We are just stuck in old ways. We will eventually learn that the Nordic way is better. Humanity is not that different from place to place.
Most progressives agree.
It’s way more than most people get. I shed no tears for the suffering folk who make $250,000 a year. Obama’s “targeted” group would not be paying much more than they do today under his plan, and the feds need the money. These rich folks can deduct local and state taxes anyway, can’t they?
I can’t say whether I think taxes in New York and New Jersey are too high. CA has reduced property taxes, of course, but let off big property owners too much. Much more is needed to empower the masses than by reducing taxes. It’s high prices that need to be reduced on things like health care, education, transportation, housing… and the low salaries people get today, what with the low minimum wage, free trade and weak unions, the makes it too hard to pay for many basic things people need. Wealth inequality and declining social mobility is what is holding down the people-- more inequality and less upward mobility here in the USA than in other developed countries.
The main thing that will cut federal government costs (besides defense cuts, and keeping interest rates low) is to have everyone contribute to health care, and to bring down medical costs. We need to do most of the domestic spending we are doing, and if the economy remains stalled, we need to do more.
Subsidies and breaks are good for new start up businesses that are in the national interest-- like green energy today, and the space program in the 1960s that spawned the computer industry. Permanent support after that should be cut or eliminated.
It’s good to hear your views on the progressive movement. But I think we need more regulation than we have now. And our corporations that are too big to fail, ought to be broken up.
A free market can only remain free if it is regulated, so that one or a few companies cannot dominate the market, gamble with peoples’ money, and rip off consumers. Free competition can only be protected by the government.
You are going in circles here. You are entitled to your opinion, but you think the free market will adjust fast enough so that climate change and shortages will not hurt us. I disagree. The government needs to act to make the shift happen faster than what higher prices and consumer choices will do. It is acting, in my state at least; and it needs to continue to act, and more needs to be done
Only because people decide they can make more money because more people want what is scarce. It is not a law, it’s a habit.
But be that as it may, I don’t agree that worries about what might happen in far distant places should be charged to people at gas stations. Gas supplies in the USA would not have been affected by Libya, since it is only 2% of world supply, and far less than that in America. So why should worries by a few folks who control the whole world’s oil market, be charged to me? If that’s the way it is, then it’s a stupid system. Oil companies who ship their products directly to gas stations, can get crude from many different suppliers directly.
Why deliberately evade my point, and then call me ignorant? You know very well there was a documentary about GM killing the electric car decades ago. If they hadn’t done that, we’d have all electric cars by now. That’s the point. This shift has been delayed for over 40 years. It should not be left to car companies to decide on conversion.
I know about most of the facts about electric cars; maybe not every detail. But I know some of these metals are mined domestically now, not just in China; and battery materials can be recycled. Electric cars cost about the same as others now, and the price is becoming reasonable. Government rebates help too, as they should. It didn’t take a “conspiracy” to kill the electric car; what a ridiculous charge. The car company executives just decided to kill it because they wanted to keep the more-convenient status quo than try something more risky. That’s why government is needed to cushion the shift. CEOs make decisions; that’s what they do. Calling this conspiracy is just looney sloganeering and you ought to know better than engage in it.
They ARE doing it faster than we are. Countries like Denmark are almost carbon neutral. I already gave you the answer; oil and car companies prefer to do what is convenient and what they already know and what makes them money.
It should not be held holy, as YOU hold it. It needs to be regulated, controlled and directed toward the best interests of the people. That is not happening.
Well then I’ll have to look into what you wrote here more when I have time, and get back to you and see if I can refute some of your charges against me.
Oil is shipped across the world as a matter of course - the middle east produces a lot of oil, and Europe, the US, etc. consume a lot of it. So, oil pretty much always has to be transported in order to get to its final destination.
