I think it fits because the Joker wanted to eliminate the fundamentals of the civilized society. Obama by his own words wants to "remake" America. Fix, tweak, improve, I'm all for that- the U.S. is not perfect. But I think we have a good thing going here, no need to "remake" it.
Yes,noone owns the world. But we would be better of if more people acted like they did.
I think what you mean to say is people should act more responsibly and be environmentally conscious. You can own something and still treat it like crap. What I'm making my point about is the conceit that's inherent in most proponents of anthropogenic global warming. "Humans rule Earth but most are bad and pollute, not like me, and so I can feel good about myself when I buy this poison-filled lightbulb."
So you are saying that we should send people producing/using cars to jail because they produce an externalty?
No. We should send people who hurt other people to jail. A company can use toxic chemicals in production and dispose of them safely- we jail the ones that dump it and poison people. People can drive cars responsibly. We jail the people that drive drunk or otherwise recklessly such that they harm people. It's pretty simple.
Good explanation on subsidies. I agree 100%. Only problem is the second half of my point, which is "a tax break is not a subsidy"
It isn't revenge.
The way you wrote it it was. Neighbors don't dump on each others' lawns, we have garbage trucks that take it away for us. A landfill isn't really destructive, and we have plenty of space for them. Then after a few decades you can build a school on top of it like my town did.
Exactly. Did anyone look at the pictures? It's a freakin go-kart. Why waste time on this when they could work towards making a normal sedan have 100 mpg on gasoline?
I have a problem with all those people who don't own the world and also act like they don't.
Was this supposed to be a wisecrack? Because it wasn't wise, and you sound like you're on crack. No one owns the world. So sane people don't act like they own it.
Subsidising or taxing are the two ways of dealing with externalities.
No, neither of these are good ways. We write laws to deal with them. If a company is dumping crap in the river, you outlaw it, and if they keep doing it, people go to jail.
Subsidies hurts the economy atleast as much as taxes. And usually more.
You give no example of how "Subsidies hurts", and moreover a tax break is not a subsidy.
That would be greed and power. And you can find greed equally well among communists, capitalists or whatever.
I won't argue that, but again, look at history. The US is the most powerful nation on earth, but we do more than almost any other to take care of the environment. Look at China and Russia. Both among the most powerful. China has perpetual smog such that people wear masks, and Russia has drained the Aral Sea and turned large swaths of central Asia into desert - both causing untold human death and misery I might add.
The rich guy will gladly dump tons of shit on his neighbours background when the neighbour isn't watching. And his neighbour will do the same. And they both end up with shitty backyards because most of their lobbying will go towards preventing laws forbidding shit dumping.
I never claimed anyone was logical. But I think self-interest is stronger than revenge- I don't see people going to town hall to fight for their right to get back at their neighbor with further property destruction.
I have a problem with people who act like they own the world.
And the things every one of you green people don't understand are economics and history.
Economics - what you want is a price difference to incentivize green technology and practices. What you fail to see is that making energy more expensive raises the prices of everything but this could be done just as easily by cutting or eliminating taxes on green technology, without hurting the economy at large.
History - you think unbridled capitalism allows evil corporations to plunder and abuse the environment. Let's look at how we take care of the environment here, vs. China or Russia or Cuba etc. The rich guy wants a beautiful backyard full of nature and has the means to defend it. The poor guy doesn't have the time or money to lobby the government or corporations to protect nature.
Is it cheaper or not? Make up your mind.
If it's cheaper, it's more competitive. No communist-like government price controls needed.
LehiNephi is right on.
You started by laying out an impossible standard of proof... I used a bit of verbiage that reflected the not-100%ness of our current understanding, and you respond as though I said, "It'll most likely amount to nothing."
I apologize for any hard feelings. I'm just coming from the position of 1- this is really expensive. 2- it's unilateral, and therefore not effective. 3- it's a dangerous increase in government size, with industries clamoring for favor, essentially corruption by its very nature. I appreciate that you admit we don't understand the climate 100% and I don't mean to turn that against you in a spiteful way, I just feel like any doubt however small lends credence to opposing this bill.
"We don't know the right way" was rejecting the idea that we would find the least-cost path to lower emissions by guessing at a mix of specific policy steps.
I don't think we need to guess here. I don't claim to know the absolute-best least-cost path to lower emissions, but this bill is very high cost, and won't fix the problem since other countries won't do the same. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. I accept that this bill would probably hurt high-emitting industries the most, but it raises prices on absolutely everything. I can think of several ideas that are less expensive and less detrimental, the first and best of which I think is making green R&D or green power plants tax-free. This creates a similar price difference to Waxman-Markey that gives incentive to be green, except it doesn't hurt the whole economy.
