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Chinese To Supply 600 MW Wind Farm In Texas
Hugh Pickens sends in a Wall Street Journal report that Chinese banks will provide $1.5B to a consortium of Chinese and American companies to build a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using turbines made in China. The wind farm will be built on 36,000 acres, and will use 240 2.5-megawatt turbines, providing enough power to meet the electrical needs of around 150,000 American homes. The project will be the first instance of a Chinese manufacturer exporting wind turbines to the United States. China aims to be the front-runner in wind- and solar-power generation "The Obama administration is hoping a shift to renewable energy will inject new life into the US manufacturing base and provide high-paying jobs, making up for losses in other sectors. But while the US has poured money into renewable energy through tax credits and other subsidies, China has positioned itself to reap many of the benefits by ramping up its export machine."
I'm not seeing an obvious benefit to China in doing this. Is there one, or is China just being really generous?
Economic Hit Man much?
They are people too !!
Oh, T. Boone. You really need a better pseudonym.
http://twitter.com/OLDTELEGRAM
What with all the rest of the cheap Chinese shit we Americans buy every day, what's the big deal with buying some more cheap shit to generate our electricity?
Hey, cheaper turbines making cheap electricity. We're preserving the American Way of Life.
new world order
I hope that the Chinese exports to the US do not mean the USA loses all control of the technology behind the venture.
Who knows...the Chinese could well end up controlling everything we rely on. This could be a backdoor entry!
It is because they have their yuan tied artificially low to the dollar. Once America is destroy, they will simply shift it to the Euro. This is for all intents and purposes, a cold war. It is aimed cleerly at all western nations. America will go down first, but EU, Canada, Australia will follow. Right now, China is working hard to pull Japan and South Korea away from the west and have them be part of an asian bloc.
If the west does not pull together and insist that China honor their treaty obligations (drop ALL trade barriers and free their money per the Clinton agreement AND WTO), then kiss it all goodbye.
I thought those huge blades were very difficult to manufacture and transport. I know for something this expensive they can customize a barge and do something special at the port, but I'm surprised this didn't give local producers an edge. And while I considered myself knowledgeable about the waking dragon, I'm somewhat surprised that they have the manufacturing chops to produce something this "high tech". I guess it's another feather in their hat that their businessmen can arrange this sort of deal. With Texas no less.
Come ON people! Get it together!
Like our deficit financing?
Why do they need a back door when they can go in the front door of the fed?
This just makes me so cranky on a Friday morning that I don't know where to start. If the U.S. hasn't figured out that losing all its manufacturing infrastructure to other countries is a BAD thing, then maybe we deserve it. Was it the funding? Because it's not like the Chinese quality is superior (however, they are getting better). I'm all for spending a little extra money to buy a product made within my own country as long as the quality is the same.
This makes me feel all fuzzy good inside, so I endorse it. It "feels" greeny, so it must be a good thing.
...where the hell are they going to put them? I'm sitting here in West Texas in an office of a major tower manufacturer; and we have 80 towers worth of sections sitting in our storage lot (which is being expanded) that the company purchasing them can't find a home for. A couple of sites have been proposed, but they fell through because it would cost too much to build the infrastructure to connect them to the grid. Now they're trying to find a site in a different state. And Mr. Pickens reportedly has 200 towers built that he can't site either, my favorite quote is "Well I damn sure can't put 'em up in my yard". So good luck to the Chinese I guess. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
"No sir, I don't like it!"
I hate how articles talking about renewable energy never take into account the capacity factor of the production. Wind is about 30% or so, so the real average output will be more like 200 MW, unlike a nuclear or other plant with a capacity factor of 90+%. Yet still, they will be compared on their MAX output, not the AVERAGE.
providing enough power to meet the electrical needs of around 150,000 American homes.
California really are getting desperate. Also, that's a long cable; they'd better crank the voltage to reduce resistive loss...
Why are we not using US resources for this? G.E. has been producing these turbines for years.
I would like to picket them.
What I find amazing is that Chinese wind Generators are well known for lots of downtime (gee, what a surprise), which means high labor costs on THIS side. That means that these companies will pay a great deal more for the power.
Seriously, though, this is getting sad. First we loose the manufacturing of cheap plastic crap, then consumer electronics, then consumer everything. We pin our hopes on big-ticket stuff like train engines and green technology, then we start losing that too. The fine article pointed out that just 25% of the components of US-installed turbines are made in the states.
What's wrong here? It can't just be the wages or the currency. There's a hell of a lot of skill and work that went into china's boom for the past 30 years. Are our best and brightest going to Wall Street rather than industries that actually produce something? Is economic nationalism seen as passe among the powerful? Are we generally just too lazy now?
36,000 acres of turbines to power only 150,000 homes? Seems incredibly inefficient...
I hope this works out better than the Chinese drywall that eventually reeked of their sulfurous quarries.
On second thought, this could be a good thing, something that could fire up the blood of the cowboy entrepreneurs down there to compete in this new arena. I wouldn't surprised to see people like Dubya associated with new ventures.
Wait, Texas EXPORTS windmills, mostly to the Netherlands. I see the blades going by rail to the port all the time. The Beaumont Enterprise lists what ships are in port with cargo and destination information.
...using turbines made in China...
Sigh...I knew the artificial inequities in trade - that is, the artificial difference in the cost of living and thus the wages you can get away with paying, the artificial differences in the cost of regulation, and the way the Chinese manipulate their currency to ensure they maintain a preeminent trade position - would result in the much-ballyhooed "green jobs" going to China.
