> 3D printers are really only viable for purchase by businesses in most cases
Yes, of course it will be businesses, just like it's businesses that buy most of Home Depot's lumber, bricks, cement, etc. But I could see plenty of construction companies, mechanics, plumbers, miners, etc. who are tired of shutting down work because they need to drive to HD to get a part. Even if it costs them 20x as much to print a 2.5 inch bolt vs. buy it, it's a no brainer because time is money.
that is not the only effect. the other effect is that US producers will go out of business, because China is subsidizing the production of their PVs and windmills. the tariffs bring the cost of China's products closer to market price. if you take away the tariffs, you need to simultaneously remove the subsidies. yes, that includes the US's green energy subsidies as well.
Good lord. You still don't understand why arable land is not finite? Incredible.
My point is that your point was bunk, and I did my best to show you why. I'm cool if you want to have a worldview that doesn't at all match reality, but you will only hurt yourself. Everyone makes decisions on a daily basis by looking through the lens of their world view, and if the way the world works doesn't match how you think it works, then you will make the wrong decisions. If your own stubbornness keeps you from fixing that, you are (probably) the only one who will be harmed
No, that's exactly the point. It is not a completely different topic. Many tariffs are used by countries to counteract subsidies in the producing company. That is why we (the US) impose a tariff on Chinese PVs. China heavily subsidizes PV manufacturing. And if you just eliminate the tariff without handling the subsidy, then the problem gets worse, not better.
Land is relatively finite, but that's not what you said. You said arable land, and you did that intentionally because you know that arable land is what is relevant for wealth. Arable land is not at all finite, as I explained. You are right that I did not offer citation, but I also did not think I needed to. Obviously natural factors change the amount of arable land all the time. Some sources of this are: deforestation, pest population changes, crop disease/fungus or competitive plant life, water sources changing course or becoming salinated or drying up, desertification, terracing, urban sprawl. Then technological advances in agriculture also changes the amount of arable land. Some sources of this: irrigation, aquaculture, indoor farming, genetic modification of crops, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
> which is why it is effectively fixed for christs sake.
It has no relevance to the discussion of wealth stagnation or growth, and I am pretty sure you still don't understand that... or else you would have never brought it up.
Your comment is not internally consistent. You said it triggers once she is a W-2. But then you say as soon as the company is paying her, that's when it triggers. That means it would trigger when she's an employee of her own one-person and I am a customer of hers. If you meant "paying her wages", then it would trigger when she was an independent contractor being paid by 1099.
There is a small shelf of this debate that is actually based on logic and facts. But the vast majority of the debate is full of nonsense like that to which you allude. So, unless you are specifically referring to the IPCC as "gospel", then it hasn't changed.
> The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past
Serious question: how could you possibly know this with any reasonable degree of reliability? Even in the last 70 years, our ability to measure global average temperatures has become orders of magnitude more precise, let alone O2 and CO2 levels. There is no way to determine whether tangential methods of measurement, like ice cores and tree rings, are accurate.
It depends. Sometimes tariffs are NOT effectively subsidies and are used to counteract subsidies in the producing country. But since you acknowledge that these are very related subjects, then I assume we will agree that both tariffs and subsidies for green energy need to be eliminated, or else we're just manipulating the market with slightly different (but possibly equivalent) forces.
The US uses tariffs to offset subsidies by China, for example, on PV panels. If you agree to eliminate the tariffs without addressing the subsidies, then it doesn't solve the problem, and it certainly doesn't "increase American exports" as the summary suggests. Of course, you'd have to eliminate the US's green subsidies, too.
Their purpose is not to be virtuous. Their purpose it to be profitable. Jobs do not ever get created except in the scenario where a rich man is trying to become richer.
> The amount of arable land in the world is fixed. Some people live on a thousand acres, some people live in a tenement building.
False. The amount of arable land 500 years ago was significantly less than today. Technological advances continue to increase land that is arable.
> The amount of currency in the world is effectively fixed even in a fractional reserve system.
This makes me wonder whether you have any idea what is going on. Currency is only a measurement mechanism for wealth. If the amount of currency were truly fixed, then you would get deflation, because wealth would increase from x --> y (where y > x) and therefore each unit of currency would represent a larger amount of wealth. Whether currency is fixed, increasing, or decreasing has exactly zero explanatory power in whether wealth is fixed. Wealth can be fixed or variable in either of those three currency scenarios.
