Economics Thread
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nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
They mostly make money by earning and selling carbon credits.
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Tesla is living in the Battery World. And makes things that support them. Solar roof for powerwall, batteries for electric cars. What separates Tesla from most competitors is the massive infrastructure. I don't love Teslas, they look great, but I feel like overall they're outshined by other cars. But I'd rather have except for the infrastructure a Mustang Mach e It looks better, has better prices, etc.
zitothebrave
Connoisseur of Minors
Bum-faucets raw dogging.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/west-wing-playbook
LARRY SUMMERS isn’t in the Biden administration, but he is in their heads.
Some in the White House dismiss him as old news. Others continue to consult him. At least a few worry that his critiques could be right.
Whatever one thinks of him, BILL CLINTON’s Treasury secretary and BARACK OBAMA’s first National Economic Council director has become an unlikely avatar of the loyal opposition to the Biden White House.
He has said JOE BIDEN’s signature $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was too large and could lead to inflation, and went so far as to tell Bloomberg News in March, “I think this is the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years”
“A lot of what he's saying is what everyone is saying over coffee and whispering,” said one prominent economist who proved the point by only saying so anonymously. “He’s an outlier in the public debate because the people that have megaphones aren't saying this on the Democratic side, but he's well within a consensus view in the economics profession.
—————
Let’s follow the science
LARRY SUMMERS isn’t in the Biden administration, but he is in their heads.
Some in the White House dismiss him as old news. Others continue to consult him. At least a few worry that his critiques could be right.
Whatever one thinks of him, BILL CLINTON’s Treasury secretary and BARACK OBAMA’s first National Economic Council director has become an unlikely avatar of the loyal opposition to the Biden White House.
He has said JOE BIDEN’s signature $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan was too large and could lead to inflation, and went so far as to tell Bloomberg News in March, “I think this is the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years”
“A lot of what he's saying is what everyone is saying over coffee and whispering,” said one prominent economist who proved the point by only saying so anonymously. “He’s an outlier in the public debate because the people that have megaphones aren't saying this on the Democratic side, but he's well within a consensus view in the economics profession.
—————
Let’s follow the science
striker42
Well-known member
Well, you can build stuff quick when you don't have to worry about ensuring things are built safely and don't have to give any consideration to the environment.
I have no doubt there's a lot of unnecessary red tape. However, a lot of the red tape is there for reasons. We don't want things like the Iroquois Theater Fire to happen again.
acesfull86
Well-known member
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-06-04/solar-jobs-2021-how-china-beat-u-s-to-become-world-s-solar-champion
Chinese firms now supply three quarters of the world’s solar panels.
U.S. companies, which 20 years ago made 22% of them, now produce just 1% on American soil, according to Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BloombergNEF. At one point there were 75 major solar parts factories in the U.S., a number that was expected to grow as the industry flourished. Most have since been shuttered.
The industry failed to take root in the U.S. despite billions of dollars in government incentives and nearly two decades of pledges from presidents, starting with George W. Bush, that the nation would be a clean-energy superpower. Even the crushing tariffs imposed by former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump succeeded mostly in pushing the work out of China and into other Asian countries.
...
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Obama won election to the White House in 2008 on a promise to create 5 million green jobs -- and a surge of solar projects in the sun-drenched Southwest promised to deliver many of them. When businesses and homes go solar, every panel is “pounded into place by a worker whose job can’t be outsourced,” Obama boasted.
The work was spurred along by a 2005 tax credit that allowed developers to deduct 30% of solar project costs. Although that tax break didn’t require the use of American parts, the Obama administration tried to cultivate a domestic panel-making industry by paring tax bills for clean energy manufacturers, too.
The 2009 stimulus package created a separate 30% tax credit to steer $2.3 billion toward more than 180 advanced energy manufacturers, though only eight recipients made solar panels and the incentive program ran out of money after just one year.
...
China was using every tool at its disposal to develop its own solar industry. Local governments offered cheap land and state-backed banks provided friendly financing terms. Beijing also created demand for the products with generous subsidies that helped make the country the world’s largest purchaser of panels.
