.
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There is nothing bogus in it — the tax rate is very high, and those, who don't pay any simply have no net income left. Read your own link carefully and you'll see:
and, even easier to understand and feel:
Being an owner of one such small business, I can confirm this — at the end of each year, whatever is left on the business account, is paid to me as salary/bonus: from which I pay income tax. This leaves the corporation with zeroed-out income. Leaving money on the business account makes no sense — the corporation would have to pay tax on it first, and then, if it ever decides to pay employees (or shareholders) with it, those people would have to pay income tax on these same monies. Better to dispense with it right away. And if you need money later, you can borrow, because interest rates are much lower, than taxes (unless we are in a credit-crunch).
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Actually, I think godwin's law isn't about not talking about Hitler as much as it was about comparing others to Hitler and Nazi Germany. The point being is that you can have a discussion about Hitler and Germany, however when your disusing killing puppies or whatever then someone claims someone else is just like Hitler or a nazi or something, they would have lost.
It's actually more about straw-man attacks and so on then the actual subject. Pointing out something is factually correct or the same wouldn't or shouldn't trip godwin's law. I mean someone attempting to resurrect the Third Reich and calling it thee pretty ponies society shouldn't get a pass from legit criticism.