Am I the only person in America who sees a horribly bleak future for our children because of inequitable free trade and trickle-down economics? The latter only encourages our top economic tier to seek the margins the former provides, eliminating patriotism (and ethics, morality, honor, and even the public displays of religion - but that is another rant entirely) from the equation.
Unless something changes, I don't think America has anywhere to go but down...for 90% of us, anyway.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
We give them information about missile technology they give us information on wind mills.
Sounds fair to me.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/oct/15/inside-the-ring-2059116/
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
With approximately 1 ton of rare earth magnets in each turbine, and China having dominance in the rare earth supply chain, and threatening to cut off all exports of rare earth oxides (hmmm, build your factory in China and China will let you have access to the REO), with no EPA or greenies to stymie the mining industry, I'm failing to see where this field is level.
Why do the China has to get into this? Don't the US realize that by having such deals and loan with China they're selling their country. Obama has planned for the green energy industry to help to rebuild the economy. If the wind turbines and most of the manufacturing is done in China, where's the point?
150,000 homes, powered by
36,000 acres = 145.7 km^2
Average U.S. household size = 2.59 (census.gov)
150,000 homes = 388,500 people
145.7 km^2 / 150,000 homes ~= 1000 m^2 per household
145.7 km^2 / 388,500 people ~= 375 m^2 per person
U.S. Population = 304,059,724 (Google)
To power the entire U.S., that's 114,022 km^2
(For reference, the state of Ohio is 116,096 km^2)
Right now, China is targetting America by tying their Yuan to the dollar. BUT, once they feel that we are down enough, then they will go after EU by tying to the Euro.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"Pickens Calls Off Massive Wind Farm In Texas" "Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday July 08, @12:35PM" http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/08/167212
They're suppressing competition by undercutting prices. This is easy to do if you've got a low cost labor pool and government backing (both overt in the form of subsidies and covert in the form of silent ownership by senior Chinese government officials). All the better that you can seek (and probably get) tax breaks from the government of the very country who's industry you're looking to hobble with your low prices.
That said, there's nothing wrong with buying Chinese generators if they meet quality and price requirements. But I think this is a case where the US government has lost sight of the football here. Assisting a foreign power with the task of gutting an industry that was pioneered in the US and that may be important in future green energy markets around the world seems extremely foolish and short sighted.
So these days we have a choice for every 36,000 acres: either build 150,000 structures to house 300,000+ mouths to feed, or build 240 turbines to power 150,000 structures housing 300,000+ hungry mouths somewhere else? Can we have an option (c) none of the above? I'd kinda like to just leave those 36,000 acres the hell alone.
I, for one, would like to welcome our chinese overlords.
Its not that you are "new" - you are just finally starting to show your face.
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
New World Order Your winds farms not made in the U.S.A. Your wind farms not made in the U.S.A. in slave labor camps in China. ...errrrrr.... made in factories in China and so on and so forth.
Yours In Novorossisysk,
Kilgore T.
Asian-American, please.
I can't be the only one that finds China supplying the US with technology to generate clean energy ironic.
Yes Obama, even green jobs are fungible.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Works great for one two three months but false apart after the first rainfall. Kind of the same way the clothes made in China last.
Athiesm is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby.
How long before one of the blades snaps off and kills someone, or there's lead in the paint, or the turbines themselves are "rigged" by China for debt-collection purposes? I know here in Oklahoma I see huge wind turbine blades being hauled all the time - well, at least in summer. I don't know where they come from or going to, but the going along the highway that goes from Tulsa to Dallas (state HWY 75) Why not buy American...and help OUR economy for once? Seems there needs to be an increase on taxes for imported goods...maybe we could use that to supliment health insurance (either by lowering income taxes, or by paying for it...)
Of course, it's because a developer in Texas can just buy the land and build a wind farm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/weekinreview/18galbraith.html?_r=3
The irony is quite telling -- environmental regulations making it harder to build a renewable energy source. The most telling part of this (and recall that the New York Times was not a particular fan of this TX governor):
That is, measured purely by results, the track record of the state that doesn't give a shit is miles ahead of the state that makes a big complicated deal about caring.
[ Aside: I'm not against environmental regulation by any means. At the very minimum, however, we ought to insist that the benefits a cleaner environment outweigh the costs of regulation. In cases like this where it seems like the regulations are actually counterproductive to the goals, well then the costs are truly wasted.]
The thing is, with electricity generation you have something known as "baseline demand" which you can think of as a water table or the level of the sea a low tide.
You absolutely HAVE to have this generating capacity 24/365, no if's, but's or maybe's.
The problem with wind (and solar, and wave, etc) is that generating capacity can be anywhere from zero on up, if there is no wind, or even just light winds, generating capacity is effectively zero.
What this means is that if you are an electricity grid planner, it doesn't matter how much theoretical wind turbine generating capacity you have, NONE of it is applicable to your baseline demand.
This means the only things that you can use for baseline demand are coal powered, oil powered, nuke powered or hydro powered "traditional" generating stations.
The nature of "traditional" power stations is such that like the car doing 60mph down the freeway, there is a fair bit more power on tap, 24/365, so in fact, due to the nature of grid demand, by definition, the "traditional" power stations that are REQUIRED to meet baseline capacity can, in 99.9% of cases, ALSO supply peak demand (think of this as high tide).
So, the ONLY thing you can use wind power for, assuming the wind is blowing, is peak demand.
Now that you can only use it for peak demand, and given that you have an electrical grid, the only time you will ACTUALLY use one power source over another is if one is CHEAPER per giga-watt-hour than another.
Fact is, wind power loses out here too, UNLESS you heavily subsidise it, and that is no longer a level playing field.