Chinese factories also worked to improve efficiency and reduce costs. For example, they used new tools to slice thinner polysilicon wafers with less waste, producing more solar cells from the same amount of raw material. That innovation has helped lower costs by 80%, making solar as cheap as coal now in many parts of the world.
The surge of cheap panels from China dealt a crushing blow to U.S. manufacturers -- and Solyndra wasn’t the only casualty. After three other U.S. solar manufacturers sought bankruptcy protection, Obama in 2012 slapped duties as high as 249% on the imports. Manufacturers responded by moving operations out of China, but they didn’t head to the U.S. Instead, large manufacturers skirted the U.S. tariffs by building facilities to assemble solar cells and modules across Southeast Asia.
Making matters worse, China retaliated by imposing its own duties of up to 57% on imports of U.S.-made polysilicon -- tariffs that crippled U.S. producers of the conductive material used in solar panels.
“It was a disaster for the U.S. brands,” said BloombergNEF solar analyst Xiaoting Wang.
Before the Chinese tariffs, U.S.-made polysilicon had been shipped to the country and used to produce ingots, the next stage of solar cell manufacturing. But the tariffs made American polysilicon too expensive, Wang said, and the U.S. went from making 50% of the world’s polysilicon in 2007 to less than 5% today.
...
Domestic solar panel manufacturing was already dwindling when Trump took office in 2017 with vows to crack down on China and put “America first.” Even though he was no champion of renewable energy, Trump extended his protectionist policies to the solar industry, too, imposing import limits and tariffs as high as 30% on foreign solar cells and photovoltaic panels in 2018.
Trump’s tariffs had the potential to help a handful of panel makers stay afloat, but at the expense of wide swaths of the domestic solar power industry. While manufacturers SolarWorld, Suniva Inc. and First Solar Inc. cheered on the tariffs, they were fiercely opposed by renewable power developers and installers who feared climbing panel prices would put them out of business.
The tariffs briefly boosted some U.S. manufacturers, as both SunPower and First Solar increased production. But America’s hunger for solar power meant that imports from Asia climbed anyway, as domestic developers exploited a loophole to buy foreign-made double-sided panels not subject to the duties. And Trump’s tariffs weren’t enough to save two of their biggest champions, the now-bankrupt Suniva and SolarWorld.
...
Biden is trying to encourage renewable manufacturing with his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package and a plan to revive the lapsed 2005 tax credit worth nearly a third of the cost of factories making solar panels. Buy-America mandates could also be imposed for federally funded solar projects, an idea advanced by several Republican senators.
But a few new U.S. panel plants would do little to loosen China’s stranglehold on the rest of the solar supply chain, which extends beyond panels to the polysilicon that is used to make them. China now produces more than 80% of the polysilicon and roughly 98% of two other key components -- wafers and ingots -- that are used in panels worldwide, even those manufactured and assembled in other countries.
------------------
Yet another example of tariffs not only failing to help, but making a situation worse.
Did we win the trade war yet?
Chinese firms now supply three quarters of the world’s solar panels.
U.S. companies, which 20 years ago made 22% of them, now produce just 1% on American soil, according to Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BloombergNEF. At one point there were 75 major solar parts factories in the U.S., a number that was expected to grow as the industry flourished. Most have since been shuttered.
The industry failed to take root in the U.S. despite billions of dollars in government incentives and nearly two decades of pledges from presidents, starting with George W. Bush, that the nation would be a clean-energy superpower. Even the crushing tariffs imposed by former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump succeeded mostly in pushing the work out of China and into other Asian countries.
...
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
Obama won election to the White House in 2008 on a promise to create 5 million green jobs -- and a surge of solar projects in the sun-drenched Southwest promised to deliver many of them. When businesses and homes go solar, every panel is “pounded into place by a worker whose job can’t be outsourced,” Obama boasted.
The work was spurred along by a 2005 tax credit that allowed developers to deduct 30% of solar project costs. Although that tax break didn’t require the use of American parts, the Obama administration tried to cultivate a domestic panel-making industry by paring tax bills for clean energy manufacturers, too.
The 2009 stimulus package created a separate 30% tax credit to steer $2.3 billion toward more than 180 advanced energy manufacturers, though only eight recipients made solar panels and the incentive program ran out of money after just one year.