This means that the producers of oil are free to ship their oil to whoever is willing to pay the highest price. So, if a disruption in Libya causes oil prices in Europe to rise, producers who would normally ship oil to the US will ship to Europe instead. This will cause a shortage in the US, and prices in the US will rise as a result.
To use your example - a gas station will call up his oil supplier and say “I need 10,000 gallons at $3.00 / gallon”, and the supplier will say “Europe is short on oil because of Libya’s disruption, I can sell it for $3.50 / gallon if I ship it there, and it only costs me $0.10 / gallon to do so.” The gas station owner, not wanting to run out of gasoline to sell to his customers, then says “Okay, I’ll give you $3.40 / gallon”. Repeat thousands of times across the US, and voila - prices in the US rise as well.
I don’t understand what is objectionable or “stupid” about this system. You end up paying a higher price because the people in Europe, or Africa, or Russia, or wherever, are willing to pay a higher price.
There are lots of folks, on the SDMB and in real life, who can make a coherent defense of their positions and suggestions. Even when I don’t agree with them, at least they have a basic understanding of economics, the law of unintended consequences, and one of the basic understandings of adult life - that most problems with simple solutions have been solved already.
This has always been one of the biggest problem with these freshman screeds. They start from an assumption that the problem is really simple, if only everyone would listen. They ignore completely the idea that maybe people over 20 have given these problems some thought before them, and maybe the current system is the best that can be devised, shitty though it may be. They are based upon a total ignorance of the unpleasant consequences of doing things like outlawing political lobbying and political spending, consequences that those of a us just a little older are well aware of.
[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
You are going in circles here. You are entitled to your opinion, but you think the free market will adjust fast enough so that climate change and shortages will not hurt us. I disagree. The government needs to act to make the shift happen faster than what higher prices and consumer choices will do. It is acting, in my state at least; and it needs to continue to act, and more needs to be done
[/QUOTE]
No, you are shifting the goalposts of the discussion. I never said anything about global warming or climate change in this thread, nor was the topic brought up. My points have been pretty linear in this thread, so your assertion that I’m ‘going in circles’ is about as well founded as your economic theory basics…which is to say they aren’t.
As for your overall point in this paragraph, is the government going to suddenly get totalitarian and absolute powers to go against the will of the majority of Americans? Or, are Americans going to suddenly either give that power to the government, or have a sea change in their politics that would allow such a radical change? Unless your answer is ‘yes’, then I’d say that market forces are going to get it done faster than fantasies of fiat government being able to use it’s iron head…er, hand…to simply ‘fix’ these sorts of problems in quicker time frames.
This doesn’t even make any sense. Seriously, you think people use oil because some traders want to make money and out of habit? Where do you get this stuff from. Let me ask you something chief…do YOU have an all electric vehicle? If not, why not? Just habit? The desire to give Big Oil and Evil Mustache Twirling Speculators money??
But your ridiculous opinion here is based on conclusions you are drawing without having a clue how it all works! It’s like giving your opinion on the limitations of the speed of light by indicating you don’t think that’s right and basing it on kindergarten ideas of peddling faster to make the trike accelerate…perhaps with an idea that if only you could go downhill a bit more and get a nice tail wind that you could show those physicist types they are wrong, youbetcha!
Sorry, but there aren’t enough :p’s available to demonstrate how ridiculous it is for you to make assertions based on conclusions you are drawing using your own ignorance and rhetoric to fuel them. That’s why I’ve repeatedly told you that you shouldn’t talk about stuff you have zero understanding of, because it makes your assertions look silly.
Um…because I didn’t evade your point? Let me be plain…the assertion that GM killed electric cars decade ago is complete horseshit that is not substantiated by the facts. It’s pure, unadulterated CT non-sense. THAT’S the point. That you don’t get it is, well, militantly unsurprising at this point in the discussion.
Well, do you have a cite that the rare earth metals used in producing the advanced batteries for AEVs and hybrids are mined in this country? Please back up your horseshit with some cites, because the last time I checked China was the major producer of those resources, and they have started curtailing or limiting their export. We HAVE rare earth element resources and reserves in the US, but we don’t mine them by and large…certainly not to any great extent. Do you know why?