The grid itself is also a problem, although a high tension grid can transfer useful power 1,000 miles, when you start talking about reasonable losses and efficiency in the grid, you are down to 250 miles, so it is not like you can put offshore wind farms *here* and connect them via the grid to a demand *here* 1,200 miles away, even with the wind power subsidies, it still does not make economic sense.
All you have to remember, is this.
The purpose of a wind turbine manufacturer is to sell wind turbines.
They really could not care one way or another if the installed turbines make economic sense on a level playing field.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
You know what they say about West Texas: the wind doesn't blow there -- it sucks!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
That's back-of-the-envelope based on the summary. Does that strike anyone as high? Low?
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If anything in this article is news its that its China and not some other country. Hopefully they are made better than most Chinese crap.
I know I personally went on a tour of a new wind farm (just under 200MW, 86 2.3MW turbines I believe or something like that) on Wolfe Island in Ontario, Canada. Everything excepting the base infrastructure was make in Denmark, shipped to New York, then Barged to Ontario. They (Denmark) are world leaders in that technology, which is why they are shipped from there. They are also monitored by Siemens in Denmark as well (as well as locally).
Its the same thing as when I also went on a tour of a solar farm in also in Ontario, the panels were all built and transported from California, because that is where the expertise and technology is located. Again they also monitor in California as well as locally the farm.
I mean ideally we would have these technologies locally in Canada, but due to shortsightedness on the part of our Government, none of the infrastructure is in place. I believe the largest solar panel manufacturing facility owned by a Canadian company is actually located in Germany as that government was willing to front matching capital of up to 50 million dollars, Canada wouldn't match anything. So now Germans primarily get the benefit of that facility, in both jobs, product, and technology.
Anyway I was not aware that China had inroads into this technology hopefully for Texas sake they do, as one of the big components to cost feasibility is A) How much maintenance will the windmills require, and B) what is the lifespan. If they require tons of work or don't last very long, they could be in trouble. Of course perhaps they got a discount to make it worthwhile.
Your secret plans for foreign industrial domination have now come to fruition. Now, let's help you keep the financial industry deregulated as well so we can completely destroy our country.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Yes... all the while complaining about the US dollar and demanding the UN create an artificial international currency instead. Meanwhile, other foreign countries have started buying up dollars to prevent their currencies from being too strong, so everybody is fucked up. Everyone except the one country that's complaining the most.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Great. Now, instead of being dependent on foreign oil, we'll be dependent on foreign windmills.
This is another great example of why giving money or tax breaks to the biggest corporations is no longer a winning strategy to promote job growth. The multi-national corps have a world-wide market to pull labor from and are only forced to buy local labor for a few on-site jobs. This is why I believe they should stop ALL money going to huge multi-national corps (who have their own R&D money anyway) and focus on getting micro-loans to smaller businesses who can't offshore their work as easily. Start preferring the little guy trying to start something on a local corner by his house instead of a corporation that really has no home or loyalty whatsoever.
I thought Obama wasn't going to fall into this trap of giving money to huge corps who are simply going buy cheap foreign labor. I guess I was wrong.
Repeat after me:
lesson 1.
"Ni hao" = Hello.
lesson 2.
"Wo men shi dou ni de ji di"=All your base are belong to us.
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%
Me, I'm American in the sense that I view the American people to be my people.
I think it is wrong for some to exploit absolutely artificial differences nation to nation in the cost of the essentials of survival - food, housing, medical care, utilities - by transplanting their manufacturing plants and service centers to those cheaper nations so that they can pay lower wages vis-a-vis America's solely to further enrich themselves faster than they could in America.
That costs America jobs and is bringing great harm to my fellow Americans. Further, I would expect the average citizen of all nations to have precisely the same perspective regarding protecting their fellow countrymen.
But it is not the "average" citizen of any country who is being so tremendously enriched by inequitable free trade, now is it?
I have a difficult time accepting that I should seek to be "among the 10%" and take joy in counting my riches while watching my fellow Americans slide into poverty. I may not be religious, but I still don't believe in abusing my fellow human beings just to satiate my greed.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
To put this into perspective:
36,000 acres = 7.5 x 7.5 miles = 12.5 x 12.5 kilometers = the size of Walt Disney World
Source:
Convert 36000 acres to square miles
Well, it's quite simple really; Chinese banks are willing to loan the money for this venture. American banks aren't. With Chinese money comes Chinese suppliers.
In spite of the fact that the government has pumped over $1T into American banking, they still aren't loaning money for ventures like these. Of course it will probably be profitable; Chinese investors are not stupid. So why aren't there any American investors putting up money for these things? Maybe we would have way better off letting big banks fail and directly using the same amount of money to fund projects directly.
I bet the Chinese government is subsidizing this to help the Chinese wind industry.
Much of the 36k acreage could be dual-use - I've seen lots of wind farms in actively farmed fields, for example. Many others are done in places like mountain passes, where you're not building much of anything else anyway. So it's not like all this space is just being wasted.
Because, of course, it doesn't say we're giving China any missile technology. It says that authority to rule on what missile technology can be exported is now going to be done at the Department of Commerce instead of wherever it was done before. It's only unnamed "critics" of the administration who are saying that this will result in more technology transfer. Of course, given that your source is the notoriously anti-Obama Washington Times, it's not too surprising that they would provide unsourced quotes about this sort of thing.
A little less transparent propaganda, please.
That's so goddamn smart I can't begin to describe it...
Because "making sure you're in the top 10%" is something you have total control over. It's not like the circumstances of your birth could possibly have anything to do with it. Here's a news flash: some substantial portion of the US wasn't born with silver spoons in their mouth. Their parents don't have enough money to send them to college, and in the absence of "government bailouts", it's all but impossible to afford to go on your own. How are people in this situation supposed to just make sure there in the top 10%? To say nothing of the fact that the top 10% is, well 10%. So you're perfectly ok with the idea that 90% of the population is going to spiral into poverty. Nice.
