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The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com)
New submitter TheCoroner writes: A paper in Nature Energy suggests that the benefits we receive from moving to renewables like wind and solar that reduce air pollution exceed the cost of the subsidies required to make them competitive with traditional fossil fuels. Ars Technica reports: "Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein and his colleagues estimate that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion. The benefits from wind work out to be more than 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is more than unsubsidized wind energy generally costs.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
But what about the health benefits of me driving a '69 Charger Hemi R/T? It's great for my stress level and has cured my erectile dysfunction.
You are welcome on my lawn.
is it just me or when you read an article like this one does your "This is a crock of sh*t" alarm go off?
Seems like about 1 million assumptions and taking estimates into facts and global averages into local and assuming 100 utilization of generation and zero pollution cost of manufacture and disposal of generation equipment. Plus probably more. I mean I love renewable energy but this article just smells bad despite all the clean renewable air.
$30B / 3k people = $10 million per person
That's a heck of a lot of economic benefit per person.
What about the emissions generated to build large wind turbines or solar panels? This includes any and all emissions generated by the mining, refining, transportation of the materials, manufacturing, transportation of the finished product, and installation. Keep in mind that any emissions generated to build the infrastructure needed to enable such things must also be included.
What about the loss of land to host wind farms and especially solar farms?
Does this take into account all of the costs?
That's one thing that leftists aren't so good at: seeing the full cost of their ideas. They see the immediate benefits, but miss out on most of the direct costs, and essentially all of the indirect costs.
But those wind farms are so god damn ugly. I'd rather die earlier. Thanks anyway.
Since nuclear has such a wildly greater EROEI than wind and solar, why isn't this story about the trillions of lives and quintillions of dollars saved by nuclear over the last 50 years?
Oh, right. mdsolar still gets paid per click for stories that push up the stock price of companies that take taxpayer subsidies in exchange for importing Chinese solar panels.
Carry on.
Of course, it has long been known that if the negative externalities of coal generation were factored in it would be way more expensive than other generation forms. Did they also count the concerns about coal ash storage, which has caused drinking water problems and even a flood of radioactive, toxic sludge in the case of the Tennessee Valley?
But if all those people don't die early, the rest of us will have to share the cost of their social security payments.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Capturing the hot air emissions from Trump would be the cheapest source of clean electricity.
It should come as a no surprise that the stuff that comes out of tailpipes is not good for you to breathe. It can and does kill people. People who want to kill themselves quickly, breathe a lot of it in a short amount of time. The rest of us are doing it over a longer period of time.
The sooner we switch away from a gas burning engine, the better.
and we create a better world for nothing?
Jokes aside, at least in the US nothing's going to change unless our electoral system does. Right now about 55,000 coal miners in swing states are holding our national elections hostage trying to hold onto jobs made increasingly irrelevant by fracking and cheap natural gas... With our electoral system it doesn't matter how you vote because we don't weigh each person's vote equally. Which was after all the entire point. It keeps change to a minimum and protects landowner's interests.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Even including the deaths from Chernobyl nuclear power has an impressive safety record. More people died from windmill and solar accidents per energy produced than nuclear.
Sure, there were a lot of accidental deaths in the early days of nuclear power but it's making a lot of safe energy now. Wind and solar combined make very little energy, and you compare that to worker deaths from electrocutions and falls and nuclear has them beat by an order of magnitude on safety. Nuclear is better for the environment too, less carbon produced per energy than wind or solar. Pretty sure nuclear kills fewer birds and bats too.
I just heard on the radio today of the health effects of the sound made by windmills. I think they called it "infrasound", it's the low frequency hum made by windmills that cause headaches, hearing loss, and all kinds of crazy stuff. Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know.
I see a lot of comparisons of wind and solar to coal and natural gas. Why not compare it to nuclear? I know why. By comparison wind and solar is expensive, dirty, deadly, and did I mention expensive?
If these articles want to convince me that I need wind and solar power then they need to compare it to nuclear too. But they don't. Again, I know why.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Correct.
Some US lives have been saved, while billions of Chinese will suffer major lung and health complaints for decades to come.
Or we could have spend greenie funds on saving lives on car deaths, drug overdoses or fixing up those who cannot afford health care - and die early. This is called opportunity cost, and the politicians in greenie states know this.
The story isn't about nuclear because the study examined the health costs of fossil fuel emissions, not the health costs of radioactive emissions.