:smack: Hell, what am I saying…of COURSE you don’t have a fucking clue why we don’t mine them here…you are under the delusion we are in some sort of meaningful quantities. So, rather than attempt to make you think or have a rational discussion with you, let me just tell you…mining them has a large negative impact on the environment…which means it’s both unsavory AND expensive for us to do so. China, of course, being the workers paradise and all, doesn’t have that problem, since workers are cheap and who gives a fuck about the environment over there?
Cite? But let’s pretend they are. My question is why haven’t they done as you suggest…i.e. why haven’t they enacted regulation such that all new cars HAVE to be electric (or maybe hybrid)? You haven’t answered the question I’ve asked you…nor have you adequately answered the question you seem to think you have, since YOU’VE PROVIDED NO FUCKING DATA TO BACK UP YOUR ASSERTION THAT OTHER COUNTRIES ARE DOING IT FASTER THAN WE ARE. thunk thunk thunk Is anyone home? Is this mike on? Do you get it NOW?
Seriously…no one could be this dense. You are either not reading what I’m writing, you are using babble fish to translate it into Swahili using an old Latin dictionary, something else I’m not going to mention in this forum…or you are pulling my chain. Assuming the later or some variant there I’m going to take it that you are not discussing this stuff in good faith and leave it at that, unless someone else wants to tell me how what I wrote in any way resembles the above.
What, again? I’m tired of doing that, especially since it’s clear you aren’t getting it, and based on the last are either not reading what I’m writing or are arguing in bad faith.
You are so confident that I am ignorant, that you are making yourself look foolish. First website that came up confirms my figures:
So don’t talk about subjects you know nothing about, and don’t make assertions based on your lack of understanding and ignorance. LEARN something about the subject and THEN discuss it.
Yeah, argue by changing the subject and calling me names.
It is really tedious to have to research subjects that everyone already knows about, just to answer name-calling from such as you.
YOU are the one who doesn’t know what you are talking about, as was obvious to any informed person in the first place.
President Obama says: “the problem is not the supply. It is the bets being made. We going to monitor speculation…” see the video at the ABC link. You are insulting me, and the president too, because he’s saying what I’m saying. So you and Blake think I’m a freshman writing screeds, but you are also calling the president the same thing. You think our president is a freshman who writes screeds, XL? Do YOU Blake?
How silly can you get. People don’t know what unfair prices are? Can people look up to the sky and see whether it’s raining or not?
I think they can. Free marketeers like you trot out this free market delusional nonsense to justify every injustice there is. What is clear, is that what you claim is “how things work,” is really how they are NOT working for the people. The only thing more clear than that, is that you folks who are so mindlessly defending the status quo, are the ones who are causing all the problems in this declining country.
My utility gives me info on where energy comes from and what it costs. The last thing we need is coal, and for you to defend the need for it is the height of superstitious gullible nonsense. Your “guess” is so off the mark as to reveal just how uninformed you really are. Using all we want, eh? Do I have to “research” the stats I have in my own World Alamanac that California is one of the most efficient states in energy use in the country? What state are you from, Texas? I bet you don’t even know how bleepin’ inefficient you are. Again, you should do some research and know what you are talking about before you make accusations against us in California.
No, we have a cool governor NOW, not last year. We have a real one now, instead of a stupid, muscle-bound Hollywood action hero merely acting the part. Not the first time we made that mistake, to the horrible effect on the rest of the country when he was installed in the White House by all you rich folk! YOU BET we are a good model, and we will get more so in the coming years with all the reforms we are making, and will make. I bet you don’t even know what those are-- you being so uninformed about anything that really makes a difference for the better.