Seriously... why?
Monitor bandwidth usage on IIS6 in real-time: http://www.waetech.com/services/iisbm/
I find it strange that already a lot of the comments seem shocked and confused by the fact that China is capable, willing and more than ready to provide this technology at a price that would obviously be deemed competitive with local markets. Has American industry really been asleep for so long?
Yes, other countries, even those that people think are so backward and lacking in knowledge are more than capable of producing high value goods at a reasonable price and a high quality standard.
I'm just waiting for the rest of the comments to come flooding in that:
a) China will try to takeover local industry
b) America will be seen as weak
c) Local industries weren't given enough opportunity
d) The American Life will be affected by reasonably outsourcing work.
This would be a more serious objection if 1) you built all the wind turbines in the world in the same place and 2) this place had wild fluctuations in wind velocity. But in practice, we spread the turbines out over huge areas of the US, so if it's still in one place, it's blowing in another. And the grid issues are mitigated by the same thing. We'll use power generated in California to power California, in Texas to power Texas, off the east coast to power the east coast, etc.
Also, we tend to build wind turbines in places where the wind is rather steady and strong - mountain passes, plains, at sea, etc - so there's a lot less fluctuation in the wind than you might think.
Bottom line: yes, we'll need to be able to provide some level of baseline load, either by storing intermittent sources of energy, or by using traditional power plants such as nukes (probably we'll end up doing both). But to say that wind turbines are some kind of self-licking ice cream cone is sort of ridiculous. People aren't buying these things because they look cool - they're actually contributing useful capacity to the system.
No one has commented on the fact that $1.5B / 150,000 homes is $10,000 per house served. That seems ridiculously high to me. I have no numbers to compare to but that seems high.
From http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/SavingandDebt/P87298.asp it gives $1400 per year as the average power bill. Let's assume 50% profit margin since there aren't any consumables: 50% going to infrastructure, salaries, maintenance, paying off lawsuits about dead birds, migraines, ... So that's only $700 profit per year. That gives a payback of about 14 years! I would say that would be approaching the lifetime of the windmills (no matter what the manufacturer says).
So how is this a good deal? How can anyone make money with those numbers? Poke some holes in my assumptions because it just doesn't make any sense.
Wait, who are you implying is the victim here?
(Really, China won't have anything resembling control of this stuff, and even if they did have absolute control of a couple percentage points of the electric generation infrastructure, so what?)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Do you want your government to tell private industry they cannot buy from any company they want, but ONLY from a vetted list?
Because that is what would happen.
Without a whitelist someone could start up a company in the US selling chinese turbines and then you'd get the same turbines but purchased from an american company (who employs 3 people).
Yay, once again the Chinese are eating our lunch! Once again, a huge government boondoggle has unintended consequences. Who'd of thunk it? Don't worry, I'm sure they'll get health care right.
Correction - New World Odor
so, you did not get many replies:)
I will give a try. Here is a slightly relevant url:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a8gkj6sgD6dw#
Somewhere else I hear that about 40% of us manufacturing is shutting down because of the credit crunch.
I think free enterprise ideology is junk and I am not an adam smith free trader, but capitalists can do a good job at introducing new tech into the productive process and I regard that as the best measure of the wealth of a nation. Obviously, if you let capitalists run wild, they end up pushing paper and you get maybe a quadrillion dollars of derivatives, world-wide, and that suck the life out of both you and manufacturing. Looking locally, I hear the big bail-out banks still have a 100 trillion of derivatives. And looking still more locally, I live near a small town that has one bank. It is a part of a regional chain. The parent just got hit with a requirement to raise 300 million in new capital. I wonder if they can do that. In any case, they are not going to be easy to get credit from. Perhaps in normal times, they would have been closed down. Hah, I just cashed a $5000 check and they had difficulty coming up with the cash.
Anyway, upgrade productive processes and junk the WTO, and do bilateral trade deals. You still need a competent government and you need lots of effective creativity, from scientists down to the factory floor. So, I admit there are some issues with which to deal.
then you can replace them with US-made ones which will last 5 years. After that you can get european ones which will last 20 years or more. good luck.
This is obviously an ill-conceived attempt at a Trojan Horse. I'm sure a cursory look inside the windmill's will reveal trained, armed comando-monkeys
Although you'd think there would have been significant technological improvements in the field of wind energy harvesting in the last 100 years, you'd be wrong. Most of the "improvements" haven't actually panned out when implemented in real weather, with the exception of production cost reductions (first growth Sitka spruce being more valuable than platinum these days) and maintenance simplification, both due to use of modern synthetic materials.
The long-case Jakes of the 1940s are still the machines to beat, and most of the best windmills incorporate exactly the same technologies... or significantly inferior schemes... and I'm speaking as someone who has been following the technology for over 25 years.
Why not a gold farm?
I kid, I kid!
Its funny that this came up. I just attended mandatory export compliance training the other day.
It would make sense that the commerce dept would be the ones calling the shots on this. There are (from what i understand) two areas of export regulations ITARS and EAR.
There are three departments that manage permissions for exports:
State Department (ITARS): weapons, etc
Commerce Department (EAR) : commercial/military
Treasury Department : (forgot what they cover)
Here is a link to EAR if youre curious: http://www.gpo.gov/bis/ear/ear_data.html
so much for energy independence
The US government lied to Americans in the 1990s, telling us that lifting tariffs on China, ignoring its direct opposition to so many US values, was going to turn "2 billion consumers" into a bonanza for American producers. That never happened. The US is a third of a billion consumers for all kinds of Chinese production. China tells America what to do now, like ignore the Dalai Lama and the abuse of Tibet - and to ignore poison food and toxic products.