> Concentrated wealth does not create jobs, distributed wealth does.
You have made an assertion, not an argument.
> If there is a demand for shoes (lots of people want and can afford shoes), there WILL be a shoe factory.
No, there won't, unless somebody has "concentrated wealth" to invest in the capital.
> If people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year then there will NOT be a shoe factory and no amount of tax cuts for the wealthy will cause there to be one.
You are obviously a raving leftist, because you view this entirely backwards. Tax cuts do not cause anything. Tax cuts are not a thing anymore than letting your foot off the brake in your car is a thing. Taxes are the force in question. In your scenario, the degree of taxation will influence whether or not a factory can be built, because it impacts the ability for capital to be accumulated and therefore the cost of capital in the borrowing or equity market place.
> Money goes where money is, like gravity. If it's not broken up and dispersed from time to time the gears will eventually grind to a halt.
Bingo. And this level of ignorance is even more well defined in the people fleeing high cost states to enjoy lower cost Texas. They will complain about their state, taking no culpability in causing it by voting for decades of mismanagement, and then come here to Texas. Of course, since they do not recognize why their original state is a mess, they continue to advocate for the same crap here, especially in Austin.
Also, the premise of this is a little silly to begin with. Wouldn't you need to analyze what percentage of people with college degrees CAME from cities vs. rural areas, and then compare the percentage that GO to cities vs. rural areas and determine whether there is a significant difference?
I know the "corporations are not people" thing gets people riled up, but let's just think this through logically.
So, if I am an independent contractor making widgets, and then I decide to incorporate to limit liability but am the sole owner and employee, and then I decide to outsource my accounting to an external one-person company, and then I hire the accountant directly as 1099 rather than being a customer, and then I hire her as W-2 employee... At what point do I stop being a person and give up my religious rights?
> This doesn't deny corporations from running ads, they just have to do it on their own, and out in the open where everyone can see who they are telling people to vote for. They have to buy their own ads to tell people to vote for Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell.
Congratulations! "Your" plan is already the law of the land.
Certainly not all potential alternatives would be worse, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a privately developed road system anywhere in the world that really matches the publicly built systems.
Unfortunately that point is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is looking at the total cost to society for the Interstate system (including opportunity costs) and the total benefit to society for the Interstate system... and only then comparing it to alternatives.
The problem with Interstate fans is that they have zero imagination. They are unable to consider how our history would be different without the Interstate system. They can only take our current state and subtract the Interstates and consider how we would be worse off. Of course we would be worse off! For over 50 years, we have organized our cities, our way of business, our cultures, our markets, our car purchases, and our entire lives based on the fact that you can get from point A to point B in a car in a particular amount of time at a very low (marginal) cost.
We all laugh about the flying car idea, but one reason it's not here is that there's no need for it. We have the Interstate system and it's cheap (per mile) to drive on it (don't confuse marginal cost per mile with overall cost). But with anyone with the slightest bit of imagination and ability to think outside the box, it is pretty clear that without the Interstate system connecting the cities: a) cities themselves would be more compact, a la Europe... bye, bye suburbs and long, environmentally-expensive commutes b) air travel would be a much, much bigger market, and it would be mass produced similar to cars
You people are looking at the chicken and the egg and wondering how much it would suck if we didn't have the egg! It's a nonsensical comparison because you're missing a very obvious causal link.
I love how you act like you came up with an original point, instead of an overused, irrelevant point. Do I think we would have the interstate highway system we have today? No, probably not. We would have something different.
Now I would love for you to try to tell us that that something different would be worse, better, or the same. You don't know and no one else does. You're talking about completely alternative histories here, where the country would have organized in a different way without the ability to travel on the interstates.
You assume that every single one of those alternative histories would have been worse. I say there is zero evidence supporting that and you're making an ass of yourself by repeating nonsense talking points from the big government types.
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> 3D printers are really only viable for purchase by businesses in most cases
Yes, of course it will be businesses, just like it's businesses that buy most of Home Depot's lumber, bricks, cement, etc. But I could see plenty of construction companies, mechanics, plumbers, miners, etc. who are tired of shutting down work because they need to drive to HD to get a part. Even if it costs them 20x as much to print a 2.5 inch bolt vs. buy it, it's a no brainer because time is money.
that is not the only effect. the other effect is that US producers will go out of business, because China is subsidizing the production of their PVs and windmills. the tariffs bring the cost of China's products closer to market price. if you take away the tariffs, you need to simultaneously remove the subsidies. yes, that includes the US's green energy subsidies as well.
