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US Puts Tariff On Chinese Solar Panels
retroworks writes "Two stories in Digitimes make a puzzle of economic policy. U.S. and European tax incentives and stimulus increase steady demand for solar panels. The Chinese government subsidizes production of solar panels to meet this growing demand. The U.S. and EU complain, and place tariffs on Chinese solar panels. Do allegations that China has used government funding to subsidize the production trump our desire for cheaper solar power? Subsidizing demand led to subsidized production. In other words, one market interference (subsidized demand for solar) leads to its counterpoint, government tariff and taxation of the same product."
A (rare) moment of US/EU strategic and economic briliance?
"they tuk uuur juuubs" idiots
get back to us in 10-20 years from now and tell us if YOU are still employed.
obviously you are well employed and proud of it.
but what is now, won't always be. I was once like you are: young, arrogant and thought I owned the world.
THINGS CHANGE.
but people like you, in your current mind-frame, are NOT HELPING.
I can't tell you how many people that I've heard bitching and complaining about "the nanny state" and "handouts" since Obama got elected that, once they themselves have fallen on hard times, had no problem whatsoever being a huge hypocrite and taking those "handouts" from the "nanny state" themselves. One old 'friend' (more of an acquaintance these days) in particular regularly posts shit about kicking people off of Medicaid saying that it's not his responsibility to take care of "freeloaders". Meanwhile his wife has been milking Social Security for a decade due to a car accident which injured her ankle and is "unable to work".
Hypocrisy is being worn almost like a badge of honor these days. I honestly can't tell if it's deliberate or people are seriously so fucking stupid and short-sighted that they can't imagine being in similar situations.
>>>Maybe because their workers operate round-the-clock
According to Steve Jobs. He claimed this is the reason he manufactures in China, because they are available 24/7 whenever Apple needs a rush job. American workers aren't. I say it's time for the EU/US to insist China start treating their workers better (or else cut off the product at the incoming port). Having the Chinese operate 70-80 hours a week, or woken up in the middle of the night to drag them into a factory, is an infringement upon basic human rights.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
'mandatory saturdays' is not the same as 'chinese hours', so to speak; but we're inching our way there, aren't we!
When Occupy Wall St. was just starting up, there was this marine who was proud of the fact that he was working 60-70 hour weeks and it took him 8 years to get a degree.
While a lot of people clamped onto his work ethic and said it was an example of what's great with America, a lot of people also said he's an example of just exactly what's wrong with America.
I can't write as well this early (relatively, for me) in the day, so I'll just quote from the above article:
I understand your pride in what you’ve accomplished, but I want to ask you something.
Do you really want the bar set this high? Do you really want to live in a society where just getting by requires a person to hold down two jobs and work 60 to 70 hours a week? Is that your idea of the American Dream?
Do you really want to spend the rest of your life working two jobs and 60 to 70 hours a week? Do you think you can? Because, let me tell you, kid, that’s not going to be as easy when you’re 50 as it was when you were 20.
And what happens if you get sick? You say you don’t have health insurance, but since you’re a veteran I assume you have some government-provided health care through the VA system. I know my father, a Vietnam-era veteran of the Air Force, still gets most of his medical needs met through the VA, but I don’t know what your situation is. But even if you have access to health care, it doesn’t mean disease or injury might not interfere with your ability to put in those 60- to 70-hour work weeks.
Do you plan to get married, have kids? Do you think your wife is going to be happy with you working those long hours year after year without a vacation? Is it going to be fair to her? Is it going to be fair to your kids? Is it going to be fair to you?
I worked at a job - worked, as in past tense - for a month as a manager. My first job as manager, no less. The company was running all of their employees 70-90 hours a week (a lot of that was driving time on the road), sometimes more. Overtime was non-existant. The boss would keep taking more and more jobs while refusing to either slow the pace or hire more people to handle the workload.
The boss would bitch about the (rare) new hire being unexperienced, yet he wouldn't invest in even minimal training other than "Here's how you do this particular job - now go repeat this process 5,000 times over the next 12 hours." He would bitch about payroll, yet not take either solution to solve the problem (cut down on the work, or hire more people). He would blow up at me and try to get me to act as a vehicle for his anger towards the employees (to which I adamantly refused).
I tried to act as a buffer by... translating diplomatically. People were "fired" three or four times in my entire month there. "Tell him to get the fuck to the job in the next 15 minutes or he's fucking fired!" would translate to, "Hey, the boss is getting a bit mad, could you try to hurry it up a bit? I know you've been on the road for 12 hours but I'm getting a lot of shit dropped on my head." I felt like a Sergeant getting retarded orders from some idiotic general higher up in the chain of command - all I could really do is try to protect my guys (one of whom was my best friend) and keep the cash flow going.
I eventually quit. Boss's sweet-talk aside, the above things unsettled me too much. I was working 80 hours a week and literally not getting paid (not even straight time) for half of that. Violation of OSHA and federal law was rampant. I suppose I could have reported them to some government agency who may or may not have taken action, but that would have likely just ended up with the people I liked there (literally everybody but the boss) jobl
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
companies think they can dictate things that are absurd and yet, they often get away with it.
There was an employer here in town a few years ago that basically called a company meeting and told everyone that they had to take a 10% pay cut or else he was laying them off and hiring in new people to work for lower wages. When the employees obviously went completely apeshit, the owner said "Don't blame me, blame the economy".
So the employees, they all get together in their own time and they work out ways for them to cut costs, give up their vacations and shit, sacrifice some bonuses, raises, and shift differentials, agree to higher production quotas, and manage to come up with a plan that will enable the boss to cut costs without cutting the employee pay so drastically. The owner's response? "No, my decision to cut your pay is final. The economy is weak right now, and I'm going to capitalize on that by cutting wages back. I don't have to do this, but I am going to anyway to increase my bottom line. Don't like it, there's the door. If you think you're going to organize, be aware that I will fire all of you and move this entire operation to Kentucky."
The employees were obviously furious, but what could they do? A few did quit, but most of them just sucked it up because even a 10% pay cut is better than working for minimum wage in retail or collecting a paltry $300 bucks a week in unemployment that won't even cover a mortgage payment. It turns out it didn't matter anyway, because not long after that, the owner fired everyone and moved to Kentucky just like he threatened, obviously having had plans to do that all along.
If I were those new employees in Kentucky, I wouldn't get too comfortable. I'm sure Mexico or China is going to start looking more and more attractive to him every single day...