The trade relationship with China is a scam that has enriched only a few bankers, a few factory moguls who walked out on American labor, a tiny percentage of China's people who got to join them, and a bunch of Chinese and American government scam artists.
--
make install -not war
The point here is that the Chinese are building this technology and the US isn't.
People here are too busy sniveling about how hard converting to renewable energy is, while other countries are going there and doing that, leaving us behind. The mere fact that we're having to buy this technology from them instead doing this project in-house is the point
We're missing out on a great opportunity and moving towards 3rd world country status at break-neck speed.
Although we are very good at killing people with predator drones. This trick we have down pat
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
So how do you feel if stimulus money is used to buoy an ally?
Then I would suggest making sure you are part of the 10%
Me, I'm American in the sense that I view the American people to be my people.
I think it is wrong for some to exploit absolutely artificial differences nation to nation in the cost of the essentials of survival - food, housing, medical care, utilities - by transplanting their manufacturing plants and service centers to those cheaper nations so that they can pay lower wages vis-a-vis America's solely to further enrich themselves faster than they could in America.
That costs America jobs and is bringing great harm to my fellow Americans. Further, I would expect the average citizen of all nations to have precisely the same perspective regarding protecting their fellow countrymen.
But it is not the "average" citizen of any country who is being so tremendously enriched by inequitable free trade, now is it?
I have a difficult time accepting that I should seek to be "among the 10%" and take joy in counting my riches while watching my fellow Americans slide into poverty. I may not be religious, but I still don't believe in abusing my fellow human beings just to satiate my greed.
If you were truly speaking for your "fellow human beings" (instead of your fellow countrymen), and truly detest exploiting the "artificial differences nation to nation", then perhaps you could see it more clearly and simply: those who are willing to work harder gain more, and those enriched by "inequitable free trade" are exactly those at the shorter end of the inequality. Frankly, although I doubt you're aware of it, the level of hypocrisy displayed in your posts is staggering.
The continuing high value of the dollar is destroying the United States economy.
It's why China continues to dismantle our manufacturing and production base. It's why it's cheaper to cut a tree in our forest, ship it overseas to have it cut into boards, and then ship it back to build another McMansion. It's why the Middle Class is eroding in favor of $7/hour burger-flipping poor and Upper Middle/Wealthy super-professionals.
And no politician is going to make the case that we should make changes, because it's easier for the short term. With a strong dollar, oil is cheaper, imported crap is cheaper, travelling overseas is easier. But it comes at the cost of our manufacturing base, which cuts into our sovereignty and our true long-term power.
Why should we bother making these windmills here at $XXX a pop when we can import them from China for half that price? And so goes the experience, the drive, the wisdom, the creativity of our population, who don't have any compelling reason to do any more than buy another (imported) video game console, and play another video game. Why bother getting educated when it's so easy to get what you want? Your $7/hour burger flipper has more true buying power than the upper-middle class equivalent in China!
That is, until the cold, North wind blows. This is *NOT* a long-term, stable situation. The United States does NOT provide value equivalent to its buying power, and this is evidenced by our long-standing trade deficit. Sooner or later, China will decide that it's no longer advantageous to export their stuff cheaply. They will stop subsidizing our Dollar, and without the true wealth and production/manufacturing base to support us, we won't have much to say about it.
The Chinese have had a continuous civilization for 4,000 years. They can be patient, while we Americans still think 100 years is a long time.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Um.. Clinton put the sale of missile technology under the auspices of Commerce to get around the apparently more restrictive rules of the Department of Energy. This resulted directly in the sale of guidance systems to the Chinese.
Jeez, it's like right out of the same playbook, and it's recent enough history that senior members of the Clinton presidency are in the White House right now working for State.
Welcome to the country of whiners. Everyone here in the U.S. is all for solving problems unless it is going to inconvenience them for a half second.
Well that explains the foreign based pirate bay being used mostly by the US "customers".
You imply that I am unwilling to see other "human beings" become more well off. That is either a misinterpretation or a distortion of my words. Anybody who is willing to work hard should be able to get ahead, wherever they live.
What I am not willing to do is to sacrifice Americans to make the citizens of some other country better off.
Free trade as it is now structured (to include the currency manipulation by some countries) penalizes the American people - and indeed, the people of all of what were once described as "the industrialized countries" - for being successful for so long. The people of our nations do not bear any responsibility for the forms of government that other countries have chosen that have held their peoples back for so long. To ask us to pay for the mistakes - the choices - of others is unwarranted, unrealistic, unfair, and unacceptable.
I would add that those who say or insinuate that Americans do not work hard are either uneducated or willfully ignorant. I would heartily recommend the Discovery Channel series "Dirty Jobs" to such.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
WHY DON'T WE GET SOME DAMN POWER LINES FIRST!!!! I am so sick of driving around seeing all these turbines just sitting there idle on windy days because we don't have the transmission lines to get the energy out of here.
How about concurrently?
I'm sure the people who invest in the company stringing the lines would be just as unhappy seeing their money tied up in a power line to the site of a proposed wind farm that isn't there yet - or a failed wind farm project.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
there should be a considerable tariff on everything imported from china
http://www.americanprotectionist.com/
That joke sounds pretty funny...til it's your job. Then it's rather hard to laugh about the whole situation. Another thing to keep in mind since we're doing "flips" here. Are the other countries engaging in protectionism in relation to their workers and industry? The US position doesn't seem so absurd when you look at the big picture. A fair and level playing field globalization is not playing on.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Enemy? Who has done more damage to the USA over the past few years? The US Gov or China?