If a similar study were made about nuclear, it would have to factor in the health costs of radioactivity leakage, nuclear accidents, and nuclear waste disposal, which nuclear advocates never factor in because they always leave that problem for future generations to solve. Such a study should certainly be done.
I don't know why we're trying to save the Earth when we're just going to blow it up in a Nuclear Holocaust anyway.
If you're going to account for costs like that, you also need to account for opportunity costs. How about it?
I don't know if you have seen one, but windmills take up about as much land as a cell tower. It's just the footprint.
The loss to hospital revenue likely doesn't justify the green energy cost when you consider upper respiratory problems, including the higher potential for cancer. Too bad...
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
http://news.stanford.edu/news/...
Here's TFA:
"Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it's straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do," Jacobson said. "The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide." Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.
So basically, to make Nuclear just fall off his chart, he assumes that building more powerplants will lead to nuclear war, and calculates how much stuff that will burn. Is that not completely absurd?
Basically, the gist of what he's saying about Nuclear is this: "We have to pretend like it's a bad idea, because if we don't, other countries will want to do it, and then they might build bombs. So, say it with me: Nuclear is a baad idea."
Does somebody want to break it to the guy that Iran and other states will pursue weapons programs no matter what sort of powerplants we build in the US? And besides, what's more likely to cause war: Clean and cost-effective nuclear powerplants that the rest of the world will want to copy, or an energy shortage which sends us looking to secure fossil fuels? I think the latter.
Anyway, this calculating methodology is so incredibly bizarre that I suspect it's bought.
So I'm always hearing about how the climate science community is rigorous and weeds out bad work, but that doesn't seem to have happened here. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but it's been eight years and AFAICT this study was never retracted nor the lead scientist (Mark Z. Jacobson) confronted over it.
Why on earth would they risk their income, allowing progress to happen, for the well being of the proletariate?
You can't have people living near a windmill, so that may cut down the value of the land. Also, huge gobs of concrete are used to stabilize them. Well, everything has some negative consequences, it's all a matter of what you prefer.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
In any case as the old saying goes one in the hand is worth 2 in the bush. They have a very clear moral argument that less pollution means better health for you and your children, why muddy the whole thing up with macroeconomics
I know you're just trying to stat an argument but why are wind turbines and solar panels leftist?
It's estimated that there are 200,000 early deaths from air pollution a year just in the US. So it makes sense that fossil fuels would actually be the most expensive once health is factored in.
http://news.mit.edu/2013/study...
Anything to further advance the idea of omniscient and benevolent rulers confiscating, errr, redistributing their subjects' monies for The Greater Good(TM).
If you are against it, you are against The Greater Good, BTW.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The entire reason we want the clean energy sources is this hypothesis (that lives saved exceed the dollar cost).
But this kind of comparison is stupid to make, which is why the true conclusion is not believed by climate deniers.
The report depends on putting a dollar value to the human life AND on a lot of other soft comparisons.
Estimations upon estimations, making it pointless, at least for the purpose of convincing the non-believers. The green believers already know it to be true and don't need convincing.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles emit pollution that weighs roughly as much as the vehicle- every single year.
Electric cars emit tire rubber dust (same as ICE) and brake dust (but only 1/10th as much).
That's it. No micro particulates, no unburnt hydrocarbons, no leaing fluids, no CO2, CO, or Sulphur.
Any pollution created by the cars manufacture is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable.
Any pollution created by electrical generation is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable (even coal).
If your town has 1 million ICE vehicles in it on a given day, replacing them would remove 4 billion pounds of pollution per year from your town.
That's going to help many over 65, and anyone with breathing problems, probably cut cancer noticeably due to the reduction of PM10 combustion emissions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I suppose you'll also try to argue that there are less women in tech because there are differences between men and women...
And just think! All those power subsidies (and ethanol in petrol) will make food more expensive, which means millions more children will starve, which will keep the population down, which will further reduce pollution.
Its WIN-WIN
"between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion."
So, averting one premature death costs the economy $10M? Not sure why the benefit goes down per person if more deaths are averted, but where on earth are they getting anywhere near $10M per person?
Because if we don't make it a better place before, nobody will be around to blow up in a nuclear holocaust anyway...
that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion.
