Slashdot Mirror
Stimulus Could Kickstart US Battery Industry
Al sends along a Technology Review piece that begins "Provisions in the Congressional stimulus bill could help jump-start a new, multibillion-dollar industry in the US for manufacturing advanced batteries for hybrids and electric vehicles and for storing energy from the electrical grid to enable the widespread use of renewable energy. The nearly $790 billion economic stimulus legislation contains tens of billions of dollars in loans, grants, and tax incentives for advanced battery research and manufacturing, as well as incentives for plug-in hybrids and improvements to the electrical grid, which could help create a market for these batteries. Significant advances in battery materials, including the development of new lithium-ion batteries, have been made in the US in the past few years; but advanced battery manufacturing is almost entirely overseas, particularly in Asia."
Every time I read "grant", "advanced research", and "tax incentive", I see "gift", "white elephant", and "sleaze".
Yes, it's good to spend collective funds on roads, bridges, art, maybe even public fiber, insurance, and banking. But anything the market can do, it should. And I mean a free market, not that fake crony capitalism championed by Bush. In a free market, with proper authority to stop the powerful from escaping the rules, every company is free to compete without barriers. Every subsidy, cheap loan, and grant is a distortion of that market unless it goes to areas that cannot make a profit.
My blog
I don't want another battery, I want something completely new. I hope that the text of the bill doesn't actually use the words "battery" or even "electro-chemical".
I would so much rather a ultra-capacitor or some similar storage device that could conceivably be free of rare metals, and have extremely fast charge times (were the current available)
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
You feel good about an agenda being forced on you and paid for with your taxmoney? This has nothing to do with the economy. They are using the economy as an excuse to pay for things that are not necessary.
drink the cool-aid sheeple.
Bullshit. This is just more pork that's avoiding the issue. A "stimulus" would be punishing the people responsible for this mess, setting things up so that it can't happen again, and giving people faith in the system so that they aren't scared to spend their money knowing it will come back to them.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So other than racism do you have any comment you wanted to make?
The reality is dumping in China or in California will impact everyone. Do you know where rivers end up going? We can and should set standards on environmental cleanliness. Then to ensure that our companies are not at a disadvantage all products imported to this nation must be produced in a way that meets those standards or its cost should be increased via tariffs to prevent abuse of the commons.
The reality is dumping has a cost, but it is externalized. A tariff would merely internalize this cost.
There are only three ways to finance a deficit: taxes, debt, and inflation. Add this trillion dollars to Bush's trillion dollars, and the inescapable conclusion is that payment will be large, painful, and unlubed.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If you finance with debt, and spend the money borrowed on something that makes you markedly more productive, in the end it can be far cheaper than never going into debt at all. Let's say I'm selling firewood. If I borrow to buy a chain saw and a mechanized log splitter I'm going to be able to produce 20 times the firewood in the same amount of time, with the same amount of labor. That log splitter pays for itself in the first year. Smart debt is like that.
The whole point of "capitalism" is capital - specifically borrowing it through various mechanisms so it can be employed to produce efficiencies that more-than-pay-it-back. A system without such mechanisms of debt isn't capitalist at all. Not all uses of debt work out; but when they do it's the very genius of the capitalist system.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
How convenient, after years of economic prosperity on the back of trade with China (which both benefited from) now that there's a crisis they're against free trade and everyone should isolate themselves.
Like it or not it was the greed of certain Americans that caused this crash, the reason it spread all across the world is because the whole world has been investing in the US sub-prime sector.
Trying to deny that we live in a global economy, just as it goes into a crisis, is extremely irresponsible and we'd only end up hurting ourselves.
Finally if you want to "Kick them the fuck out" try not buying their products.. Good luck, their products are what make the Western lifestyle affordable.
// MD_Update(&m,buf,j);
How convenient, after years of economic prosperity on the back of trade with China (which both benefited from) now that there's a crisis they're against free trade and everyone should isolate themselves.
China and the USA have a complicated relationship that goes through weird phases. By and large most Americans like Chinese people... Chinese food is great, the history and artwork are just amazing. There's always going to be an American soft spot for China because the two countries are opposites in some ways - China is very old, and America is very young.
Like it or not it was the greed of certain Americans that caused this crash, the reason it spread all across the world is because the whole world has been investing in the US sub-prime sector
Well, I'm not buying the sub-prime thing. The total value of all mortgages in the USA is only about 10 trillion dollars, and so I would think that if the subprime mess were the problem, that's only about two trillion worth, and the USA has already pumped that much money into the banking system to cover those losses, either via TARP, or via games played with the Federal Reserve.
Finally if you want to "Kick them the fuck out" try not buying their products.. Good luck, their products are what make the Western lifestyle affordable.
Um, the western lifestyle was more affordable before those products happened. It used to be, before free trade, that a single man could work 9-5 at a steel mill, support a stay at home, a bunch of kids, pay for medical expenses out of his pocket, own his house and have two new cars and a TV, and he could send his kids to college. When he retired, he got a company pension that lasted not only until he died, but until his wife died. Since the emergence of free trade, bit by bit, that standard of living has been eroded and that's what the Democrats are just screaming about while, foolishly, Republicans keep pushing the free trade button despite all the ruin that it caused. Yes, its good on paper, free trade is, but it just doesn't work.
This is my sig.