There are are not restrictions on who drills in Gulf. British, Dutch and France companies have been doing so for decades. They then usually distribute production in the US which reduces transport costs and makes more profit. But their shareholders keep the profits. Its not clear whether China would ship their oil to back home to statisfy the worlds 2nd largest oil market.
Some of the best virgin prospects are just south of the border in Cuban territory. Everyone execpt US companies are drilling there now.
I'm surprised that we're not contracting through some of the companies that are building these windmills here in the US. We have at least two in here Colorado.
mod parent up
What i didn't see mentioned here is the fact that it is a 1.5 Trillion dollar investment for about 150000 homes. That works out to be 10000/home
Seems like a extremely large dollar figure for a small coverage area.
Why? For yet another conspiracy theory with no proof?
I'm sure not all conspiracy theories are wrong, but it had sure better have some proof first.
Everything in my previous post is public information. I would like to see some evidence to back up the claims of TFloore before giving it any thought.
The only part of TFloore's post that I know off the top of my head is accurate is that yes, Pickens did need right-of-way access to build the high-powered transmission lines to the proposed wind farm. This is a problem that has been identified in other studies about wind farms in general, in that the US power grid needs a more modern transmission system to support projects like this. It's still a rather Byzantine system with local grids still not always cooperating well with others and various other problems.
Also, the issue of the right-of-way was not Pickens' only problem. He was also having difficulty getting financing (at least that's what he said on his last interview on Charlie Rose and until I hear differently, with proof, I'm not going to believe otherwise).
You Americans just don't get it do you? You have no money to finance this kind of projects anymore. Do you know how many of your banks got bailout money from China? Your government owes China a shit load of money.
"You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
Given the Chinese' infamous quality issues (a severe lack thereof) it may be safe to assume these things will start falling apart long before they've paid for themselves.
Might it be a smart move to reverse engineer the components in these turbines and start making our own replace parts for them?
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
More like carefully planned.
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
The problem is the tax-credits are for BUYING a wind-turbine. We should have refundable tax-credits for SELLING a wind-turbine. And make them structured upon the total electricity it makes. Then we would have a PRO-BUY-AMERICA bias in the wind turbine making.
How many more coal-fired power plants will the chinese build first in order to make us our new green turbines. Like everything else on the shelf it's made coal fired by lots of slaves. Yeah, China is still communist. We used to embargo their trade because of it. I guess the new 'market economy look' has us fooled. Anyway, if a third world country like Brazil can raise their tariffs to keep tooled-up then we can too. Takes guts though. Might have to take the E.P.A. down a notch or two to let us compete, not to say lets blacken our skies, but all we did so far is take it overseas to slaves n' coal. Is that good? Let's get our lost industry back and make our own product.
Work hard and demand unreasonably high wages is not the same thing at all. So...I have a glass of water here to sell you...$10 per sip. Now, I assume based on your assertions that you would rather pay me $10/sip of water rather than exploiting low wage earners who maintain the water works. That is basically all you are saying... People who do menial tasks should be able to demand higher wages for no other reason than 'fairness'.
The thing no one likes to talk about is that the amount of manufacturing in the U.S. has steadily been rising. The difference is that we can do more manufacturing with less people.
I swear to god, people like you need to take economics classes. This isn't some callous "get rich" thing. This his how supply and demand works. When people like you start demanding the government step in and enforce half baked "equality" schemes the entire thing collapses and we *all* wind up in the shitter.
I suppose we should raise minimum wage to $10/hr so that burger flippers can make a living flipping burgers. Well..except for the fact that they get paid more so the prices of burgers have to go up to pay them. Oh, and because they had an increase in income prices of other goods goes up to match that. Oh and finally, because the individual burger flipper now costs 2x what it did previously, 1/2 of them lose their jobs. Congratulations...I suppose your next solution is to raise the minimum wage to $20/hr now?
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
lollll....I gather you think burger flippers should make, oh, $0.50 an hour so that you can have a cheaper burger?
Can probably get an even cheaper burger, if we grind burger flippers up and make 'em into more burgers when they die of starvation.
Why don't you go talk to those burger flippers' landlords, insurance companies, gasoline stations, utility companies, grocery store owners, and so on and so forth and tell them to lower prices so that you can get a cheaper burger by paying burger flippers less?
The cost of living is what dictates minimum wage; perhaps your economics courses did not cover that? It was covered rather well at the two universities I obtained degrees from.
What you are essentially arguing is that you are entitled to live well by picking and choosing what other people are entitled to earn, regardless of whether that is enough for them to live on.
Very...democratic of you, if by democratic I mean dictatorial.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
Then your econ courses or your professors sucked. Minimum wage is dictated by government attempting to control things. The idea is that if the cost of living goes up, the government comes in and forces businesses to pay more. This usually means those businesses cannot hire as many people so unemployment tends to go up with the minimum wage. Also, even the most basic econ course should have covered that an increase in income (real or perceived) causes an increase in prices so cost of living goes up. So with things like minimum wage and easy credit the prices of things go up. What is really fucking people is that nearly everyone can get this easy credit which is basically an artificial increase in income so they are willing to pay higher prices for things. If people weren't so swipe a card and pay such inflated prices things would normalize much better.