Then don't move here. Please.
Good lord. You still don't understand why arable land is not finite? Incredible.
My point is that your point was bunk, and I did my best to show you why. I'm cool if you want to have a worldview that doesn't at all match reality, but you will only hurt yourself. Everyone makes decisions on a daily basis by looking through the lens of their world view, and if the way the world works doesn't match how you think it works, then you will make the wrong decisions. If your own stubbornness keeps you from fixing that, you are (probably) the only one who will be harmed
of course
No, that's exactly the point. It is not a completely different topic. Many tariffs are used by countries to counteract subsidies in the producing company. That is why we (the US) impose a tariff on Chinese PVs. China heavily subsidizes PV manufacturing. And if you just eliminate the tariff without handling the subsidy, then the problem gets worse, not better.
> land is not a finite resource
Land is relatively finite, but that's not what you said. You said arable land, and you did that intentionally because you know that arable land is what is relevant for wealth. Arable land is not at all finite, as I explained. You are right that I did not offer citation, but I also did not think I needed to. Obviously natural factors change the amount of arable land all the time. Some sources of this are: deforestation, pest population changes, crop disease/fungus or competitive plant life, water sources changing course or becoming salinated or drying up, desertification, terracing, urban sprawl. Then technological advances in agriculture also changes the amount of arable land. Some sources of this: irrigation, aquaculture, indoor farming, genetic modification of crops, fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc.
> which is why it is effectively fixed for christs sake.
It has no relevance to the discussion of wealth stagnation or growth, and I am pretty sure you still don't understand that... or else you would have never brought it up.
Your comment is not internally consistent. You said it triggers once she is a W-2. But then you say as soon as the company is paying her, that's when it triggers. That means it would trigger when she's an employee of her own one-person and I am a customer of hers. If you meant "paying her wages", then it would trigger when she was an independent contractor being paid by 1099.
I think you have proven my point
Nobody's rights are infringed in this case.
There is a small shelf of this debate that is actually based on logic and facts. But the vast majority of the debate is full of nonsense like that to which you allude. So, unless you are specifically referring to the IPCC as "gospel", then it hasn't changed.
> Making solar panels and other green tech cheaper is always good by anyones standards.
In a vacuum? With no other effects? In what scenario would that ever happen?
> The point you seem to be missing is that the climate change we are experiencing now is happening MUCH faster than any in the past
Serious question: how could you possibly know this with any reasonable degree of reliability? Even in the last 70 years, our ability to measure global average temperatures has become orders of magnitude more precise, let alone O2 and CO2 levels. There is no way to determine whether tangential methods of measurement, like ice cores and tree rings, are accurate.
Market distortions cause market inefficiencies. Your "gotcha" comment is silly and suggests you are the one who is confused.
It depends. Sometimes tariffs are NOT effectively subsidies and are used to counteract subsidies in the producing country. But since you acknowledge that these are very related subjects, then I assume we will agree that both tariffs and subsidies for green energy need to be eliminated, or else we're just manipulating the market with slightly different (but possibly equivalent) forces.
So, you support eliminating all government subsidies for green energy too, right?
The US uses tariffs to offset subsidies by China, for example, on PV panels. If you agree to eliminate the tariffs without addressing the subsidies, then it doesn't solve the problem, and it certainly doesn't "increase American exports" as the summary suggests. Of course, you'd have to eliminate the US's green subsidies, too.
I'm sure you're all in favor of that, right?
Their purpose is not to be virtuous. Their purpose it to be profitable. Jobs do not ever get created except in the scenario where a rich man is trying to become richer.
> The amount of arable land in the world is fixed. Some people live on a thousand acres, some people live in a tenement building.
False. The amount of arable land 500 years ago was significantly less than today. Technological advances continue to increase land that is arable.
> The amount of currency in the world is effectively fixed even in a fractional reserve system.
