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Obama Awards Nearly $2 Billion For Solar Power
crimeandpunishment writes "President Obama says it's time to heat up solar power, and he's willing to spend a big chunk of federal money to do it. Saturday the president announced the government is giving nearly $2 billion to companies that are building new solar plants in Arizona, Colorado, and Indiana. The president says this will create thousands of jobs and increase our use of renewable energy."
Obama funds massive solar powered money printing machine....
...or $906,250 per job!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Abengoa Solar, a unit of the Seville, Spain-based engineering company, will receive a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to build a solar-power plant in Arizona that will create 1,600 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, according to White House documents released in conjunction with Obama's address. The power plant will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and generate enough energy to power 70,000 homes, Obama said.
1.45billion to power 70,000 homes.
That's $20,000 per home?
And 85 jobs. Don't forget the 85 jobs. 1.45B for 85 jobs. Are you against economic recovery? I bet you pirate music too.
The unfortunate reality of this is that the "thousands of jobs created" is, at best, an overestimation and would really only open the opportunity to a small number of people. Jobs like these are very highly skilled and specialized which might re-employ about 2%-5% of the approximately 25 million unemployed. In the grand scheme of things, only a politican could celebrate this. Jobs need to be created across the socio-economic stratem in order for there to be meaningful economic recovery. Even if we looked at the rosiest side of this claim, the only people getting full time, permanent employment would be the solar engineers. The installers and the IT professionals would most likely be outsourced or hired as temporary, project labor. Thus, once the project is completed, we are only marginally better off economically. This is certainly not to say that we will being do our ailing planet a very large favor! But let's call a spade, a spade. We are not really helping our economy but helping the planet!
I remember the good old days, when Congress would appropriate money for projects. When, exactly, did Presidents get signing authority on the national checkbook?
Nevermind that Spain's experiment with subsidizing solar power is one of the causes of their looming fiscal insolvency. Let's follow them down the path to ruin. Yay!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
These are the same asshats (feds run by leftist expletives) that
pumped nearly half a billion dollars into Tesla, the electric car company.
According to Ed Wallace of http://www.insideautomotive.com/ (he has a radio program where he
went on at length about Tesla car company today)
This outfit is in over its head 300,000 dollars in per car for cars they expect to sell for some 120k or there abouts.
They claim to expect to sell 20,000 units per year. To date they have only sold some few 1000.
Bottom line according to MY reading of what Mr Wallace said is that this company is a shill and sham
that will accomplish taking money from foolish investors that came late to the game and US Taxpayers who
as we can all bear witness appear to be fools as well.
Further reading on the sham Tesla TSLA electric cars:
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/01/behind-the-hype-on-tesla/
Expect no less from this expenditure of YOUR money.. (assuming you are a American taxpayer).
I recommend anyone take a listen to his show when it is on Saturday AM.
Great site for talk show junkies is http://streamingradioguide.com/radio-shows-on-air.php
Something between the lines jumps out and bites your arm off. Soltan Gris / London
Well then, the government can start doing my job then if it's their money. I'd love to see the bureaucrats design and develop rapid software solutions. ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Welfare doesn't create jobs...
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I would be more inclined to call neo-Keynesian welfare economic wisdom folksy in the sense that everyone is taught FDR took us out of the Great Depression with the New Deal and WW2 (which is just wrong - check out the depression that never was: 1920).
Regardless of the existence of jobs, any variation from what people actually want can be considered wasteful; private or public. You're right that jobs are important and in demand; but to just create them is to treat the symptoms rather than cure the cause.
Keynes himself said that all government spending turns into inflation and that any public spending, to be at all effective, *must* be unexpected.
Nope... didn't miss the point. ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Hell, sign me up for that job!
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
The green program in Spain (solar power, etc) costs more than the energy it produces.
The piggies will have to find some other government trough. So of course, off they go to Obama, where else!
For instance look at this article: http://michellemalkin.com/2009/04/13/spains-green-jobs-boondoggle/
IT claims that every green job "Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration."
What incentive? Sustainable income -- oil is both risky and a limited resource (right now much of the risk is socialized by the public, so of course they won't stop anytime soon). In fact, there has been a lot of research put into alternative energy by existing energy bigwigs. What incentive will remain after the 2 billion runs out? People are just going to jump on the solar energy bandwagon now that there's immediate cash being thrown at it.
It reminds me of my visit to the main Google campus, where every single building has solar panels on top. They did it not just because it sounds awesome, but because the government subsidized the cost with tens of millions of dollars. In the 30 year lifespan of the solar panels, they will come nowhere near paying back the cost of their production. This illustrates the fallacy of supporting alternative energy for its efficiency -- it's more inefficient and as such is currently a wasteful thing to put into production (what kind of energy was used in the production anyway?). The technology isn't there yet, which is why subsidization like this 2 billion is such an easy sell on the surface.
My point is that the money is going to be squandered by people who will put this public money to work for them. It's not even money being put toward independent research; it's money being put toward creating solar plants! The same solar plants that cost more to make than they return.
This 2 billion is corporate welfare -- the 2 billion goes toward building plants, and the owners of the plants will now be making themselves money at the expense of the public. Take into account the collusion of government and corporation; the same crowd sits at the head of both, and the same crowd is always helping itself.
note: That's why this is a bubble; no one would be building solar plants yet, because they don't return energy at a sustainable rate.
Actually, that is exactly how it works. Solar power customers can predict with very high certainty what their future electric bills will be, because the costs are known.
And those costs are nowhere near as low as coal or nuclear power. They will know their electric rates, but those rates will probably be around $0.50 if true cost were in place. The Service/Utility Commissions will probably work something out so these people can actually afford their electricity.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
You seem to think that we should not be spending money, but if not now, then when?
You sound like someone who makes up strawman arguments in order to get +insightful.
Poster says "Subsidizing non-economical power generation is not money well spent."
YOU then respond, via direct quote, with "No, subsidizing clean power generation is money well spent."
In effect, you shrugged off the economics of it. Glad you used douchebag strawman tactics to get +insightful. Now fucking respond to the point.
"His name was James Damore."
You either need to raise taxes or reduce spending
I completely agree with this! Reducing spending seems like a great way for the fed gvt to go!
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
in fact, the economy cratered. There's a sucker born every minute - or should I say, an idiot.
I'm pretty sure the House of Representatives, FHLMC and FNMA are the biggest culprits here.
I didn't call you an idiot. I called the idea of spending money despite having cut taxes idiocy. I think I'm actually agreeing with you there.
My grief is with the Fed Gvt for trying to do social engineering with tax money. FHLMC and FNMA were involved in criminal activity with huge amounts of money, at the behest of many elected federal politicians. This is where our attention should go. But this is not even surprising. Big governments always do this. The solution is to bring all of the expensive projects to a more local forum. The whole idea of having 50 states, each having their own rules and projects, is a great thing. The citizenry could move to the state which best met their own notions of goodness and we'd all be able to see what solutions were great and which were mistakes.
As it is, we really don't have a choice. The whole thing is a disaster. I have many issues with Bush's presidency, especially his interest in spending taxpayer money on projects which are of clearly debatable merit, i.e. nationbuilding, pharmaceutical programs, etc...
Blech.
I have even more issues with the current crop of representatives. And they've mostly been in office since Jan 2008.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham