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Hazzawoof t1_iv1yv60 wrote

Reply to comment by 40for60 in What factors contribute to gas prices? [OC] by USAFacts_Official

OK let me address your strawmen arguments one by one...

  1. truly poor people aren't driving anyway. To the extent it affects the working poor, there are other policy options to make up for it. Pricing in the externalities of your energy use doesn't have to happen in a vacuum. Public transport can be subsidised, EVs can be subsidised, tax transfers can be used.

  2. Europe taxes the poor to send their rich kids to college? Yes, many countries in Europe have high gas taxes. They also have lower levels of inequalities than the US... And guess what, the people on lower incomes can afford college too! Despite the "land of opportunities slogan" the US has less social mobility than many of its European peers.

  3. Do you think global warming is great for the poor? The US is a huge carbon emitter because it does not price in its energy use externalities. Yes it will affect the poor but fuck guess what, the extras taxes can be redirected for their benefit. Win-win.

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40for60 t1_iv20pwv wrote

  1. I work in the clean energy field and drive EV's so I don't need a lecture from someone who most likely does neither.

  2. Lets look at Germany, at age 12 they test the kids to see who is college material and then split the the chosen ones into AP like systems so by the time they are 18 they have already completed a lot of what we would deem college materiel. Should we start doing that here? Deny the poor, refugees and immigrants the opportunity to go to college?

  3. In Europe all of society pays the higher regressive VAT and energy, which include electricity, taxes and this is then used to pay for things like college for the chosen ones.

If we charged the poor more for electricity or fuel how would this speed up the conversion to green energy? I'm really curious how the little bit would could squeeze out of the poor will accelerate the testing on deep water wind turbine platforms? Or overcome the BLM hurdles for the Choke Cherry project?

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Hazzawoof t1_iv2ahdg wrote

  1. I don't own an EV nor any other car. I catch (electric) public transport
  2. Why is this turning into some ill-informed conversation about the merits of paid/free university? It has little to do with gas taxes. But since you insist on digging that hole... Socialised education and health services kinda conclusively are effective at reducing poverty and income inequality. Go look up the Gini index. Germany and Europe in general is way in front of the US in this regard.
  3. Do you have any economics background? Go look up the concepts of supply and demand, and externalities. Increasing the price of 'dirty' energy makes people less likely to use it and use clean energy sources instead. Clean energy producers are incentivised to invest more as the competitive advantage of dirty energy producers (not paying the cost of their externalities) is reduced/negated. Further, tax revenues can be used to subsidise clean energy R&D.

Lastly, I don't even think taxing gas is the right solution. Introducing a proper cap and trade emission trading scheme is what the US/ world really needs.

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40for60 t1_iv2gbwp wrote

MN has a higher HDI then both Germany and Europe does and a number of other states do to. As far as GINI goes Ukraine has a better index then almost all of the Euro's so how relevant is the Gini? but Ukraine's (along with most countries in Europe) have a GDP PPP then Mississippi, there is massive inequality in Europe unlike the the US, there is a big difference from Germany to Poland to Ukraine. But back to EV's and clean energy, straight up you don't know what your talking about. Beyond just big OEM mfgs like Ford and GM the first tier suppliers like Dana/Spicer, Magna, Borg Warner etc.. are all making massive investments in EV tech, problem is outsiders like yourself don't see it because they aren't making Tik Tok videos every 5 minutes to appeal to children. MISO laid out their plans for the massive expansion of the grid earlier this year is anyone talking about that? The largest wind farm in the country, which is being developed by a Republican Billionaire and could produce 1% of the countries electricity is starting to be built out and the deep water wind turbines paired with the new 15/16/17 MW turbines will start being produced in scale post testing in 2025 then deployed off of both coasts.

So I'm baffled by people who think nothing is getting done and that taxing the shit out of poor people or a carbon tax (that would never pass) would move the needle. The Chokecherry farm has been in development for 15 years, for all the people that are complaining nothing is being done why aren't they doing something? Why isn't AOC sponsoring a massive training program in her district for the 10's thousands of union jobs that will be needed for the massive offshore wind industry?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality

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40for60 t1_iv2kt81 wrote

This is the third straight year that submittals have exceeded the previous all-time high, reflecting an acceleration of the resource transition. This acceleration is a trend identified in MISO’s Renewable Integration Impact Assessment (RIIA), among other sources. “At this point, we are experiencing exponential growth in the queue,” Andy Witmeier, director of resource utilization at MISO, said. “The current applications continue to be heavily weighted with renewables and standalone storage requests again tripling the amount submitted the previous year.”

Supply and Demand doesn't really work at the consumer level for grid provided energy and most people don't have the ability to produce their own. Its good that some people started to work on these problems decades ago while others were doing nothing.

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