So what about all of the economically advantageous deaths (like that of pensioners) that have been prevented? Economically you are best off with people dying with minimal amount of hospitalization right at the end of their productive life. If the cost for that is a certain number of premature deaths, it may still well be worth it all in all.
So making this an economic argument is at best cringeworthy. It dehumanizes the suffering and ends up being a lie or irrelevant anyway. You cannot measure right and wrong in dollars.
If the reporting is such gibberish, I am compelled to assume that there is no science involved in the "paper" at all. Probably some cherry-picked data points to draw a graph for the rubes with no error bars, and a long string of questionable assumptions to raise the bullshit level even higher.
Your kind is obsolete.
aaaaaaa
Measuring the public health cost of pollution is a perfect example of picking the dataset to support your conclusion. I can work the numbers either way. Give me a few hours to make up support to the assumptions, and I can spit out a paper in a month that supports your agenda. The only problem is that it showed up in one of the Nature journals instead of the pay to play journals where this category of analysis belongs.
All there is is the joy hating people brings you. Which probably makes the loneliness forgotten for a short while, but it just ensures that loneliness continues.
Sad.
Moron.
And why are you including only one event for nuke deaths and not just one coal mine for coal? Because you want to pick the feature you like to ensure the "right" conclusion. Talk about bullshit alarms....
And it will further improve your health and wellbeing, right up until that tree or lightpost you hit.
Also it will be better for the environment since those engines output a lot less pollutants, other than CO2. For that just plant a bunch of extra trees in your yard (if you can afford a vintage charger hemi r/t I assume you have the money for the swap, and the property for the trees.)
Oh, it isn't. So what's the beef, moron?
And you hear that bullshit alarm? It's your own mind making it. Yuo don't want it to be true because it sounds hippy ecoloon leftist and that's bad people right there, only barely above muslims, so therefore you DON'T WANT it to be true,so you make up a bullshit alarm so that you don't have to accept it.
Even if you had a real bullshit alarm, just because it could be wrong doesn't mean it is.
But for some reason your bullshit alarm doesn't go off at your bullshit alarm. Because it's not detecting bullshit, it's detecting what you don't like. And every time what you don't like is also wrong, your confirmation bias makes you remember how accurate your bullshit alarm was.
Pst. Hey kid, wanna save the world with an atmospheric electricity collector grid?
captcha, being sentient: disrupt
No, not gobs of concrete. And they don't build wind towers in cities, so natch on the "you can't live near it". Cows couldn't give a rats ass about living near a wind turbine.
Better... until all the refined heavy and alkaline metals find their way into the ecosystem.
The last German auction for needed subsidies for coastal Wind-generators the winner asked for exactly 0€ subsidies.
They don't need that anymore.
38 species of migratory birds are back on the endangered species list thanks to windmills. Windmills are also changing the patterns of prevailing winds and altering weather patterns. This is getting blamed on climate change, but you can't sit there with a straight face and honestly believe that windmills are not changing the prevailing winds.
The environmental impact of windmills is at least as large as the impact of combustion. They should be banned right along with ICEs and fossil fuel plants.
Do you know that none of the fossil fuel extraction industries pay for what they extract. And that the oil industry even gets a tax break for pumping out the oil called an oil depletion allowance. The oil isn't even theirs in the first place.
Has a higher velocity than money sent abroad. It does more here. It is worth it to spend a bit more to keep the money here.
Wind is a health DETRIMENT if near population. There have been studies done, mostly in Europe, about the low frequency noise generated by wind turbines. It causes major mental health issues in animals (including humans).
Just in case we don't...
Everything the parent said is wonderful. Here's a problem - marketing.
There is a huge segment of our population that will not want anything other than an ICE powered truck or muscle car. Their "manhood" - identity - is based on cubic inches or liters, how loud it is, and how much black smoke it emits - like those "Rollin' coal" rednecks.
GM, Ford, Chrysler actually hire acoustical engineers to make the sound of the exhaust on their trucks and muscle cars sound more "bad" and "manly".
So, people's attitudes are also going to have to change and as history has shown, that takes a long time. And that's something that the "change the world" techies (and Tesla shareholders) do not understand.
According to NextEra, 800 tons of concrete per windmill. A quick look shows ranges from 200 tons to 1000 tons per windmill. I'd call that gobs. Their are a lot of abandoned wind farms that no one wants to clean up, too. A clean-up deposit should be required to build them.