Your little democratic/dictator comment shows how fundamentally broken your understanding is. Minimum wage is dictatorial, it is set and enforced by government attempting to control things it undermines both the business and worker ability to negotiate their own contract. Now, I think government should be involved to some degree, stopping things like company towns from returning, but if I am willing to work for 4/hr because I am starving and I need to support kids, but I can't negotiate that with a potential employer because minimum wage demands that they pay me more, that isn't very democratic. It also forces businesses to become inefficient producers, which also leads to an increase of prices!I think it is stunning that you would call dictator action by the government "democratic" and people's freedom to negotiate wages "dictatorial".
Cost of living going up because of an increase in minimum wage is natural market forces operating. Minimum wage going up because the cost of living went up is artificial government control. This kind of stupid "feel good" intervention typically causes more problems than it solves. All the little workers demand higher and higher wages...the business can't/won't compete anymore...or they sell at a loss...either way...they die. Then all those little workers have nothing. What a fantastic economic policy. I hear it worked great for Detriot.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
All the little workers demand higher and higher wages.
Your words suggest a certain contempt for the American worker/consumer (who are 90% or more of the American people, although some are only discovering their "class" as they are let go as the consequences of Republican economic policies unfold). That in turn indicates a certain myopia, which is suggestive of your economic status/dependency.
Regardless, if you had thought about your last sentence:
I hear it worked great for Detroit.
first, your words might have been different. Since you insist in placing blame upon "all of the little workers" and use Detroit to represent your example, would you care to explain how heavily-unionized Ford keeps ticking along, while GM and Chrysler are lurching towards the abyss?
I am always amused by those who blame America's worker/consumers/soldiers, when it is they who made this country great, and it is they who stood (and stand) between America's wealthy elite - whether they are of the symbiotic or of the parasitical sort - and America's enemies who would take their wealth and slay them out of hand.
You have convinced yourself - and now attempt to convince the world - that leadership and management make no difference.
You complain of "all the little workers" demanding higher wages when it is America's top 5% - exemplified by our CEOs - who drive price increases. It takes a lot of margin to raise your pay and benefits from a multiple of 30 times average worker pay to 400 times; the same goes for higher dividends, and on and on.
If the demands of America's worker/consumer placed a disproportionate burden upon America's economy, then pray tell why has our inequality curve shifted to reflect the wealthy few taking ever more ever faster? http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/even-more-gilded/
Consider the implications of that chart, and tell me again whose understanding is "broken".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
No, I have contempt for the mindless masses that insist on demanding handouts rather than blazing their own path. Now, that also happens to coincide with most Americans.
Toyota is maybe a better example, the workers get treated very well, the plants often have small clinics on site to help workers get checked out and get the basics (cold med type stuff) so they aren't taking a huge hit to productivity. They also tend to have much more generous sick time policies that actually encourage sick workers to stay home and get healthy rather than have them coming to work sick and infecting the work force. The unions have had a damned hard time taking hold. The lesson here is don't treat your employees like slaves and they won't unionize and drag you down. Workers unionize when they are abused, then the unions grow, then the union bosses are really the only ones really getting the good deal as they bring down the beast...then all the little workers get left in the ashes. Ford is surviving because they are doing a better job of competing and carrying the excess burden.
Workers have not made the country great. Every country has workers and not all even remotely great. The thing that made America great were the trail blazers. The innovators, the risk takers, and the pioneers. The people that dared to give the finger to the crown. The people that bear arms to protect those freedoms. The people that actually innovate and do creative things in the market. My original post is about that very thing, that the fat rich lazy bastards are just waiting to be eaten by those who are willing to push forward. The reality is that the vast majority people are not of that class.
If the average American consumer could pass a basic math class and calculate interest the money wouldn't be flowing upwards in huge streams. Look at how rapidly consumer debt is increasing. When people stop buying shit, the top runs to the government for protection. The government brings all kinds of moronic "controls" to try and manipulate the game for whoever will give them the best deal. The people are most often brought to support the politicians with bribes of welfare, handouts, and mandatory wage hikes. Once the politician is securely in place they sell us all to the fat bastards that would rather manipulate the game than be competitive.
I absolutely blame the American people. The founding fathers were a small bunch and told a big nation to fuck off and created the America we have. You are telling me that 5% of the population can control a couple hundred million people without their consent? That is moronic. These people are willing wage slaves begging for handouts instead of finding ways to break the chains. I have no desire to carry them. I don't believe in nation building overseas either, if those people want their freedom let them stand up first. I am not opposed to helping those that do go into open revolt, but I do not support sacrificing American lives to "Free" people who will not first sacrifice their own in the fight. These idiots are bought off with stupid handouts from a government willing to sell them to the highest bidder. They cheer on higher corporate taxes without giving a single thought to the fact that those taxes will just be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. The whole thing is pathetic, and it is driven by the 95% too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything other than look for their next handout.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
The people that dared to give the finger to the crown.
And guess who are the people who now presume to be America's crown; America's hereditary aristocracy? The people who are hard at work eliminating any possibility that new "trail blazers" will come along and upset the status quo they've spent the last 30 years bringing about? Why do you think they attack anything that can help the common man or woman rise, such as education?
I'll give you a hint: Britain's "crown" also believed that the colonists were - as a rule of thumb - "too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything".
lolll...do you really think that America would be anything without the American people as a whole? Do you think the Colonial Army was made up of only those people who signed the Declaration of Independence?
Why do you think that the Republicans primarily depend upon the tactic of "divide and conquer" to win elections? Why do you think that every other sentence out of a Fox "personality's" mouth - or from the Rushbo to the Rushbots - is designed to instill fear, or anger, or hate of or towards one or another segment of the American population?
Why do you think the Republicans attempt to instill the idea that "liberals" are a threat to America, if this is supposed to be a democracy where the interests of all are represented?
Why? Because when America is given the opportunity to think and act in a cohesive manner, it is impossible for that 5% to control America - and they know it.