This makes me wonder whether you have any idea what is going on. Currency is only a measurement mechanism for wealth. If the amount of currency were truly fixed, then you would get deflation, because wealth would increase from x --> y (where y > x) and therefore each unit of currency would represent a larger amount of wealth. Whether currency is fixed, increasing, or decreasing has exactly zero explanatory power in whether wealth is fixed. Wealth can be fixed or variable in either of those three currency scenarios.
> Concentrated wealth does not create jobs, distributed wealth does.
You have made an assertion, not an argument.
> If there is a demand for shoes (lots of people want and can afford shoes), there WILL be a shoe factory.
No, there won't, unless somebody has "concentrated wealth" to invest in the capital.
> If people cannot afford to buy new shoes every year then there will NOT be a shoe factory and no amount of tax cuts for the wealthy will cause there to be one.
You are obviously a raving leftist, because you view this entirely backwards. Tax cuts do not cause anything. Tax cuts are not a thing anymore than letting your foot off the brake in your car is a thing. Taxes are the force in question. In your scenario, the degree of taxation will influence whether or not a factory can be built, because it impacts the ability for capital to be accumulated and therefore the cost of capital in the borrowing or equity market place.
> Money goes where money is, like gravity. If it's not broken up and dispersed from time to time the gears will eventually grind to a halt.
You are making an assertion, not an argument.
Bingo. And this level of ignorance is even more well defined in the people fleeing high cost states to enjoy lower cost Texas. They will complain about their state, taking no culpability in causing it by voting for decades of mismanagement, and then come here to Texas. Of course, since they do not recognize why their original state is a mess, they continue to advocate for the same crap here, especially in Austin.
Also, the premise of this is a little silly to begin with. Wouldn't you need to analyze what percentage of people with college degrees CAME from cities vs. rural areas, and then compare the percentage that GO to cities vs. rural areas and determine whether there is a significant difference?
I know the "corporations are not people" thing gets people riled up, but let's just think this through logically.
So, if I am an independent contractor making widgets, and then I decide to incorporate to limit liability but am the sole owner and employee, and then I decide to outsource my accounting to an external one-person company, and then I hire the accountant directly as 1099 rather than being a customer, and then I hire her as W-2 employee... At what point do I stop being a person and give up my religious rights?
> This doesn't deny corporations from running ads, they just have to do it on their own, and out in the open where everyone can see who they are telling people to vote for. They have to buy their own ads to tell people to vote for Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell.
Congratulations! "Your" plan is already the law of the land.
Certainly not all potential alternatives would be worse, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find a privately developed road system anywhere in the world that really matches the publicly built systems.
Unfortunately that point is irrelevant. The only thing that is relevant is looking at the total cost to society for the Interstate system (including opportunity costs) and the total benefit to society for the Interstate system... and only then comparing it to alternatives.
The problem with Interstate fans is that they have zero imagination. They are unable to consider how our history would be different without the Interstate system. They can only take our current state and subtract the Interstates and consider how we would be worse off. Of course we would be worse off! For over 50 years, we have organized our cities, our way of business, our cultures, our markets, our car purchases, and our entire lives based on the fact that you can get from point A to point B in a car in a particular amount of time at a very low (marginal) cost.
We all laugh about the flying car idea, but one reason it's not here is that there's no need for it. We have the Interstate system and it's cheap (per mile) to drive on it (don't confuse marginal cost per mile with overall cost). But with anyone with the slightest bit of imagination and ability to think outside the box, it is pretty clear that without the Interstate system connecting the cities:
a) cities themselves would be more compact, a la Europe... bye, bye suburbs and long, environmentally-expensive commutes
b) air travel would be a much, much bigger market, and it would be mass produced similar to cars
You people are looking at the chicken and the egg and wondering how much it would suck if we didn't have the egg! It's a nonsensical comparison because you're missing a very obvious causal link.
It almost sounds like you are blaming Comcast for protecting its interests?
I love how you act like you came up with an original point, instead of an overused, irrelevant point. Do I think we would have the interstate highway system we have today? No, probably not. We would have something different.
Now I would love for you to try to tell us that that something different would be worse, better, or the same. You don't know and no one else does. You're talking about completely alternative histories here, where the country would have organized in a different way without the ability to travel on the interstates.
You assume that every single one of those alternative histories would have been worse. I say there is zero evidence supporting that and you're making an ass of yourself by repeating nonsense talking points from the big government types.