President Trump - 1st State of the Union

[Speaker to Animals]

Subsidizing energy boondoggles is bad whether it's solar or wing that is being subsidized, or clean coal being subsidized. You don't have to pick one or the other just because the DNC and GOP do.

You don't understand the problem (again).

[StCapps]

Subsidizing energy boondoggles is bad whether it's solar or wing that is being subsidized, or clean coal being subsidized. You don't have to pick one or the other just because the DNC and GOP do.

You don't understand the problem (again).

You assume I don't understand it, (again), here comes putting words in my mouth and pretending I made some dumbass argument that I never made. If you aren't arguing against an idiotic position of your own imagination, then you can't win an argument, so it's your go-to manuever.

Go ahead StA, tell us all what StrawmanCapps thinks.

[The Conservative]

Sort of a Love/Hate thing at best, coal mining.

Well, for people who immigrated to this country from shitholes, these were the best jobs they could get and they were the only people willing to do the work. They were taken advantage of by their employers and used as near slave labor to power every major city in this nation for damn near 100 years.

So you have these communities see, that played by the rules. They worked hard and sacrificed for their country on the battlefield and in the coal mines and they were ardent Democrats, being Union and all. So as just as their industry hits extremely hard times the party they supported for decades brags about how many families in the Appalachia they put on food stamps. Turns their back on them because "white rural America is dying" and spreads open their arms for the newest cheap labor in town.

My great uncle and great-grandfather were coal miners in WV... compared to what they dealt with coal is a lot safer and a cleaner environment to work in.

Also, Solar and other "Clean Power" is not cheap without subsidies.

[Speaker to Animals]

Subsidizing energy boondoggles is bad whether it's solar or wing that is being subsidized, or clean coal being subsidized. You don't have to pick one or the other just because the DNC and GOP do.

You don't understand the problem (again).

You assume I don't understand it, (again), here comes putting words in my mouth and pretending I made some dumbass argument that I never made. If you aren't arguing against an idiotic position of your own imagination, then you can't win an argument, so it's your go-to manuever.

Go ahead StA, tell us all what StrawmanCapps thinks.

You already demonstrated you don't understand the problem at all with the "let the market handle it" comment.

[StCapps]

You already demonstrated you don't understand the problem at all with the "let the market handle it" comment.

No I didn't. You are extrapolating some retarded position from that statement, when you have no reason to do that and that clearly isn't my argument, you just wish it was.

[Montegriffo]

Subsidizing energy boondoggles is bad whether it's solar or wind that is being subsidized, or clean coal being subsidized. You don't have to pick one or the other just because the DNC and GOP do.

That depends on how much value you put into policies like sustainability, carbon reduction and clean air. None in Trump's case he's just interested in a few coal miner votes, paying off the fossil fuel lobby and supporting his anti Paris accord stance.

[StCapps]

Subsidizing energy boondoggles is bad whether it's solar or wind that is being subsidized, or clean coal being subsidized. You don't have to pick one or the other just because the DNC and GOP do.

That depends on how much value you put into policies like sustainability, carbon reduction and clean air. None in Trump's case he's just interested in a few coal miner votes, paying off the fossil fuel lobby and supporting his anti Paris accord stance.

You don't have to subsidize energy boondoggles for the sake of sustainability and carbon reduction. The air is plenty clean, you don't need to kill all coal just to clean up the air, the US isn't fucking China. If Green Energy can't compete on it's own without massive subsidies, then fuck Green Energy until it fixes it's shit and becomes more economical. Forcing it down our throats before it's ready for primetime doesn't help, that just increases the price of energy.

[Speaker to Animals]

Capps, please actually try to understand what I am writing here (this is an important concept and one that a few people here don't want to accept for ideological reasons, but is very real).

The notion that "the market" will converge on the optimal solution is a dogmatic expression of faith that is refuted by the coal industry itself. This libertarian Mammon-worshiping ideology (it's more like a religion) believes in the market like another man might believe in any dogma of Christianity. But this one is readily refuted simply by looking at the coal industry and the very proliferation of coalfire plants.

Coal is one of the least optimal solutions the market could possibly converge upon. When you break it down, coal is far more costly than other forms of energy. This is especially true when you consider the environmental damage inflicted by coal mining, the health damage to the miners, and the tens of thousands of annual deaths of Americans due to lung cancer caused by coalfire plants. But for the utilities and the mining companies, it's most profitable. It's very profitable because they don't have to pay the costs of all the negative externalities they inflict on Americans.

It's like how Walmart indirectly receives subsidies for their labor force by paying them so low that tax payers have to pick up the slack with welfare and food assistance. That's also a negative externality whereby Walmart sloughs off the costs of their business onto innocent people (usually society at large since the costs are almost always spread out to all tax payers).

Utility companies don't pay for the lung cancers they inflict on thousands of Americans every year. They don't pay for the pollution they dump into our atmosphere and water. Mining companies don't really pay for the runoff into the local water supply, or the fact that they destroy the landscape itself by removing mountaintops and creating toxic holes in the ground.

"Clean coal" is a euphemism for "mitigating all the massive externalities of burning coal for energy". The only way to do that and make it profitable for the utility companies is to subsidize all the technology used to trap, collect, and dispose of the pollutants. Otherwise, if you force the utility companies to pay for that, and especially if you force them to pay for the negative externalities they impose upon the surrounding communities, then they would switch to another form of energy. This would bankrupt the coal mining companies. It would put half of Appalachia out of work too. So the government tries to subsidize the costs of mitigating the negative externalities in order to artificially make coal more profitable that mining companies stay in business and the coal workers don't sink further into economic ruin. It's literally a subsidized jobs program and gibs handout to industries no different than Obama's green energy initiative.

The market does not always arrive at the most cost-efficient solution to an economic problem because of negative externalities. This is a pretty good example of that in practice and it's an example of the government trying to artificially prop up a bad industry instead of just letting it die on its own by forcing them to simply pay for their own negative externalities instead of making tax payers do that.

[StCapps]

The market isn't choosing "clean coal", government subsidies lead to the market buying more "clean coal" than it would if there was level playing field subsidy wise. Coal is economically inefficient compared to many of it's competitors in the energy sector, less subsidies for coal will result in consumer paying more for clean coal and thus buying less of it, not more of it.

[K@th]

How much are we subsidizing "clean energy" compared to corn?

We subsidize coal more than clean energy. Maybe we should let EVERY industry compete on its own merits. I'm in favor of that.