...
China was using every tool at its disposal to develop its own solar industry. Local governments offered cheap land and state-backed banks provided friendly financing terms. Beijing also created demand for the products with generous subsidies that helped make the country the world’s largest purchaser of panels.
Chinese factories also worked to improve efficiency and reduce costs. For example, they used new tools to slice thinner polysilicon wafers with less waste, producing more solar cells from the same amount of raw material. That innovation has helped lower costs by 80%, making solar as cheap as coal now in many parts of the world.
The surge of cheap panels from China dealt a crushing blow to U.S. manufacturers -- and Solyndra wasn’t the only casualty. After three other U.S. solar manufacturers sought bankruptcy protection, Obama in 2012 slapped duties as high as 249% on the imports. Manufacturers responded by moving operations out of China, but they didn’t head to the U.S. Instead, large manufacturers skirted the U.S. tariffs by building facilities to assemble solar cells and modules across Southeast Asia.
Making matters worse, China retaliated by imposing its own duties of up to 57% on imports of U.S.-made polysilicon -- tariffs that crippled U.S. producers of the conductive material used in solar panels.
“It was a disaster for the U.S. brands,” said BloombergNEF solar analyst Xiaoting Wang.
Before the Chinese tariffs, U.S.-made polysilicon had been shipped to the country and used to produce ingots, the next stage of solar cell manufacturing. But the tariffs made American polysilicon too expensive, Wang said, and the U.S. went from making 50% of the world’s polysilicon in 2007 to less than 5% today.
...
Domestic solar panel manufacturing was already dwindling when Trump took office in 2017 with vows to crack down on China and put “America first.” Even though he was no champion of renewable energy, Trump extended his protectionist policies to the solar industry, too, imposing import limits and tariffs as high as 30% on foreign solar cells and photovoltaic panels in 2018.
Trump’s tariffs had the potential to help a handful of panel makers stay afloat, but at the expense of wide swaths of the domestic solar power industry. While manufacturers SolarWorld, Suniva Inc. and First Solar Inc. cheered on the tariffs, they were fiercely opposed by renewable power developers and installers who feared climbing panel prices would put them out of business.
The tariffs briefly boosted some U.S. manufacturers, as both SunPower and First Solar increased production. But America’s hunger for solar power meant that imports from Asia climbed anyway, as domestic developers exploited a loophole to buy foreign-made double-sided panels not subject to the duties. And Trump’s tariffs weren’t enough to save two of their biggest champions, the now-bankrupt Suniva and SolarWorld.
...
Biden is trying to encourage renewable manufacturing with his multitrillion-dollar infrastructure package and a plan to revive the lapsed 2005 tax credit worth nearly a third of the cost of factories making solar panels. Buy-America mandates could also be imposed for federally funded solar projects, an idea advanced by several Republican senators.
But a few new U.S. panel plants would do little to loosen China’s stranglehold on the rest of the solar supply chain, which extends beyond panels to the polysilicon that is used to make them. China now produces more than 80% of the polysilicon and roughly 98% of two other key components -- wafers and ingots -- that are used in panels worldwide, even those manufactured and assembled in other countries.
------------------
Yet another example of tariffs not only failing to help, but making a situation worse.
Did we win the trade war yet?
acesfull86
Well-known member
Yes. When doing something over 15 years makes you nothing except worse off, and the outcome was predictable based on a couple centuries of economic theory and empirical data, doing nothing would've been preferable.
As much as you like to say this is about fighting slave labor, it's not. It's about misguided bureaucrats giving preferred treatment to protected industries/companies and those actions not leading to their intended consequences.
It's like when public money is given to billionaires to build their sports stadiums - the public is sold on a bunch of jobs and economic opportunity, those benefits don't materialize, then you get the postmortem analysis where everyone wonders "what went wrong," as though we haven't seen the same movie dozens of times.
If we want to fight slavery in China, tariffs are the most cowardly way to do it. Let's raise prices on everyday Americans, that'll show 'em!
As much as you like to say this is about fighting slave labor, it's not. It's about misguided bureaucrats giving preferred treatment to protected industries/companies and those actions not leading to their intended consequences.
