US Passes Massive Infrastructure Bill, Investing in Clean Energy, Electric Cars, and Broadband Internet (whitehouse.gov) 157
Late Friday night U.S. Congressmen passed a long-awaited Bipartisan Infrastructure bill. "The infrastructure package contains $550 billion in entirely new investments, including money for electric-car charging stations and zero-emission school buses," reports the Washington Post.
"The spending is mostly paid for — without raising taxes. The bulk of the funding comes from repurposing unspent coronavirus relief money and tightening enforcement on reporting gains from cryptocurrency investments."
An additional $65 billion will fund broadband Internet, with new statements on the White House web site hailing the bill as "a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure and competitiveness" and "the largest investment in public transit in U.S. history."
This Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will rebuild America's roads, bridges and rails, expand access to clean drinking water, ensure every American has access to high-speed internet, tackle the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and invest in communities that have too often been left behind. The legislation will help ease inflationary pressures and strengthen supply chains by making long overdue improvements for our nation's ports, airports, rail, and roads. It will drive the creation of good-paying union jobs and grow the economy sustainably and equitably so that everyone gets ahead for decades to come. Combined with the President's Build Back Framework, it will add on average 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years.
Or, as U.S. president Biden said in his own statement, the newly-passed bill "will create millions of jobs, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st Century."
To address the climate crisis, the legislation "will upgrade our power infrastructure, by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewables and clean energy, while lowering costs," according to the White House's statement. "And it will fund new programs to support the development, demonstration, and deployment of cutting-edge clean energy technologies to accelerate our transition to a zero-emission economy."
More specifics from the White House:
"The spending is mostly paid for — without raising taxes. The bulk of the funding comes from repurposing unspent coronavirus relief money and tightening enforcement on reporting gains from cryptocurrency investments."
An additional $65 billion will fund broadband Internet, with new statements on the White House web site hailing the bill as "a once-in-a-generation investment in our nation's infrastructure and competitiveness" and "the largest investment in public transit in U.S. history."
This Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will rebuild America's roads, bridges and rails, expand access to clean drinking water, ensure every American has access to high-speed internet, tackle the climate crisis, advance environmental justice, and invest in communities that have too often been left behind. The legislation will help ease inflationary pressures and strengthen supply chains by making long overdue improvements for our nation's ports, airports, rail, and roads. It will drive the creation of good-paying union jobs and grow the economy sustainably and equitably so that everyone gets ahead for decades to come. Combined with the President's Build Back Framework, it will add on average 1.5 million jobs per year for the next 10 years.
Or, as U.S. president Biden said in his own statement, the newly-passed bill "will create millions of jobs, turn the climate crisis into an opportunity, and put us on a path to win the economic competition of the 21st Century."
To address the climate crisis, the legislation "will upgrade our power infrastructure, by building thousands of miles of new, resilient transmission lines to facilitate the expansion of renewables and clean energy, while lowering costs," according to the White House's statement. "And it will fund new programs to support the development, demonstration, and deployment of cutting-edge clean energy technologies to accelerate our transition to a zero-emission economy."
More specifics from the White House:
- "Millions of Americans feel the effects of climate change each year when their roads wash out, power goes down, or schools get flooded. Last year alone, the United States faced 22 extreme weather and climate-related disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each — a cumulative price tag of nearly $100 billion.... The legislation makes our communities safer and our infrastructure more resilient to the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks, with an investment of over $50 billion to protect against droughts, heat, floods and wildfires, in addition to a major investment in weatherization. The legislation is the largest investment in the resilience of physical and natural systems in American history."
- "In thousands of rural and urban communities around the country, hundreds of thousands of former industrial and energy sites are now idle — sources of blight and pollution. Proximity to a Superfund site can lead to elevated levels of lead in children's blood. The bill will invest $21 billion clean up Superfund and brownfield sites, reclaim abandoned mine land and cap orphaned oil and gas wells..."
