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."

Comments

Here we go again...

[pieterh]

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.

Re:Here we go again...

[garett_spencley]

Milton Friedman argued that the legal framework is already in place to deal with companies polluting the environment. It all boils down to private property. Few people pollute their own land and few people care if someone pollutes his/her own land.

Companies that pollute another person's property are already liable for damage caused to that property. The problem comes into play when dealing with public property and with the atmosphere. What we need is to extend private property laws to be inclusive of the atmosphere above that property. If someone pollutes the air on your property then you can sue him for the damages. There are already laws in place that touch on this to an extent. For example: here in Canada, if I run a business out of my home I can not allow any toxic gases to escape onto my neighbour's property. The only reason big industry isn't punished under these same laws is the practicality associated. We already have mass dumping into the atmosphere and for the government to say that it will enforce these pollution laws will have gross effects on the economy. There's really no other reason the government doesn't begin to more stringently enforce this principle.

The way I see it, the public should start suing companies in class action suits for damages to public property, the same way they do for damages to private property.

Re:Check one for science

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Check one for science

[PitaBred]

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.

Re:That kind of language doesn't say much

[wytcld]

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.