If we changed nothing about our economy between now and 2020, but invested $61B in building efficiency, total emissions in 2020 would be well below the Waxman/Markey cap.
Then why don't we say all capital expenditures towards building efficiency are tax-free? Even outright spending the $61B would be better than this bill. This is also something that China might be likely to adopt also, if it's cost-effective such that saving on energy costs saves businesses money in the long run. These last two points go back to my original set of questions; I might answer "maybe, maybe, no, no, and no" whereas you might answer "very likely" or "yes" for the first 4, but the last one still catches it- this bill is not the best way to fix the problem.
If you truly believed that, there isn't much point arguing with me. Trust me, at this point nobody else is reading the conversation.
Hehe good point. I do think you care, it just sounded like you didn't when you threw out any logical fallacies I pointed out.
People cannot derail arguments by asking for reassessments of fundamental premises, because it won't change the end result and we don't care how much effort is expended getting there.
I don't mean to derail the argument, but I think it's telling that you take the "fact" of global warming as a "fundamental premise". Remember we revere Kepler because he had the humility to abandon his theories when the evidence didn't support them. I reaffirm that I don't mean to throw out the whole temperature record, but there are some pieces of evidence that don't quite fit. The Maunder Minimum coincided with the Little Ice Age, and we had record low number of sunspots in 2008, and 08 and so far 09 have been comparatively cooler. This suggests that A- the sun is the cause of most warming/cooling or B- if we do play a part, it's secondary to the sun. It's hard to believe it's not the big bright hot thing in the sky.:) I've gone ahead and read what your skeptic's guide has to say about it, and they quote some data from satellites. It's kind of ironic, in one article they (rightly I think) throw out a minute amount of evidence for warming on Mars, but in the other they quote data from 3-4 satellites patched together for 25 years which themselves are tiny pinpricks on a sphere with a 90 million mile rad
I'm for free trade, because if everyone truly adopts such a policy, everyone benefits. I admit that this doesn't happen in the real world, so I don't have a solid position on tariffs. But I should add that any time the government mucks with the prices of commodities, it is a bad thing.
It makes green tech "cheaper and more scalable" only by making everything else more expensive. Why not say all business R&D spending on green tech is tax-free? That would equally "fund the R&D that will make green tech cheaper" without the hardship for everyone of artificially high prices.
Your point about an incentive for China & India to adopt the technology is slightly off I think - with this bill they will have more of an incentive to use dirty tech because it is cheaper right now, and business will thrive there. It may prod them to make green products for sale here since that's all we'll be able to afford, but then we sell them some more IOUs. I fail to see how this bill would bring them closer to adopting a similar plan.
I agree, most politicians are spineless and self-serving.
The problem is not with them though- if the public at large really understood the above, then any politicians proposing it would get elected. Therefore since politicians are spineless and self-serving, they would support the right policy.
The solution would be to get the "new" technologies to produce energy at or below the cost of current energy generation, not taxing everyone in oblivion to artificially do this.
I wish I had mod points. Why is this so hard to understand? Tax free R&D for green tech is the way to go.
Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.
The other thing I keep forgetting to mention, but someone else did above, is that China and other nations aren't going to stop building and using coal plants. This bill will do nothing but make it more costly to do business here, and encourage China to not adopt a similar policy, since businesses will be attracted to cheaper costs there.
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Obama isn't left enough for you? You must be an all-out communist!
I'll keep it simple: you should buy a history book. Stalin and Mao were very bad. And Cuba has run out of toilet paper!
I prefer the kind of debate where people aren't mocked for "clinging to guns and religion".
I think it fits because the Joker wanted to eliminate the fundamentals of the civilized society. Obama by his own words wants to "remake" America. Fix, tweak, improve, I'm all for that- the U.S. is not perfect. But I think we have a good thing going here, no need to "remake" it.
uhh that would be A, I'm guessing.
It's funny how the group that screams for equal treatment and equal rights is so quick to silence any that oppose them.
It's because their ideas can't win in open debate. That's why they support the "Fairness Doctrine".
Sounds like someone got paid to make a study so they can feel better about themselves when they drive like an a-hole.
beautiful women had up to 16% more children than their plainer counterparts.
If more attractive parents have more daughters and if physical attractiveness is heritable
Does this mean we'll eventually have a planet full of women? And good-looking women? Time to get back to work on time travel...