- "U.S. market share of plug-in EV sales is only one-third the size of the Chinese EV market. That needs to change. The legislation will invest $7.5 billion to build out a national network of EV chargers in the United States. This is a critical step in the President's strategy to fight the climate crisis and it will create good U.S. manufacturing jobs. The legislation will provide funding for deployment of EV chargers along highway corridors to facilitate long-distance travel and within communities to provide convenient charging where people live, work, and shop. This investment will support the President's goal of building a nationwide network of 500,000 EV chargers to accelerate the adoption of EVs, reduce emissions, improve air quality, and create good-paying jobs across the country."
- "Broadband internet is necessary for Americans to do their jobs, to participate equally in school learning, health care, and to stay connected. Yet, by one definition, more than 30 million Americans live in areas where there is no broadband infrastructure that provides minimally acceptable speeds — a particular problem in rural communities throughout the country... The Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal will deliver $65 billion to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet through a historic investment in broadband infrastructure deployment. The legislation will also help lower prices for internet service and help close the digital divide, so that more Americans can afford internet access...."
Investment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, once in a generation. Because previous generations have given the telcos over $200B to expand broadband, and they pocketed most of it without making any of the improvements they claimed they were going to make. For example, Pacific Bell (remember them?) claimed they would have 100% DSL penetration by 2000. Well, it's 2021, almost 2022, and AT&T (which bought SBC, which bought Pac Bell) still doesn't offer all of its subscribers in the former Pacific Bell service area DSL, let alone anything actually worth paying for by modern standards.
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Give it all to Starlink, problem solved.
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lol
Re: Investment? (Score:3)
100% agree. With 30,000 satellites, Starlink can support 6 million people in area the size of the US with around 25 megabits/s each. Or 3 million at 50mb/s . Both are good enough for 4K Netflix. That should cover anyone who is living from any population center. I do not see any other rural broadband solution for them. Some of them lives where it will cost tens of millions just to get a line to their house. It would be very easy to spend billions just to get wired broadband to a few hundred of the most rural
Re: Investment? (Score:5, Insightful)
StarLink is obviously a better solution than the incumbent telcos, but the problem is that Biden and Musk hate each other.
When Biden held his EV summit at the Whitehouse, Tesla, the biggest producer of EVs, wasn't even invited.
The problem with politicians making technical decisions is that the decisions become political.
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Re: Investment? (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather, its Unions and Tesla
Sure, the unions hate Tesla.
But the hate goes deeper.
The Democrats are trying to convince the American public that they need to pay trillions in taxes for bureaucrats and subsidies to fix climate change, so it is frustrating to see a rogue capitalist solving the problem by spending far less and making himself filthy rich in the process.
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EVs don't solve the pollution problem, they only reduce it. That's not nothing, and I'm generally pro-EV, but I'm even more pro-rail (between cities) and PRT (within them.) It unarguably makes more ecologic sense than rubber tires on asphalt roads.
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Musk is also working on PRT. That's what Hyperloop is supposed to be.
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Last time I looked Hyperloop was for between cities, not within cities. It won't do the door to door thing like PRT will.
There's a pretty easy solution to that (Score:4, Insightful)
The point is don't just throw your hands up and give up. We can fix this.
Re:There's a pretty easy solution to that (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Change who you vote for. Use Google to figure out which politicians are pro corporate and corrupt and then vote in your primary election or the ones that aren't. "
Bingo. Primaries are very important. With our broken, winner-takes-all voting systems, the only real choice you have is during a primary. By the time it comes down to the two A vs. B party candidates, there isn't much choice. It is about the most we can do until, hopefully, we get some type of ranked choice voting system. https://fairvote.org/ [fairvote.org]
Pro-corporate candidates are OK. Corrupt candidates are not OK (that is how chronyism happens). Corporations create wealth and jobs, not government. Government just takes money and spends it. Especially money we don't even have.
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Re:There's a pretty easy solution to that (Score:5, Insightful)
>"There has never, even once in the history of the world been a capitalist economic system in the absence of cronyism."
Um, there has never been ANY economic system OR governmental system that didn't have some type of corruption. Welcome to human nature. Meanwhile, it is a combination of capitalism, federalism, and our Constitution that made America great, prosperous, and powerful. It is not perfect, NO system is. But it is better than the alternatives.