Consider America before Reagan: Until OPEC, it was a booming, ever more powerful country. But the rich weren't getting richer fast enough to suit themselves, and when the energy shocks that OPEC created hammered our economy, they saw an opportunity to promulgate a lie - and that lie was flood-up/trickle-down economics.
And they've been lying ever since. They insist that "A rising tide lifts all boats." is the fiction, and instead claim that their taxes should be cut - as if their rising boat will lift the tide.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
I suggest you check your history. The revolution was driven by a minority action and a significant chunk of that colonial army (as is any army) is just people doing what someone else told them to do. There are far more bullet flingers/catchers than there are leaders in any given military force. The majority of people were too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything. Also, as I have pointed out NUMEROUS times that you seem to ignore, is that I am speaking of taking from the existing fat and lazy top, not from the bottom. If the others on the bottom can't be bothered to climb and take what should be theirs back from the aristocracy then I sure as hell have no intention of letting them ride on my back while I try to climb. America has a tremendous amount of upward mobility, the trouble is most people don't do anything to take advantage of it. You are sitting here trying to make me feel guilty for the lazy slobs that would rather beg for table scraps from the top rather than get there themselves. Don't give me any of that shit about how it is impossible to climb out of a bad place, some of the most successful people to grace the earth started in absolute squalor.
You seem to think that Republicans and I have anything in common. Sure, Republicans pay lipservice to libertarian ideas, but when was the last time you saw any of them actually do anything even remotely resembling anything other than corporate welfare? Or Democrats for that matter, infinite patents on medicine...yeah...talk about some freedom loving people. Most "liberals" are a threat in the fact that they honestly don't understand basic economics at all. I have only met a few self described liberals that had a clue how economics actually worked. Republicans actually do for the most part, but they abuse that rather than encourage a healthy market. Starving because of incompetent leaders vs malicious leaders still leaves you starving, though I suppose you could have a warm fuzzy that one of them wasn't actually trying to starve you, but it won't last long, you will still be dead.
Also, taxes should be fixed, not just cut. Fair tax would work way better, but that will never happen because it would fix too many political talking points that both sides use to get elected. However, again with economics, raising taxes does not necessarily increase revenue, and when our taxes are already so high, the odds are is that it will not increase revenue. This is a calculus max/min problem and it really isn't all that complicated, the problem is that people that say 'lower taxes on business' get derided for it. If the government would knock off some of the taxing, get the hell out of the way in most areas, and then actually enforce sane anti-trust type laws we would see prices fall as the companies had to race to the bottom to compete. This of course only works when the companies have to compete rather than lobby for rule changes.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I suggest you check your history. The revolution was driven by a minority action and a significant chunk of that colonial army (as is any army) is just people doing what someone else told them to do. There are far more bullet flingers/catchers than there are leaders in any given military force. The majority of people were too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything.
I'm not one to carry on a fruitless effort, which is what I conclude when someone tells me that I don't know history and attempts to prove that point by saying that the individual members of our military - to include their antecedents among the Colonial Army - are just tools doing what they're told...
It leaves me no choice but to point out - in frustration - that the Colonial Army was formed at a time when we didn't even have a country, let alone a draft . They were all volunteers.
I guess - perhaps because I, too, am a veteran, who likewise voluntarily served for half a dozen years - that being told that the members of our military are "too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything" offended me, because I stopped reading right there.
I would end this conversation by urging you to keep your opinions to yourself, should you ever find yourself in dire need of assistance from your fellow Americans - lest they intentionally decide to fulfill your characterization of them as "too stupid or apathetic to actually do anything".
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
You read that I said veterans are stupid and apathetic because you are looking for reasons to be offended. I said no such thing. You have repeatedly accused me of saying bad things about the military, and the first accusation was before the military was even mentioned. What I really don't get there is that it is the more liberal bunches that generally talk bad about the military, yet you were accusing me of right wing behavior. So, I think we can agree to cease this since you are reconstructing anything I say. You are demonizing rather than discussing differing opinions. If you have an axe to grind about anti-military people, grind it elsewhere. That doesn't mean just by virtue of being military people get a free pass. I suppose you will tell me that the folks 'just following orders' at Abu Gharib were fine upstanding service members, thinking clearly, and acting intelligently. I say they are a huge disgrace to the profession of arms, human filth, and a prime example of how so many are just doing what they are told. It is the rare few that will stand up and fight against illegal orders and other such things. The one soldier that did stand up had his life threatened by his comrades for having the courage, mind, and morals to do so.
Also, the military is just a tool doing what they are told, the Constitution ensures that by making sure that they answer to a civilian authority. Only the truly stupid would insist otherwise. When the military doesn't do what it is told that is a military coup and generally a very bad thing.
Most people aren't bad people, but when it comes to their economic or political freedom they are almost all either too stupid or too apathetic to do anything and are happy to entrust their future to mindless party line voting and never checking up on what is being done.
P.S. I served longer and you are the second person this week to try and point out that they are the better person on the assumption that I have not served.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
Manufacturing sector has already shifted. Our strict guidelines and laws will never let manufacturing jobs to come back here. But, we can expect many jobs created in the whole supply line - designs, installation, maintenance etc. But for sure, no manufacturing. government funding should keep this in mind when designing incentives for "go green". I invite you to read my blog.
Alternative Energy Sources
Manufacturing sector has already shifted. Our strict guidelines and laws will never let manufacturing jobs to come back here. But, we can expect many jobs created in the whole supply line - designs, installation, maintenance etc. But for sure, no manufacturing. government funding should keep this in mind when designing incentives for "go green". I invite you to read my blog
Alternative Energy Sources