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White House Explains Transport-Energy Future
blair1q writes "Today on the White House Blog, the President (ok, his staff) released an infographic showing various facts about transportation energy, and how current gas prices need not be so worrisome. Highlights include rapidly increasing domestic production and rapidly decreasing prices for electric-car batteries, requesting Congress to shift tax breaks from oil producers to wind/solar/geothermal energy producers, and increasing domestic oil production (yes, there's a conflict there)."
If you magically shifted to 100% domestic production overnight, at the current burn rate of 20 million barrels a day, the known reserves of 20 billion barrels would be all gone in 1000 days. Also known as "about 3 years". All gone forever. So be careful what you wish for.
I don't see anything in the graphic about urban planning. If they incentivized development near light rail hubs and discouraged car-dependant suburban development it would do a lot.
First, there's the carrot of new development projects. There's the houses themselves, and the light rail. Secondly, don't tax the suburbs as that would be very unpopular and counterproductive. Instead, simply give Federal money to jurisdictions based on their ability to reduce non-walkable development. This would reduce the *supply* of this type of development. Buyers who still want 0.25 acres of grass and a 5 mile drive to the store would see their home values increase due to the supply side effect.
Done right, we could kill two birds with one stone: The real estate slump, and gasoline consumption.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I never thought I'd see a President pretty much ACTUALLY SAY THAT.
Obama's an amalgam of the worst of Jimmy Carter, Bush I, and Bush II.
Does that mean we're going to be lucky enough to have Hope and Change limited to four years?
If the commodities speculators weren't running amok, the price of gas (and every other commodity) would come down. I read somewhere recently that oil speculators add $.70 to the price of a gallon of gas at the pump.
How do we expect to continue increasing oil production when he's not approving permits? The fact is, people are not going to be able to afford heating oil and gas for their home this winter.
the good news is, if all the poor people freeze to death next winter we can finally hear about something else whenever domestic policy is discussed.
much as you "progressives" like to talk about your love and compassion for the poor fact is, if there were no poor you wouldn't have a political platform. something that would actually help the poor stop being poor would mean no more winning elections for you. do the math. who benefits from poverty more than politicians who use it as their core campaign issues? it's like Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton - they don't really want racial harmony because that would destroy their livelihood and deny them TV time.
oh yeah and about the "tax the rich" etc. ok. so right now the top 10% income earners pay 73% of federal income taxes. the bottom 40% not only pay no taxes but actually get credits, so they pay negative taxes. you progressives, just answer me this one simple question. what is your goal? at what point will you say "ok, the rich paying their fair share is now a solved problem, time to stop talking about this and move on to other issues"? do you even have a goal that you'd like to achieve?
I just want to put it out there that this energy crises that we are having has as much to do with our habits as it does with the conflict in the middle east. We are stuck in a rut with our large cars. How many of you can fill up for under $40 and have that last for the month. We need start to drive smaller cars. You will find that your wallet will stop hurting as much.
Im not saying that we all have to go out and buy a hybrid or electric vehicle. I would caution against it. It is still expensive to manufacture those batteries and i dont think that the technology isn't there yet. Wait a few years.
Just as a tip for saving money, don't drive as much. Carpool, dust off that old bike in your garage, take the bus or train, even walk. These are all alternate modes of transportation and are a lot cheaper then driving. I personally make the effort to ride my bike more miles then I drive in a week and as a result i can fill up about once a month.
There are no "tax handouts" to the oil companies. Oil companies can depreciate their oilfield assets just like any industrial company can depreciate long-term tangible investments (factories, mines, etc). That's all.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
If the tax breaks are eliminated, or decreased, before we are fully prepared with alternative energy sources what do you think will happen. We will pay the difference at the pump, is my opinion.
Speculation does not exist in a magic vacuum. For every point speculated for higher prices, there's essentially someone else who speculated a point for lower prices. You can't make a bet with no one, you need someone to take that bet.
Don't believe the excuse of the day meant to distract from the government's failures.
If you want to lower price, think taxes. Direct taxes on gas average 50 cents per gallon. On top of that, the oil companies are heavily taxed, Exxon alone paid over $26 billion last year in taxes, half its profits. Who pays corporate income tax in the end? You do, by paying more for that corporation's products.
4) free military interventions in oil-rich but politically unfriendly nations.
Someone modded this down to -1 but honestly, I'd like an answer to this question myself. It really is a simple question. It's also a legitimate question. Answering a legitimate question would be much more respectable than modding it down and hoping it goes away like an insecure person. So, is anyone of the Progressive persuasion willing to put numbers to this?
Of course, I say that knowing that in politics you don't advance your career by actually solving problems so that they aren't problems anymore. There's not much "political capital" to be gained in coming up with solutions, particularly not practical and relatively simple solutions that don't require the creation of new bureaus to perpetually administer. But I'm not a politician and neither is anyone who is likely to respond, so I am hoping to receive a real answer here that I won't see in the media anytime soon.
What I want is for someone who truly believes in Progressivism to attempt a real answer at this question, even if you sincerely feel that no politician is adequately representing your position: at what point would you be satisfied and feel that you have gotten everything you wanted with regard to the tax code?