What is currently harming it the most are socialist tendencies and government that is too large, especially at the Federal level.
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Preach
Thats... not actually true (Score:2)
1. Weak neighbors giving us room to breath.
2. We were the only nation not beaten into a pulp after WWII
Our constitutional gov't has actually been a bit of a hindrance. The Senate was at it's start built to be more powerful than the House and not an elected body. And the reason it's 2 Senators per state isn't Federalism, it's because it made it easier for the landed aristocracy to maintain control without having a monarchy (which they opposed, not because they were all in
Re:Thats... not actually true (Score:4, Insightful)
>"The Senate was at it's start built to be more powerful than the House"
They are mostly equal in power. The Senate does have a little bit more power, but not a huge amount more.
>"and not an elected body."
It was meant to be indirectly elected through appointment by the State legislatures (which are elected).
>"And the reason it's 2 Senators per state isn't Federalism"
Actually, yes it was. The idea is that States each have equal power in that branch. It was quite elegant, and appropriate (both then and now). The States have the Senate, the People have the House. As to if Senators should be elected or appointed- I see good arguments on both sides and never have had a strong opinion either way, although the way it was designed (appointments) did seem more in-line with the original intent.
>"I don't mean to rag on you, but we should be careful not to ignore history in favor of patriotism. "
Oh, I have no blind patriotism, I can be hugely critical. But the design of our government was really quite brilliant in many ways. And works surprisingly well, despite so much time and challenges.
I do think we need a balanced budget amendment, is unfortunate the Constitution didn't firmly set the size of the Supreme Court, and I am highly critical of the Federal government simply IGNORING the Constitution when it is not convenient for them. And we desperately need ranked choice voting in all elections.
>And people will exploit it to end democracy [link article about so-called "voter restriction/suppression"].
Calling for measures to secure elections and make them transparent and less corruptible is NOT voter suppression. None of the examples in that article are voter suppression. And that isn't what will end democracy. What WILL end democracy is when there is so little faith in the election process due to lack of security, accountability, and transparency, that things totally break down. The other is when cronyism takes over. And, to a lesser degree, identity politics and the never-ending promise of "free stuff" to buy votes.
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Yet, the countries with the happiest populations have socialist tendencies. The Nordic countries are usually at the top of the list along with other European countries, New Zealand, Israel and Canada. Even Costa Rica has a happier population then the USA.
I'd argue that having a happy population is more important then being the greatest at imprisonment, having a population that feels the need to be armed and a huge political following of a reality TV star. Not to mention politicians who all seem to have esca
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>"Yet, the countries with the happiest populations have socialist tendencies."
And the examples you will site are all very homogeneous countries (in thought, demographics, religion, values, history, etc). For them, it is a lot easier than it will be for the USA- a large, very diverse population. That "happiness" often comes because they have little diversity to deal with, and usually less freedom along with that happiness.
It is true that people would generally prefer to be safe than free.
>"I'd argue
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>"Yet, the countries with the happiest populations have socialist tendencies."
And the examples you will site are all very homogeneous countries (in thought, demographics, religion, values, history, etc). For them, it is a lot easier than it will be for the USA- a large, very diverse population. That "happiness" often comes because they have little diversity to deal with, and usually less freedom along with that happiness.
Are you going for funny? Switzerland has 4 different nationalities. Canada, the closest to the USA, has 2 (plus the natives) founding peoples, 2 official languages, 2 legal systems including the Constitutional requirement that a certain member of Supreme Court appointees be from Quebec (or perhaps experts in civil law proved by serving on Quebec courts). Shit with the recent census pointing to redistricting giving the west a few more seats and removing one from Quebec has the Quebecois politicains freaking
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Change who you vote for. Use Google to figure out which politicians are pro corporate and corrupt and then vote in your primary election or the ones that aren't.
If you use Google, you'll end up voting for who Google wants you to vote for. This is stupid advice.
Funny and insightful the best kind of post
Re:There's a pretty easy solution to that (Score:4, Informative)
It's the first-past-the-post, winner takes all set-up that is the core of the problem. Get rid of that and replace it with some form of PR, and the rest sorts itself out.
