Election 2016 (Page 63)

It's all trickle down, it's just a matter of it being trickle down from the people or trickle down from the government.  The main problem with trickle down government is that it has so much inefficiency built in that 90% of the money gets sucked up and sent to the uber rich connected folks, or spent on stupid liberal projects like studying the mating patterns of the horn tailed spotted moth.
Where we get in trouble is when people like Bush do the tax cuts for the people, but refuse to cut any of the government spending.  Then to Spud's point we have an increase in deficit spending.

One thing that I know progressives tend to complain about is the concentration of wealth among very few individuals.  These individuals just so happen to be very connected with the government and take advantage of the government spending in many cases.  If we give the money to the common business owners we in effect distribute the money back to the people more evenly versus let some schmuck on wall street have another $100M sitting in his account that he can never spend. 

The only cabinet appointment I am concerned about is the "housing and urban Development" chair.

#designatedsurvivor

My thoughts:

- I agree with you that there are probably too many people on this planet and we need to start being more responsible about population.  Otherwise the poor will suffer way more -- most likely starvation and disease --  in comparison to taxing their carbon footprint.

- Conservatives need to start trusting our scientists.  Liberals need to start accepting that responsible nuclear energy usage is a key component of reducing CO2 output.

And on that last note, we have the technology for fast breeder reactors but the red tape keeps us from getting them into commercial usage.  Instead of getting a 2nd use out of our fuel AND converting it into something with a shorter half-life, we talk about burying it for a few thousand years.  It's incredibly short-sighted.

I'm not against more green energy.  But it is just a piece of the puzzle.

Nah........not until you show me they've never been wrong.  And let's not pretend there is no politics involved.....especially when money is at stake.  It's not a matter of trust.

Did somebody say Climate Science?  hehehe 

OK OK, I'll stop before we get going.  Me and spud have had a lot of fun discussions on Climate Change over the years. 

You don't need "never".  Just scientific consensus, which is what you have worldwide, not just in the USA.  The biggest money at stake is Big Oil, which is why you have all these drivers of climate change denial in the first place.

But keep it up, you're probably an anti-vaxxer too :p

Just for clarity, the consensus is that the climate is warming and that CO2 is a contributing factor.  The how much of a factor is still being determined through modeling and research. 

I'm all for green energy and alternative power sources such as you mentioned with nuclear.  What drives me nuts is the stupid enriching schemes such as carbon credits and other garbage that do nothing for the environment but make fear mongers like Al Gore $200m. 

Trump can get a little tinfoil hat on climate science, but he does support smart alternative energy so I'm confident the moronic get crony's rich schemes will be gone very soon. 

What is that?

As for climate change......I really don't care one way or another.  The Earth will take care of it.  If it means a lot less people, so be it.  I don't give it a single thought. It's Earth......it has always taken care of itself.

The reason I support nuclear is because it also helps our *energy independence* which is important for national security and for protecting the economy from instability in the Middle East.  The USA and Canada sit on huge piles of uranium and thorium.

As for schemes, I'm not necessarily in favor of a carbon tax, but I would like to see subsidies ended for big oil.  Right now, other forms of energy (including nuclear) are not competing on a level playing field.  Fix that first, then decide if anything else needs to be done.  IMO.

Oh.....vaxxing as in vaccinations.....I get it now.  No, we don't get flu shots.

General question for y'all.  Why are you against subsidies for green technology, but for subsidies of oil and corn?

I'm against all of them. :-P 

I don't know any conservatives that are for subsidies either.  They're pretty much a government payback for big money donor industries.

so why i don't i ever see any of you railing against the conservatives for those subsidies? I always here you railing against the WAY smaller subsidies for the green industries.

If I were to wail on everything I dislike about our government there wouldn't be enough room on BT to fit it all.

In all seriousness it's mostly topical stuff and green energy is the one that often sticks out and gets press time because of the ridiculousness of some of the subsidies.  Giving a half a billion dollars to Solyndra as an example is easier to get wound up on than giving raw subsidies to Exxon.  Sure, they're both unnecessary and wasteful but the Exxon or ethanol ones are just a subsidy to make a product cheaper to tweak the supply/demand curve.  I don't like either one, but I feel a lot of the blatant green energy ones are pure waste whereas the oil/ethanol subsides are more of a pass through.  So, I pick on green first and big oil down the list. 

OK I agree the government shouldn't be a venture capitalist in nearly any situation.  But you don't have to look far for things in the oil industry that end up being equally foolish:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/04/06/in-bps-final-20-billion-gulf-settlement-u-s-taxpayers-subsidize-15-3-billion/#2d582e2568fc

Now part of the problem of course, is outside the USA, many governments subsidize oil on the consumer side (keep gas prices low, etc).  This artificially boosts demand and helps lock big oil biz into their incumbent position.

For sure, I definitely don't claim there isn't dumb stuff within the oil industry as well.  The government just needs to let the free market work and regulate stuff that makes sense.  Obviously we don't want free for all free markets because then the environment gets whacked in a dangerous way.  We just need a good balance.

I dont' even mind the government investing in alternative energy where it makes sense.  The internet came about through government funding of ARPA by the DoD and it's been a "Big League" (Trump voice) success.

The trouble with subsidies in my industry is that other countries offer them as well. That's why everything left LA and went to Canada. Get rid of the incentives here in America and the companies will just follow the moolah to whatever country offers them the most. The Canadian government pays something like 40% of the company's costs claiming that it creates jobs but really it just displaces people. Louisiana offered subsidies for a long time so I had to move there, until there was talk of getting rid of the incentives and all the companies got spooked and left. As a result, it's a race to the bottom and just mucks with the whole industry. 

I'll admit I know nothing of your industry but I suspect his is an example of where Trumps talking about leveling the playing field with trade.  If Canada can subsidize companies by 40% as an example and they can sell it into the US without any penalty then it's not a fair trade deal.  As you mentioned one way to make it "fair" would be to subsidize the product in the US by 40% as well, or charge a 40% import tax/tariff on the specific product being imported.  Or another way would be to disallow government subsidies on products imported to the US. 

Obviously greatly over simplified, but what you're describing is a form of trade manipulation that's costing us in the US.  It's really the same thing as China keeping their wages depressed to make labor cost a fraction of what it does in the US and then selling into the US without penalty. 

The only "green" issue I care about is water..........it's going to be a MUCH bigger problem than "global warming" or any other green problem IMO. 

the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing ocean acidification

You might enjoy this study:
http://icesjms.oxfordjournals.org/content/73/3/529.1.full

It speaks to a lot of challenges with OA, but is applicable to climate science overall.  To paraphrase the entire study, it's really hard to get a study published that bucks the system.