What an incredible statement. Shifting the subject? I suppose, if you want to ignore the reason why we need to make the shift with government help, instead of just letting the market dictate which cars we buy just on the basis of which one is cheaper. You are going in circles over and over again. You keep asserting that we have a choice by what we buy. Nonsense and I already answered you, I’m not going to repeat it again.
Free marketeers use slogans about freedom and totalitarian to deceive. You are doing that now, and it is really tiresome. What I recommended is that government set fuel standards so high that only vehicles that don’t use gas anyway will be able to meet them. CA has already gone far down that road, and I hope for all of our sakes that it works. Asking huge monolithic dictatorial corporations and their CEOs to make what the world needs is not totalitarian, it is doing what is needed. Maybe a few CEOs will have to do what is inconvenient, but that is the extent of what you call “totalitarian.” Market forces get it done faster? We’ve been waiting for 40 years now and they did nothing at all, except resist as much as they could, using your slogans to put dumb politicians in office who will do your dirtywork.
I was just pointing out that supply and demand is not a “law,” it’s a habit. You are changing the subject. Supply and demand happens, that is clear. What is not clear is that economists can successfully make it out to be a “law” that HAS to happen. No, people don’t have to raise prices just because people are more willing to pay them for a product that is more scare than it was before. But yes, it happens a lot, because people are greedy, and people do it out of habit. My point was not about oil per se. The law of supply and demand is psychological, or religious if you will. It illustrates one of the 7 deadly sins. Understand? I bet you don’t.
You are a Sarah Palin fan too. I would have known.
I don’t see here that YOU have posted any evidence for this claim. I already posted a link here to the Heat documentary, where this is reported.
I won’t answer you until you learn how to spell the word I italicized. I already corrected you and you ignored me. Show me you can learn something, and THEN I’ll get back to you on this one.
I already did. The companies find it easier and more profitable to do things the old way
I posted about China. In a sense you are correct, they haven’t YET put out more EVs on the road than we are. But they are revving up to do so, and by 2020 will have 35% of the market. Follow the link. They are also faster in solar energy, and so is Europe. You really dispute that?
You seem to have a compulsive need to reply and argue against anything I write, usually with irrelevant insults. Thanks for the tribute, but really, it is rather ridiculous.
But normally the USA does not get much oil from the Middle East. You point may be logically plausible, but since there was never any shortage resulting from the Arab Spring in the USA, it apparently does not work out in real life. THe USA still has enough sources that it does not matter if prices go up in Europe. If Europe does not need the extra gas, it won’t be shipped there just because the price rises. If more is shipped there, the price will probably fall again soon anyway.
It is stupid, because we are paying among the highest prices ever just because oil speculators get rich bidding up the price of oil because of worries over things that don’t happen and have no effect on oil supplies here or anywhere.
You keep making these statements that are not simply false, but ludicrous. Do you really not know where Saudi Arabia is located and how much oil we buy from her?
Look, you have already demonstrated, over and over, that you do not have even the slightest clue on economics. That’s probably the one and only thing you have proven in this thread.
You can stop doing it now. We all get it. Your entire position is based on things that either you do not understand, or are provably wrong. Go ahead and base your new progressive movement on them - the country can use a good laugh right now.
Your claim was that the price of oil had tripled in a decade, and had never been so high or so volatile. XT’s link shows you to be wrong, and none of your links address the claim.
And your notion that oil prices are set by speculator’s fiat is also wrong, and has been refuted.
I think you might want to change hobbyhorses - that one is pretty much blown to flinders.
Oh, and by the way - those hideous, price-gouging oil companies who are raking in obscene profits? Net income per dollar of sales is a bit under 7%. Roughly on a par with the cruel oppressors who make furniture.
The American Petroleum Institute? Gosh, can’t get more objective source of facts than that! Got the “American” right there in the name! Sure, when you google them, they are the most prominent lobbying group for the oil industry, but that doesn’t mean we can’t simply trust their numbers and facts, these people have been on TV, and, as everybody knows, you can’t say it on TV if it isn’t true!