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Sixteen American states use RCV in at least some local elections.
Maine and Alaska use RCV statewide.
We are making progress.
Ranked Choice Voting in the US [wikipedia.org]
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I'm guessing your PR means proportional representation, but overall I have no idea where you're going with your line of thought.
So how about something completely different? Or maybe this is compatible with the lines of your thinking?
How about a no-loser voting system? There's no law of nature that says all of the reps have to be equal. Just the short version here:
How about giving the representatives voting weight related to the number of votes they receive? While also rigging the system so that every voter
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Nonsense. You need majority and sometimes even super-majority margins to control the docket, assign subcommittee members, and pass legislation in virtually every state and federal legislatures. Unless you are part of a majority coalition, you have no power at all.
PR will have zero effect.
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The way this is usually dealt with is forming coalitions; having PR would result in more “parties” or the like, who could each then have their own parties form those coalitions for-a-particular-subject-area with other like-minded parties.
I feel like it could work, and at the least it’d break up the stranglehold we see now.
How do you have a non corrupt (Score:2)
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>"pro-corporate candidate? That seems to me an oxymoron, since you're always going to put the corporation ahead of society at large."
Well, nothing is quite this simple. For example, you can be pro education but not pro "free" education or pro quotas in education.
"Society" is a super-set that includes corporations. So you can be "anti-corporation" in ways to hurt growth and competition, which can hurt society as it reduces jobs and products. And you can be "anti-corporation" in ways that encourage compe
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...without money for ads and those little vinyl signs that litter up the roadways, how will people know who they're supposed to vote for?
Do we really give a shit about the people who can't be bothered to spend a tiny bit of time informing themselves? I certainly don't. Get the fucking money out of politics, and then maybe we can get some decent people in office.
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Only government gets to define "paid for" as "we borrowed the money".
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Strongly support this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Strongly support this (Score:4, Insightful)
10s of millions should transfer tax-free.
Why? Fuck that noise. Encouraging wealth hoarding is stupid. We want money spent because only when it is spent does it circulate, and only when it circulates can it do work.
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Have the rich buy lots of land. [youtu.be]
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Doesn't matter what you encourage or discourage. By law, people in the United States have property rights, period. If people choose to hoard wealth then so be it. You're on shaky ground if you think you have Constitutional authority to force dead people to liquidate their assets when the Constitution has only been amended to allow taxation of income.
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Doesn't matter what you encourage or discourage. By law, people in the United States have property rights, period.
By the highest law of the land, people in the United States can be taxed on any basis deemed necessary to the general welfare by the federal government. Appealing to the law isn't going to support your argument here.
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That isn't true. They can't be taxed based on property, only income.
https://constitutioncenter.org... [constitutioncenter.org]
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And don't give me that taxing clause shit, that has to be apportioned which makes it nearly impossible to apply.
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That's why we have inflation. Nobody wealthy actually hoards money because they know inflation is a tax on that behaviour.
He's talking about inheritance. If you don't allow large inheritances then you get things like families losing control of their family businesses when the founder dies. I don't really think that's a problem, but the dynastic instinct is strong in humans.
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If you don't allow large inheritances then you get things like families losing control of their family businesses when the founder dies. I don't really think that's a problem, but the dynastic instinct is strong in humans.
I'm not against large inheritances, I'm against not taxing them. Just like I'm not against a maximum wage, I'm against a maximum tax like we have with SSI.
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Same thing. If I have a business and own a controlling interest worth one billion dollars, when I die and want to pass it on to my children any reasonable sized inheritance tax is going to result in a tax bill they probably can't pay, so they'll lose controlling interest. There's also the issue of the government suddenly having to dispose of large percentages of companies. I don't have a problem with that, but lots of people quite reasonably do.
If you actually want to live in a meritocracy (or real capitali
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Same thing. If I have a business and own a controlling interest worth one billion dollars, when I die and want to pass it on to my children any reasonable sized inheritance tax is going to result in a tax bill they probably can't pay, so they'll lose controlling interest.
Only if you don't also pass them enough cash to cover the taxes. Isn't your business successful?