It's like when public money is given to billionaires to build their sports stadiums - the public is sold on a bunch of jobs and economic opportunity, those benefits don't materialize, then you get the postmortem analysis where everyone wonders "what went wrong," as though we haven't seen the same movie dozens of times.
If we want to fight slavery in China, tariffs are the most cowardly way to do it. Let's raise prices on everyday Americans, that'll show 'em!
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acesfull86
Well-known member
Are we not worried about China exploiting slaves now, we're back to US protecting market share? In that case, did you read the part of the article where after years of tariffs, the US's manufacturing is almost non-existent and China absolutely dominates the market?
The tariffs. don't. work.
You're starting from the premise that this tactic is effective ...the evidence suggest otherwise.
The tariffs. don't. work.
You're starting from the premise that this tactic is effective ...the evidence suggest otherwise.
What is your answer? Do nothing? Lose all our industries? How do we combat efficiencies borne by slave labor and a totalitarian government looking to replace America as the dominant country?
This is not just an economic issue. This is a national security issue and it’s the aspect Libertarians never understand.
This is not just an economic issue. This is a national security issue and it’s the aspect Libertarians never understand.
acesfull86
Well-known member
The first thing I'd do is stop using policies that don't work. They don't work in a textbook, and the data shows they don't work in practice.
Why not demand evidence that they're actually working and having the intended effect?
If the goal is to fight slave labor, that's a human rights issue and should be dealt with accordingly. And let's be real...we both know the goals of the tariff policy aren't to fix this issue. The right is losing sleep over slaves in China just like the left is losing sleep over the citizens of DC not getting full representation in government.
How would that work, anyway? We slap a tariff on Chinese goods, those goods are more expensive to American consumers, and China responds by...substituting slave labor for more expensive labor, making their goods even more expensive to export?
BTW, I'm highly, highly skeptical of the claim that "China's efficiencies are borne by slave labor and a totalitarian government." The workforce of China is approximately 800M people, and according to the Global Slavery Index, China has just under 4M slaves. They're not overtaking the United States economy on the backs of 0.005% of their workforce being unpaid.
Again, if China having slaves is the issue, then it should be addressed on its own merits.
The general "loss of industry" doesn't concern me. It's been a fact of our economic lives forever, and yet here we are enjoying the highest standards of living in human history. The industry you work in might go under for any number of reasons, and that sucks. Technological progress, a change in consumer preferences - international trade is only one of the many possible reasons. None of those reasons justify the US government stepping in and shielding the industry from competition.
Why not demand evidence that they're actually working and having the intended effect?
If the goal is to fight slave labor, that's a human rights issue and should be dealt with accordingly. And let's be real...we both know the goals of the tariff policy aren't to fix this issue. The right is losing sleep over slaves in China just like the left is losing sleep over the citizens of DC not getting full representation in government.
How would that work, anyway? We slap a tariff on Chinese goods, those goods are more expensive to American consumers, and China responds by...substituting slave labor for more expensive labor, making their goods even more expensive to export?
BTW, I'm highly, highly skeptical of the claim that "China's efficiencies are borne by slave labor and a totalitarian government." The workforce of China is approximately 800M people, and according to the Global Slavery Index, China has just under 4M slaves. They're not overtaking the United States economy on the backs of 0.005% of their workforce being unpaid.
Again, if China having slaves is the issue, then it should be addressed on its own merits.
The general "loss of industry" doesn't concern me. It's been a fact of our economic lives forever, and yet here we are enjoying the highest standards of living in human history. The industry you work in might go under for any number of reasons, and that sucks. Technological progress, a change in consumer preferences - international trade is only one of the many possible reasons. None of those reasons justify the US government stepping in and shielding the industry from competition.
Highest standard of living while the current generation is the first generation to have less than their parents.
Why don’t you explain to the tens of millions of people under 40 who has own nothing that they should be happy because people like you and me understand the current zeitgeist.
Why don’t you explain to the tens of millions of people under 40 who has own nothing that they should be happy because people like you and me understand the current zeitgeist.
acesfull86
Well-known member
I'm certainly not going to tell them I have the solution in the form of a tax policy that they're going to carry the burden of