As for the cruel oppression of furniture manufacturers, I have no opinion on that, but to point out the Ikea is clearly staffed by fiendish Nazis bent on world domination by means of frustrating the living shit out of their customers.
[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
You are so confident that I am ignorant, that you are making yourself look foolish. First website that came up confirms my figures:
[/QUOTE]
You mean the one I posted a link to that you didn’t bother to click on earlier? THAT cite? Let me ask you something basic…what’s 3 times $1.86? (We’ll leave aside inflation and adjusted dollars and all that complicated stuff)
No, you are talking apples and oranges. You didn’t click on any of the links or cites I provided, and your lack of basics means that we can’t have a meaningful conversation about any of this stuff. I’ll give you a hint though…if I sell a million widgets at 7% profit, I’ll make more gross than if you sell a thousand of them at 50% profit…but your profit margin will be higher because, you know, 50 is a bigger number than 7 (well, maybe you didn’t know that…what did you get when you multiplied $1.86 times 3 again?).
As for your cite, I skimmed them…something it would have been nice if you had done for me, but obviously it was asking too much (it IS pretty funny that you use a cite that I provided earlier to prove yourself wrong though). Since you haven’t even been able to demonstrate a basic grasp of the fundamentals there is no point in me going through them, since they are talking about different things AND they have a distinct spin in how they are presenting their arguments. Maybe someone else would like to read through and explain why your linked cites don’t really address the question we were discussing…it seems too much like beating my head against the wall from my perspective.
President Obama is a smart guy…and I have no doubt that HE understands at least the basics…but this is pure political fodder here. It’s just populist drivel intended to buck up the troops and make the faithful feel warm and fuzzy.
I’m not insulting you OR the President, chief. HE’S making a political speech, not debating the issues. Putting yourself on par with him is laughable.
Oh, and the name is XT, not XL…though I have begun to put on my winter fat early this year. Can never be too prepared for the next winter after all…
No, of course not. Look at yourself. You don’t have any idea what a fair or unfair price is because you don’t have any idea how prices are set or why they are what they are. You think that prices are arbitrarily set by speculators who charge what they want and that people will just pay. Any attempt to try and explain to you why the price of gas at the pump is what it is continues to be met, by you, with more ignorance. You don’t know. You don’t want to know. You merely want to expound on a subject you don’t understand using Obama sound bites (probably taken out of context or given to a specific audience for a specific purpose) and Huffington Post articles that are both slanted AND are talking about something different than the topic we were discussing.
If only you get on top of a really, REALLY big hill and if the wind is blowing behind you, then you can peddle that trike past light speed. You Special and General Relativist guys love to trot out this ‘light speed limitation’ stuff, as if it’s the be all and end all, but it’s just mindless defending of the status quo. Hell, I bet you guys believe in gravity too…right? Am I right? Ha!
For the humor impaired, of which you are obviously one (there are 12 step programs out there that could help you to find or perhaps develop a sense of humor…you should definitely join up, and perhaps take a basic economics class as well while you are at it), I was making something that the rest of us call ‘a joke’. Feel free to look that term up. I’d give you a link, but then you’d probably go out and find the same cite, link to it in a new post and explain to me how your cite is better than mine, and proves your point that humor doesn’t actually exist.
One last thing then it’s off to the air port…I’m sure the thread will perk along swimmingly from here.
[QUOTE=Eric the Green]
You are a Sarah Palin fan too. I would have known.
[/QUOTE]
Sure I am man. You are spot on in this, as in your other assertions and analysis of diverse topics ranging from basic economics to commodities trading to electric vehicles and production of batteries and hybrids.