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Successful businesses don't keep significant fractions of their market cap sitting around in cash, Scrooge McDuck style. Rich people (and not so rich ones too) normally keep *negative* fractions in cash.
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Successful businesses don't keep significant fractions of their market cap sitting around in cash, Scrooge McDuck style.
wat [forbes.com]
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Lol. When a financial reporter says "cash" they mean "not cash."
It's possible you could find estimates of the actual breakdown, but it's going to be mostly stocks and such, some treasury bills and other easily convertible stuff, and enough cash to get through the week or so.
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We want money spent
Those aren't mutually exclusive. Much of the transfer of actual wealth is rarely in cash but rather in assets and investments.
Re:Strongly support this (Score:5, Informative)
Keynes was certainly correct, as demonstrated by the decades of economic growth after the New Deal, as opposed to the reduction of the middle class (and movement of money to the wealthy) after Reagan went for "trickle down"
Re: Strongly support this (Score:2)
"decades of economic growth after the New Deal"
Hilarious that you seem to have forgotten World war 2?
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GI Bill.
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Which a lot of GIs never actually got for some bullshit technical reason or another, and many wound up on the street.
Anyway trickle down economics actually can work if all the other conditions are set up correctly, like a living minimum wage (as it was intended) or better yet a UBI (and no minimum wage), national health care, etc. But by the time of Reagan the federal minimum wage already hadn't kept up with inflation for around two decades (and it still hasn't.) And inflation has to be high enough that peo
Re:Strongly support this (Score:5, Informative)
The key being, the kind of spending under Keynesian economics is less about having people do useless things for the sake of paycheck, and more about having people do useful things that provide lasting benefit and value.
The New Deal was not about paying people to dig holes and paying other people to fill them in again. It was about building dams, bridges, schools and hospitals - all things that provide value far beyond the economic activity associated with their construction.
The only time the broken window parable applies is if there is literally no economic activity at all - in which case anything is better than literally nothing... but it was never actually a basis for economic policy.
Fucking moron.
=Smidge=
Re: Strongly support this (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Strongly support this (Score:2)
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>And just because we spent X amount last year
We didn't spend that money last year. That's the point.
Last year a bill was passed saying they'd spend $400 on a merry-go-round. They only spent $200 of what was allocated. This year, they passed a bill to spend $200 on a phone.
It isn't $600 out of pocket, it's $400.
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>"We didn't spend that money last year. That's the point.
Just because it WOULD HAVE BEEN "OK" to spend it back then doesn't mean it is OK to spend it now. That was my point, although not well worded.
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Ok but let's make it a carbon tax.
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They serve different purposes. You need both. You can't tax your environment green, you actually need to spend that money on green initiatives.
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What's the limiting factor?
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The damage already done and the knock on effects to society of the sudden sticker shock.
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That doesn't sound bad at all. We just need to make sure the poor are taken care of.
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We need a VAT.
No we don’t; consumption taxes are regressive.
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But we should have raised taxes to pay for it. The billionaires dont get my sympathy, but there arent enough of them to squeeze to pay for society-wide changes. We need a VAT.
I would much rather go back to the tax structure we had in the late 70s than creating new ways for government to extract money from people.
And end the âoeinvestments go to the next generation tax-freeâ loophole that lets wealthy families keep their billions for generations.
I don't support this. People should be able to pass the fruits of their labor / good fortune on to their kin without the government getting their grubby hands on it. If you want less rich people go back to the tax structure that worked prior to the federal government being systematically corrupted by money.
Re:Strongly support this (Score:5, Informative)
>"We need a VAT. "
What we need is to abolish the income tax and replace it with a consumption tax in the form of a federal sales tax.
61% of the population paid no federal income taxes last year (they earnt too little). Thus what you propose would result in a large scale easing of the tax on the richest in society and put it on everyone else. Is that what you intended?
Incidentally sales taxes have a lot of problems in a multi-state environment that a VAT would not have. With VAT you can set it up so that instead of businesses having to do 3 different sales taxes (federal, state, city) they instead pay a single VAT rate based on where they are located, and then states do the reconciliation.