If they lose, the government will bail them out!
Any organization that gets too big is a breeding ground for such stupidity and infighting.
Why we can't seem to learn that lesson and apply it to the government like our founding fathers did... this always saddens me.
Yes,noone owns the world. But we would be better of if more people acted like they did.
I think what you mean to say is people should act more responsibly and be environmentally conscious. You can own something and still treat it like crap. What I'm making my point about is the conceit that's inherent in most proponents of anthropogenic global warming. "Humans rule Earth but most are bad and pollute, not like me, and so I can feel good about myself when I buy this poison-filled lightbulb."
So you are saying that we should send people producing/using cars to jail because they produce an externalty?
No. We should send people who hurt other people to jail. A company can use toxic chemicals in production and dispose of them safely- we jail the ones that dump it and poison people. People can drive cars responsibly. We jail the people that drive drunk or otherwise recklessly such that they harm people. It's pretty simple.
Good explanation on subsidies. I agree 100%. Only problem is the second half of my point, which is "a tax break is not a subsidy"
It isn't revenge.
The way you wrote it it was. Neighbors don't dump on each others' lawns, we have garbage trucks that take it away for us. A landfill isn't really destructive, and we have plenty of space for them. Then after a few decades you can build a school on top of it like my town did.
Yeah that always frustrated me too that the entitlements are over 2/3 the budget and they just mention it briefly in the corner.
Imagine if they fixed the poster and put it in every schoolroom, and teachers actually taught how much a trillion dollars really is.
If it really was for all spending, people actually used it, and then got mad enough to vote in people with common sense it might be worth it.
But the Death&Taxes poster doesn't cost $18 million...
Exactly. Did anyone look at the pictures? It's a freakin go-kart. Why waste time on this when they could work towards making a normal sedan have 100 mpg on gasoline?
I have a problem with all those people who don't own the world and also act like they don't.
Was this supposed to be a wisecrack? Because it wasn't wise, and you sound like you're on crack. No one owns the world. So sane people don't act like they own it.
Subsidising or taxing are the two ways of dealing with externalities.
No, neither of these are good ways. We write laws to deal with them. If a company is dumping crap in the river, you outlaw it, and if they keep doing it, people go to jail.
Subsidies hurts the economy atleast as much as taxes. And usually more.
You give no example of how "Subsidies hurts", and moreover a tax break is not a subsidy.
That would be greed and power. And you can find greed equally well among communists, capitalists or whatever.
I won't argue that, but again, look at history. The US is the most powerful nation on earth, but we do more than almost any other to take care of the environment. Look at China and Russia. Both among the most powerful. China has perpetual smog such that people wear masks, and Russia has drained the Aral Sea and turned large swaths of central Asia into desert - both causing untold human death and misery I might add.
The rich guy will gladly dump tons of shit on his neighbours background when the neighbour isn't watching. And his neighbour will do the same. And they both end up with shitty backyards because most of their lobbying will go towards preventing laws forbidding shit dumping.
I never claimed anyone was logical. But I think self-interest is stronger than revenge- I don't see people going to town hall to fight for their right to get back at their neighbor with further property destruction.
I have a problem with people who act like they own the world.
And the things every one of you green people don't understand are economics and history.
Economics - what you want is a price difference to incentivize green technology and practices. What you fail to see is that making energy more expensive raises the prices of everything but this could be done just as easily by cutting or eliminating taxes on green technology, without hurting the economy at large.
History - you think unbridled capitalism allows evil corporations to plunder and abuse the environment. Let's look at how we take care of the environment here, vs. China or Russia or Cuba etc. The rich guy wants a beautiful backyard full of nature and has the means to defend it. The poor guy doesn't have the time or money to lobby the government or corporations to protect nature.
Is it cheaper or not? Make up your mind.
If it's cheaper, it's more competitive. No communist-like government price controls needed.
LehiNephi is right on.
I thought we needed to pass the massive cap&tax bill before we saw any innovation in green technology! How can this be?
You started by laying out an impossible standard of proof ... I used a bit of verbiage that reflected the not-100%ness of our current understanding, and you respond as though I said, "It'll most likely amount to nothing."
I apologize for any hard feelings. I'm just coming from the position of 1- this is really expensive. 2- it's unilateral, and therefore not effective. 3- it's a dangerous increase in government size, with industries clamoring for favor, essentially corruption by its very nature. I appreciate that you admit we don't understand the climate 100% and I don't mean to turn that against you in a spiteful way, I just feel like any doubt however small lends credence to opposing this bill.