I don't know what cows care about, but if you can't build near it the value of the land will decrease. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
"I'm pretty sure ..."
"Maybe that's a bunch of pseudoscience, I don't know."
Sometimes, you should just shut your mouth when you know that you don't know shit.
If you want people to pay attention to you, you really ought to provide at least a *little* bit of evidence to support your arguments.
Nukes are base load.
Gas turbines, wind, solar etc fill the gaps instead of directly competing with nukes.
The nuke advocates that see solar and wind as a threat are just idiots charging at windmills who have forgotten that almost nothing has been spent on new nukes since long before wind and solar became viable on the grid.
But what if we make the world better for no reason?
7 million dollars per death ? come on really?
Solar and Wind are a crappy substitute for energy sources that are there when you need them. Now that they have admitted that they are not competitive, stop throwing money at alternative fuels and let the market do it's thing.
Saving Trotsky progressive lives is no benefit, it's a cost. Krank those coal-fires DemoRat bitch and breath deep.
So why is there an intrinsic assumption preventing death saves money for the society?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Bunch of made up numbers to try to convince people solar/wind is more cost effective then coal. If it really is that good, end the subsidies.
That would be a waste of reusable resources.
Ezekiel 23:20
Considering that health care and a focus on environmental regulations to reduce pollution have been helping environmental quality by itself, the idea that wind/solar energy is the reason for the improved health/reduced death rates is flawed. New filters and methods of using coal/oil to generate power could also do the same thing in theory.
With that said, we should not downplay the benefit of moving away from oil to generate power, since it would eliminate the power of the oil producers in the Middle East, and we could just leave that region alone fully. Also, it is a good thing to look for power generation that does not require additional materials to produce, such as radioactive materials in the case of nuclear power.
There is also the benefit of not producing as any greenhouse gasses via "burning" of materials to generate power.
The paper is there. Their methods open and the sources for their assumptions in that peper referenced.
Rather than do no fucking work and go "Really???" why not actually do a little bit of work and point out where they're wrong and why?
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
However, since the Oligarchy in the US is invested in and profiteers off fossil fuels, this report will be instantly dismissed as “fake news”
That's the point of AGW; it'll offset nuclear winter and things will be peachy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
Cal State Fullerton came up with a much more conservative estimate of a pollution cost of $1,600 per person per year in health costs, lost income and so on in the San Joaquin Valley.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Listen to Trump. Coal is the future, it will make America Great again. You are scheduled for re-education in room 101 at 12 noon. Do not be late.
Well you've definitely reduced the paper to where you can understand it, but now you've fallen below the level of intelligence required for this discussion. Reddit seems more your style.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Sure, electric cars save a lot of money...if gasoline costs $5 a gallon. This isn't that much different. The math only works because the cost of health care has gotten way out of control.
Like most environmental nutcases, you are obviously ignorant of what opportunity costs are.
Libertarianism is just rationalized recalcitrance. "I don't want to be told what to do." Too bad. You grew up into an adult, not a royal sovereign. If you want to start an armed insurrection, please do so, and assuming you survive do let us know when your trial date is.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Consider the crappy solar lights that are so common. They're basically throwaway, replacing the rechargeable battery costs more then replacing the light, besides needing a screwdriver and in my experience, as often as not, the switch fails.
I doubt that many of these are recycled.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
If I do not have enough money to buy food how am I going to buy solar panels?
Are you paying for them?
Yes they do not cost anything if the GOVERNMENT pays for it.... with ALL of US taxpayers money!!!
Moron! Economics run the World NOT good intentions!
800 tons would be a cube of edge length of ~23 ft, or ~7 meters. Concrete is heavy; anything actually made of concrete will get into the hundreds-of-tons range pretty quickly. Concrete is one of the most widely used materials in the world, with over 2 billion tonnes produced annually. By the time you're complaining about the concrete usage of wind turbines you're pretty far into flimsy rationalizations.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
"Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein" due to his presumed bias!
and I lost interest.
I would like to see their error bars and their research. Saying you think some people would not have died is just stupid.
Traditionally a person dies for every couple of million spent in construction, on that construction, it is the same in maintenance, did they factor that in? No, they did not.
basically, Berkelyites prove whatever they want to prove without regard to 'truth' or honesty, if it is in accord with their political agenda.
And of course the economic impact of runaway global warming should taken into consideration.