I usually try not to be this blunt but it's appropriate this time: anyone who knee-jerks and feels an overwhelming temptation to respond with something like "but the other party did so and so" should frankly shut up because the adults are talking. Tired of wading through the "us against them" noise whenever a serious question is asked.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
1) They have approximately 80% of the wealth.
2) Income tax is a giant red herring. Income tax its those who are well-off hard, but not the super-wealthy. It's capital gains that hit the super-wealthy, and only at a measly 15 for long-term capital gains. Anyone here remember the challenge to Fortune 500 CEOs to demonstrate that their secretary pays a lower percent of their net income in taxes than they do?
1) Have you ever even filed your own taxes? Do you not know how tax credits work? You make it sound like you think that the government cuts you a check if you come up negative.
2) The actual number of people who pay no income tax is 47% (at least for 2009), but this is not "the bottom 40%" of wage earners -- it's the bottom 47% of tax payers. You can make a lot of money, but if you get enough deductions or credits, to pay no income tax.
3) That's only income tax. Said people still pay payroll taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, etc.
It's really simple: taxing luxury at a higher rate than necessity. That's what it really comes down to. Now, in a perfect world, this would ideally be done on the sales tax side. But apart from discouraging spending, there's a problem. How much luxury is -- and thus at what rate do you tax -- a head of lettuce? Canned button mushrooms? Fresh button mushrooms? Fresh oyster mushrooms? Truffles? Pretty much every consumer product would require its own "luxury assessment", which would be the most absurd of bureaucracies.
Instead, one can tackle this on the income side. A poor person *can't* spend a large portion of their money on luxury; necessities eat up too much of their budget. A rich person *can't* spend a large portion of their money on necessities (what are they going to do, stockpile diapers by the millions?) -- excepting that they spend their money charitably on necessities for others. Which is -- you guessed it -- tax deductible. This is the rationale for higher tax rates for higher income earners -- to tax luxury at a higher rate than necessity.
That last paragraph contained spoilers, so if you don't want spoilers go back and don't have read it.
all the easily accessible, cheap energy has been found
Rei posted some real facts to the contrary. You reply by just blindy asserting this - is this a religion to you or something? Cause this reads so much like the posts asserting the evolution must be BS.
is it reasonable to argue that peak oil is a bit further out than now? sure. but you seem to be arguing that oil/gas/coal are infinite in supply.
Rei is arguing that for all of human history the "oil peak" has moved out by more than one year per year. That's a simple, checkable fact. That's not saying it will never come, only that there's no data about when it wil come.
The "oil peak" isn't necessarily a problem - eventually there will be some source of power so cheap that no one would dream of using oil for power. The interesting question is whether a marvelous new power source is invented before or after the ultimate limit on the oil supply matters. One thing's for sure the more expensive oil becomes, the more motivation there is to fins/use somehting better. The solution to high commodity prices has and always will be high commodity proces.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
When the stock market crashed in October of 1929, Herbert Hoover was in office. Other than the notable exception of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, his response to the Great Depression was for the most part to do nothing and let the economy take care of itself. He refused to run a budget deficit, and didn't use federal money to stimulate the economy. In fact, he was such a deficit hawk that he ended up raising taxes in order to keep the budget balanced with declining revenues.
FDR was inaugurated March 4, 1933, and by this time the economy was a complete basket case. This was over three years and three months after the market crash of 1929, so your suggestion that FDR's policies turned a small correction into the Great Depression is simply wrong. The US was already three years into the depression, and Hoover's relative inaction, which for the most part would have made today's Ann Rand acolytes happy, clearly didn't allow the economy to heal itself as you suggest.
At he height of of our prosperity, the top marginal tax rate varied from about 70% to about 90%. I feel about 50% is fair, and I also support a new bracket beginning at somewhere between $500,000 to $1 million annually to which the 50% marginal rate would apply. Moreover, Social Security contributions should not be capped. Spending should then be reduced below revenues until the debt is paid off.
I've seen a lot of things, but I've never been a witness.
In the last decade, I've gone from paying $3,000/year in income taxes to $20,000/year by a mere tripling of my income. Please explain how I am getting more benefit now than I was before.
I personally am not worried so much about how much oil is left. I'm worried about the pattern we're in with respect to it. It's polluting our planet and causing wars, regardless of the amount you say exists worldwide. I'm hoping we can get nuclear fusion working. Cheap, nearly unlimited energy would be a huge boon to all of us. Except the oil companies in the short run, but even they would benefit, taken as a collective of individuals.
Actually, it's your oil companies that are investing the most in other forms of energy. These guys know that as soon as a "better" form of energy is found, they are out of business. If they are the ones to discover this new form of energy, they put their competitors out of business.
I know everyone likes to call the "oil companies" or "big oil", but the fact is, these are "energy companies". Oil just happens to offer the best profit margin right now. If cars and plants start to run on milk, oil companies will gladly become dairy farmers.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The question:
Please explain how I am getting more benefit now than I was before.
The answer:
by a mere tripling of my income
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