"We don't know the right way" was rejecting the idea that we would find the least-cost path to lower emissions by guessing at a mix of specific policy steps.
I don't think we need to guess here. I don't claim to know the absolute-best least-cost path to lower emissions, but this bill is very high cost, and won't fix the problem since other countries won't do the same. We'd be shooting ourselves in the foot. I accept that this bill would probably hurt high-emitting industries the most, but it raises prices on absolutely everything. I can think of several ideas that are less expensive and less detrimental, the first and best of which I think is making green R&D or green power plants tax-free. This creates a similar price difference to Waxman-Markey that gives incentive to be green, except it doesn't hurt the whole economy.
If we changed nothing about our economy between now and 2020, but invested $61B in building efficiency, total emissions in 2020 would be well below the Waxman/Markey cap.
Then why don't we say all capital expenditures towards building efficiency are tax-free? Even outright spending the $61B would be better than this bill. This is also something that China might be likely to adopt also, if it's cost-effective such that saving on energy costs saves businesses money in the long run. These last two points go back to my original set of questions; I might answer "maybe, maybe, no, no, and no" whereas you might answer "very likely" or "yes" for the first 4, but the last one still catches it- this bill is not the best way to fix the problem.
If you truly believed that, there isn't much point arguing with me. Trust me, at this point nobody else is reading the conversation.
Hehe good point. I do think you care, it just sounded like you didn't when you threw out any logical fallacies I pointed out.
People cannot derail arguments by asking for reassessments of fundamental premises, because it won't change the end result and we don't care how much effort is expended getting there.
I don't mean to derail the argument, but I think it's telling that you take the "fact" of global warming as a "fundamental premise". Remember we revere Kepler because he had the humility to abandon his theories when the evidence didn't support them. I reaffirm that I don't mean to throw out the whole temperature record, but there are some pieces of evidence that don't quite fit. The Maunder Minimum coincided with the Little Ice Age, and we had record low number of sunspots in 2008, and 08 and so far 09 have been comparatively cooler. This suggests that A- the sun is the cause of most warming/cooling or B- if we do play a part, it's secondary to the sun. It's hard to believe it's not the big bright hot thing in the sky. :) I've gone ahead and read what your skeptic's guide has to say about it, and they quote some data from satellites. It's kind of ironic, in one article they (rightly I think) throw out a minute amount of evidence for warming on Mars, but in the other they quote data from 3-4 satellites patched together for 25 years which themselves are tiny pinpricks on a sphere with a 90 million mile rad
I'm for free trade, because if everyone truly adopts such a policy, everyone benefits. I admit that this doesn't happen in the real world, so I don't have a solid position on tariffs. But I should add that any time the government mucks with the prices of commodities, it is a bad thing.
It makes green tech "cheaper and more scalable" only by making everything else more expensive. Why not say all business R&D spending on green tech is tax-free? That would equally "fund the R&D that will make green tech cheaper" without the hardship for everyone of artificially high prices.
Your point about an incentive for China & India to adopt the technology is slightly off I think - with this bill they will have more of an incentive to use dirty tech because it is cheaper right now, and business will thrive there. It may prod them to make green products for sale here since that's all we'll be able to afford, but then we sell them some more IOUs. I fail to see how this bill would bring them closer to adopting a similar plan.
My Gzone comes pretty close, for a bit less, and available in the US.
We all have medicinal reason now!
I agree, most politicians are spineless and self-serving.
The problem is not with them though- if the public at large really understood the above, then any politicians proposing it would get elected. Therefore since politicians are spineless and self-serving, they would support the right policy.
The solution would be to get the "new" technologies to produce energy at or below the cost of current energy generation, not taxing everyone in oblivion to artificially do this.
I wish I had mod points. Why is this so hard to understand? Tax free R&D for green tech is the way to go.
Even as Democrats have promised that this cap-and-trade legislation won't pinch wallets, behind the scenes they've acknowledged the energy price tsunami that is coming. During the brief few days in which the bill was debated in the House Energy Committee, Republicans offered three amendments: one to suspend the program if gas hit $5 a gallon; one to suspend the program if electricity prices rose 10% over 2009; and one to suspend the program if unemployment rates hit 15%. Democrats defeated all of them.
-Wall Street Journal
The other thing I keep forgetting to mention, but someone else did above, is that China and other nations aren't going to stop building and using coal plants. This bill will do nothing but make it more costly to do business here, and encourage China to not adopt a similar policy, since businesses will be attracted to cheaper costs there.