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Imagine a machine with two totally separate input panels. On the first panel you select the distribution of the means of taxation -- consumption, income, capital gains, estate tax, sin tax, whatever you want. On the second panel you can select the amount and shape of progres
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Federal rebates on EVs? (Score:2)
Did the federal rebates on EVs make it into this bill? I hear a lot of crowing about other stuff but I can't find confirmation about the rebates after searching a bit this morning.
If it did make it into the bill I'm not sure why no one is reporting on it. Yeah more EV chargers are nice but bringing EVs down into a price range even more Americans (and myself) would find affordable and / or reasonable is absolutely huge for cutting our country's emissions. I know I'll be buying a long range Model 3 next year
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An extensive charging network also benefits the subsequent owners of used EVs, once they start having degraded range and need to stop every 100 miles or so to recharge. Giving people who can otherwise afford a brand new vehicle a tax break on it, doesn’t actually help the majority of Americans who are driving around in 12-year-old (the approximate average age of a vehicle in the US) gas guzzlers, because they can’t afford to buy new regardless of a rebate.
That used Nissan Leaf sitting at the de
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I think you're off the mark on the value of the rebates. Dropping the price of a Tesla by 10 grand not only opens them up to a ton more new car buyers via the lower price but it also puts them much closer to the price of the gas power equivalents meaning making the most environmentally friendly descion much easier for a lot of folks who might be able to afford say a Tesla at full price but would rather hold onto 20 grand and get a gas car.
The charging stations I suppose are nice in your scenario of used EV
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There's lots of commuters making long commutes that take hours because they're poky, stop-and-go bullshit, it's just the kind of driving that EVs are especially efficient at. Given they're already financing their new car they might as well get an EV so long as they can charge at home. That's where the focus ought to be, because the people doing that kind of driving that's so horribly inefficient in an ICEV are the ones we need to get into EVs fastest.
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For starters, appealing to those with average or less commutes stands to get as the largest gains in cutting emissions just by shear numbers.
Meanwhile, those with long commutes are incredibly unlikely to buy an electric car unless it has the range to handle their commute and no amount of chargers will change that aside from perhaps massive numbers of privately owned level 2 workplace chargers. Meanwhile, if the car can make it through a single day's commute then it can almost certainly be at 100% battery th
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Range is not the problem. These are not super long commutes, they're just through extremely congested corridors. As long as you're gentle with acceleration (and deceleration) the EV is very efficient at all speeds, while a typical ICEV is only efficient right around 55-65 — fast enough that the engine isn't totally wasted, but slow enough that drag hasn't mounted up. The ICEV is inefficient at all speeds compared to an electric motor, but at low speeds the air pump engine is truly abymsal. Typical cur
Good luck Joe Biden (Score:2)
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As usual, no counterpoint, just a downmod and a mindless post as AC (presumably to prevent the downmod).
Go ahead, roll out the wind and solar farms. Put your money where your mouth is.
Oink ... Oink ... (Score:2)
Money from what? (Score:2)
The bulk of the funding comes from repurposing unspent coronavirus relief money
So, just where did that "unspent coronavirus relief money" come from, originally? It came from future taxes. They were "new" when it was (over-) allocated to covid, but now they're not...
News for nerds? (Score:2)
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News for nerds? More like news for people too dumb to understand massive debt kills.
It is a sort of economic MAD that so many are so invested in the USD, and the US continues to gain so much debt. If anyone relevant admits that the whole thing is bullshit then it might throw the system out of balance.
So, no social change then? (Score:3, Insightful)
What this amounts to, is Business As Usual.
No mention of the CRAZY idea of stopping rampant consumerism - the very thing which has led to the climate crisis in the first instance.
So, sure, if all this goes to plan, globally (good luck with that) - and the world continues on a path of unrestricted growth, using renewable energy... the planet still gets fucked over.
One totally obvious example of this strategy of consumerism, is that there's no concept of Americans questioning their reliance on cars.
Instead, a network of charging points, built on a simply staggering scale, ensures that the motor car continues to dominate.
Every aspect of this bill, if you examine it, is quite simply to continue an unsustainable path in a world of finite resources.