It should not. Runaway warming situations are generally not possible on Earth, at least not until the Sun expands and the oceans boil off. The stratosphere is too cold for H2O to accumulate; you may have even noticed its tendency to precipitate out of solution. Carbon sensitivity is at the wild extremes 5-6 degrees per doubling. Burning all the coal reserves would make the poles tropical and the tropics uninhabitable, but we can't actually go full-on Venus. And of course, given that the Earth has been much warmer in the past, if runaway warming were possible we wouldn't be here to discuss it. We can make things seriously unpleasant for the next 10k-100k years, but some part of that was probably projected to be an Ice Age anyway. In the long run, the planet will be fine, and humanity is quite likely to survive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Nope: wind and solar.
This is just another example of that crazy Ayn Rand being right... stupid Colorado oil fields and natural gas revolution destroying peak oil.
Oh, and the comment on he original post about changes in energy prices... could this refer to natural gas that is also clean burning with less carbon output? If so, how would this same study look if it compared impact of coal vs natural gas and showed that fracking has an enormous benefit?
But what about the narrative!
The $30 billion is the total economic benefit, and the 3,000 is number of deaths only.
No. RTFA. The $30B is only the benefit of avoiding the 3000 deaths.
Fact: Windmills can potentially have impacts on birds through collisions and habitat disruption. However, the impact is very small, and dramatically less than that of urban sprawl, buildings, house cats or climate change. For example, one study notes that for every 10,000 birds killed by human activities including fatalities by collisions with man made structures, less than one death is caused by a wind turbine. For every 1 bird death caused by a wind turbine, 1,000 to 2,000 bird deaths are caused by cats. Even the National Audubon Society strongly supports wind power as a clean alternative energy source that reduces the threat of global warming.
http://www.torontoenvironment.org/windmills/myths#birds
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They forgot to factor in something...
Death is the best thing for the economy. It creates new jobs, opens up positions - especially high-paying positions - to young people. It lowers the population, putting less stress on the finite food and - especially - water supply. It opens the market and lowers housing costs for lower-income buyers.
And nuclear power has been estimated to have saved 1.8 million lives, but it doesn't stop the anti-nuclear folks from complaining about the horrible subsidy of government-underwritten insurance (which hasn't actually cost us anything).
By the way, you want to take renewables-enthusiasts with a grain of salt.
a win win study, hmmm. alternative energy...."Berkeley environmental engineer..".
Dammit! Nevermind.
Kind of a win-win. Plus over population will cease to be a thing.
That is a feature of consumer electronics in general, not of solar power in particular, especially at larger scale.
Ezekiel 23:20
True, but how many crappy consumer products end up in the landfill. Solar lights with an AA battery made from nickel cadmium or better, phones etc. It is still a bleeding of valuable resources.
Not arguing with the idea that moving to renewables is wrong, just not as perfect as you assume. Of course to expect perfect means not doing anything which is worse.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I wasn't exactly complaining. As I said, everything has its downsides. Making concrete releases carbon dioxide, so finding a replacement eventually is important. It also clutters up old sites and once a company goes bankrupt there's no one to clean them up. I'm in no particular hurry, though.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
You are complaining about crappy, cheap toy lights, made to absorb the consumer's wallet, not the best that the real technology produces. Of course, a capitalist is free to produce whatever cheap crap that they think they can sell quickly, and the American consumer is always ready to buy the latest in this throw-away garbage if it comes with enough manufactured hype from a frivolous social media marketing campaign: It's what the marketers have been training the consumer to do for decades: acceptance of the flashy and cheap with the full understanding that none of it will last out the year.
People revel in their self-administered stupidity and willingly waste their shrinking paychecks on whatever the next flashy TV ad is pushing. It is what drives the consumer's dollars towards filling the bank accounts of the international global corporations and ultimately what is causing the huge gap in wealth inequality.
Why do you suppose the GNP keeps rising? It's because people have been convinced to keep buying flashy trinkets that become trash before the year is out. The producers of this crap have no care for the mountains of garbage this creates in our landfills: they do not have to pay for the trash collection and waste disposal. They are already laughing at them all the way to the bank while coming up with the next campaign for removing fools from their money.Consumers are the most ignorant of all sheep.
Except for Trump supporters, who are just as undereducated and willfully misinformed as their sociopathic orange-man leader.
PlaynBass