You wouldn’t know a ‘free marketeer’ if one put on mouse ears and bit you on the ass. You are right about one thing though…this is past tiresome, since you don’t have the ability to read and comprehend what I’m actually saying. Instead I get a tape recorder screed that doesn’t really bear much resemblance to the point I was attempting to beat into you. Let me translate what I was saying in the part you quoted here, since you didn’t get it…the only way you could force the radical changes you propose is either if the government could overrule the voting public or if there was a huge shift in the voting public’s stances. Contrary to your fantasy, people buy and use gasoline because relative to the alternatives it’s still CHEAP. That’s why you don’t see a huge shift in people going out to buy AEVs or even hybrids.
So, I’ll take that as a ‘no…I don’t have an electric vehicle, and no, I don’t want to answer why that is’. I’d ask you if you ‘understand’ what I’m getting at, but I already know the answer…you don’t get it. You want to simply run your rhetoric recorder and spew out horseshit.
It’s not up to me to debunk every conspiracy theory and horseshit claim. Especially one as stupid as this one. We HAVE all electric vehicles TODAY…and they are a niche market. That’s after about 2 additional decades of development in battery technology. It’s ludicrous to assert that GM killed the electric car decades ago, as if only GM could possibly produce one. But, if you want a cite for it (not that it will do any good…hell, you didn’t click on any of my earlier ones after all), here you go.
From the cite:
As with many conspiracies, this one hinges on the people perpetuating it being ignorant of things like the facts (and in this case economics, production, markets, engineering, etc etc).
Don’t answer, but you look like fool for pointing out your own board ignorance. The word ‘cite’ is short hand on this board (and many other boards) for ‘citation’. It’s not, as you seem to think, a misspelling of the word ‘site’. Feel free not to answer me, however…it would actually be better that way.
35% of WHAT market? Based on what? China is buying ICE (that’s short for Internal Combustion Engines, so we don’t get into another spelling or syntax dispute here) vehicles, at staggering rates. They are buying SOME hybrid and AEVs, but the numbers are trivial. Again, do you have a cite that China is building their EV or hybrid numbers faster than the US? As a bonus, why isn’t China mandating, by fiat in the way you suggest, that their citizens who are buying new vehicles HAVE to buy EV or hybrid vehicles? And, since China is building up it’s personal transport fleet now, why aren’t their citizens just buying hybrids or EVs instead of ICE? Status quo? How could it be?
What I dispute is your understanding of what is being discussed here AND your assertions. Do you have a cite that solar power is growing faster in Europe than in the US? Who has the larger install base TODAY? Who has the larger install base in solar or wind TODAY?
As with seemingly every facet of this discussion, you draw the wrong conclusion.
And with that I bid you ado. Perhaps some other 'dopers would like to continue the discussion with you. There are many who feel much as you do, so perhaps some of them will wander in to give you some much needed support. Perhaps some of the boards highly intelligent and knowledgeable liberals or progressives will wander in to explain to you what we have been trying to talk about, and maybe give you some clues about reality verse wishful thinking, and perhaps a lesson or two on the basics of economics and General and Special Relativity wrt trying to get your trike to go faster than the speed of light if only you had a large enough hill to start from.
To paraphrase form the Holy Grail: Lancelot, Galahad, and I will wait until nightfall, and then leap from the rabbit, taking the French by surprise…not only by surprise, but totally unarmed.
…
…
Er…er…well, what if we built this large wooden badger…
You still don’t know how to spell cite/site.
The chart confirmed exactly what I had thought. That was $1.67 I believe, and rose up over $4 within 4 years, and now it’s back.
Good, they are delicious.
Good, I really don’t want you to hurt yourself.
OK XT. I am not the president, but it is interesting that he said the same thing I did. You can spin that however you care to.
Good analysis there. But I deny it.
Physics has a certain truth to it, within the limitations of its field.
Oh I dunno; I thought my catching you doing Sarah Palin was a bit of humor, but evidently you really ARE a Sarah Palin fan, which is about all anyone needs to know about you I guess. Or do you have a wiser side? Let’s see it, friend.