No mention of curbing meat consumption.
No mention of curbing totally pointless TONS of eWaste.
No mention of re-wilding the environment.
No mention of cutting back the carbon footprint of humans, in terms of the sheer volume of waste produced.
It's trying to solve just ONE problem - and sure, that problem is a real doozy and if we don't solve it, we're fucked.
But if we DO solve it, we're still fucked - nature is still going to be shafted and our own habitat is still going to be degraded.
What is needed is a social change so damn profound, it's just never going to happen ... because westerners - and I count myself amongst this group - are spoiled rotten.
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there's no concept of Americans questioning their reliance on cars.
Because unless you're going to invent Star Trek teleporters, most suggestions revolve around either:
Establishing a massive amount of public transportation on a scale which would be economically infeasible.
Convincing everyone to move to urban areas (also economically infeasible).
Bringing back horses.
No mention of curbing meat consumption.
That'd be unpopular with the majority of the US population, and the commonly cited carbon footprints of raising animals for meat assumes conventional production methods. Guess what? Growing, harvesting and ship
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Hey, I didn't expect any of my ramblings to get a positive response - and the replies really do prove my point.
Many of us lucky individuals in wealthier countries, have grown up with the idea of entitlement and an aspiration to own "stuff". ... well, it seems to me, often, people are trying to fill a void.
Absolutely - we want to be comfortable - who the hell doesn't?
But so much of what we buy, with our wealth, is
We lust after some cool new product and when we get it, it's like - oh, ok, not really satisfied
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One totally obvious example of this strategy of consumerism, is that there's no concept of Americans questioning their reliance on cars. Instead, a network of charging points, built on a simply staggering scale, ensures that the motor car continues to dominate.
You can pry my car from my cold dead hands.
What is needed is a social change so damn profound, it's just never going to happen ... because westerners - and I count myself amongst this group - are spoiled rotten.
It should be obvious by now "tree hugging" is a waste of time. Asking people to give up everything and live like shit for the sake of the environment is a complete and total nonstarter. If this is your strategy you will not only fail but you will actively build a loud entrenched consensus against your interests.
Those who give a shit about the environment will just have to get off their asses and find a way for people to have their cake and eat it too. Offer bett
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You can pry my car from my cold dead hands.
They will also be hot dead hands during the day, it will be hot AF and you will be dead in your car.
It should be obvious by now "tree hugging" is a waste of time. Asking people to give up everything and live like shit for the sake of the environment is a complete and total nonstarter.
That's boring hyperbole. Lots of people enjoy the experience of public transportation when that experience is not shit, because the transportation in question is not passing through a poophole.
Those who give a shit about the environment will just have to get off their asses and find a way for people to have their cake and eat it too.
Ah yes, it's someone else's problem to solve the problem of you. You might not like what solution they come up with.
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They will also be hot dead hands during the day, it will be hot AF and you will be dead in your car.
This sort of ridiculous hyperbole only works to undermine your position.
That's boring hyperbole.
It happens to be reality.
Lots of people enjoy the experience of public transportation when that experience is not shit, because the transportation in question is not passing through a poophole.
Said nobody.
Ah yes, it's someone else's problem to solve the problem of you. You might not like what solution they come up with.
I'm not sure what you mean by solving problem of you. If your solution involves figuratively going to war with a substantial portion of the population you will only undermine yourself and your cause.
Everyone has a right to decide how they spend their time. If I cared sufficiently about climate change to spend most of my time doing something constructive about it I sure as heck wouldn't waste my tim
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What is particularly sad are those who care sufficiently about the environment to invest time in addressing problems only to end up hugging trees and advocating for OTHER people to solve the problem for them instead of taking action themselves.
What's sad is that you don't realize that most people can't just make their own car or whatever, they can only buy what's offered to them. And also that most emissions are from corporate sources, not from individuals directly.
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What's sad is that you don't realize that most people can't just make their own car or whatever, they can only buy what's offered to them. And also that most emissions are from corporate sources, not from individuals directly.
Nobody is telling you to master vertical farming, create commercially viable fusion reactors, create cheap reliable grid storage and build a factory churn out enough terra preta to meet world demand and capture carbon all from your gargage all by yourself. Nobody is saying hey drinkypoo solve global warming all by yourself.
All of the worlds corporations, all industrial activities are carried out by the actions of individuals. You are an individual and you can choose to join existing group working on any n
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And in that single quote, we have the problem in a nutshell.
Hey, OP, I'm not having a go at you - I have a car myself, a very nice car. I don't drive it much anymore, because ... pandemic.
But I do like to drive it.
My original comment absolutely included ME as part of the problem - I'm conditioned, I'm selfish, I'm western, I've had this wealth and consumerism my entire life.
The difference, however, is I'm willing to say "Ok, maybe I'm ready to change. Maybe I CAN a
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It is a very abstract problem - that you and I, would never give up our cars, even though we could see, through abstraction, that the very owning of those cars, ultimately fucks someone else over on our planet.
That it leads to suffering in some far flung third world country, due to the resources required to build the amount of cool cars we like to drive.
Bulk of environmental disasters in the developing world are being directly caused by negligent LOCAL mismanagement of lands and natural resources whose governments proceed to blame on everything and everyone except themselves. What is currently going on within Africa and Americas is the equivalent of ascribing blame for the 30's dust bowl on global warming.
Which would be fine, if it wasn't for the fact that you can literally trace our wealthy lifestyles to the exploitation we practiced and still practice in developing nations.
The first world is propping up the third world by investing and developing commercially to make a profit. If not for that they would have even less.
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Ho hum (Score:2)
It needed to be 25x that. And the USG should not trust private enterprise to do a damn thing.
Passing the bill (Score:2)
Sounds like when a bunch of us go out to lunch. We each toss in what we think we owe and pass it on. The guy at the end winds up paying $45 for a grilled cheese sandwich.
Re:tightening crypto reins? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:tightening crypto reins? (Score:5, Informative)
Nice strawman there. Quote marks mean something, and what you have quote marks around isn't a quote. Here's the actual quote: "...tightening enforcement on reporting gains from cryptocurrency investments"
Enforcement on reporting gains has nothing to do with phony market cap figures, exchanges, and liquidity in the crypto market. It has to do with properly collecting capital gains tax when people sell crypto for a profit. That is, standard tax enforcement.
If anyone wonders why they need money (Score:4, Insightful)
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"Enforcement on reporting gains has nothing to do with phony market cap figures, exchanges, and liquidity in the crypto market."
It does, at least here. Not sure about in the US. In order to realize a taxable gain, you have to actually sell an asset. If I transfer some stock, currency, or cryptocurrency from one account I own to another, I don't realize a gain.
He's implying (correctly) that much of the "liquidity" in the cryptocurrency market implied by the trading volume is just self dealing, which shouldn'
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Your quote is inexact:
...unspent coronavirus relief money and tightening enforcement on reporting gains from cryptocurrency investments
The second part must be milking crypto hype, demanding its coverage with taxes in reality dollars.
The first is non less curious, though: like corona was budgeted and covered in advance with sort of savings, or so. Actually, I think this one means very simple emissions and inflation to everybody, who has USD on hand, or on their accounts, or as their future salaries and other income, etc. There is gonna be who pays for it, certainly.
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your comment, like your tag-line "quote", is a lie that is designed to get people to do stupid things
Re: They had to pass it. (Score:2)
Good morning! Sunday morning!
Twitch twitch. Gasp gasp.
I found the answer (Score:3, Informative)
The 2,702-page bipartisan bill, which has not changed, contains just $550 billion in new spending. The $1.2 trillion figure comes from including additional funding normally allocated each year for highways and other infrastructure projects.
This page [investopedia.com] explains that.
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Question 1, why the price disparity? Because of accounting, the amount spent, vs the amount it cost is quite different. Bills like this often build off existing funding budgets so for a lot of it we were already spending for it but we are investing more.
Question 2, Why would any GOP members support this. Trumps big 2016 push was on improving on infrastructure, his administration decided to not make it a priority, however infrastructure was something that the Democrats were willing to work with Trump on.