ThePrince14 t1_j8v0h3d wrote on February 17, 2023 at 3:25 AM

You’re completely moving the goalposts on the argument at hand. Again, the fact remains that investment in renewables in Texas is very healthy and has contributed to the state generating more power from renewables than any other state. That doesn’t happen if you believe same old Reddit’s tired tropes that Texas is the right wing devil determined to destroy everything progressive. If all these super powerful people in the state are actively anti-renewable and discouraging development of renewables in Texas, why is it so prominent and continuing to grow?

And since you brought it up, please educate us on what those fossil fuel “subsidies” actually are and how they work. I think if you were to actually educate yourself on the mechanism with which these “subsidies” work, you’d realize that again, Reddit parades out the same BS uninformed information over and over.

Spoiler alert, people like to call any sort of tax break for oil and gas companies a “subsidy” so they can perpetuate their narratives. Many of these tax breaks are the same sort of tax breaks that any business in any industry gets. I’ll give you an example, say you start a business that manufactures doorknobs. You build your own factory that manufactures those doorknobs and start selling them. Businesses generally get to write off the cost of building that factory as a capital expenditure against their profits. That’s not a subsidy in the way most people think about subsidies. But when it comes to oil and gas, people want to further their narratives, so they lump in capital investments and call it a subsidy.

CoffeeFox t1_j8vffz7 wrote on February 17, 2023 at 5:45 AM

> You’re completely moving the goalposts on the argument at hand.

You seem to be used to practicing arguments in a mirror, and forgot there isn't one present here.

They stayed on-point about messaging of elected officials and overall government policy and you danced around looking for an inroad to make deceptive generalizations regarding private entities that was fairly well off-topic right from the beginning.

It isn't "moving the goalposts" to repeatedly inform you that you are unsuccessfully trying different approaches of arguing with things that nobody even said, and it's ironic in the extreme to attempt to start up a game of Calvinball and then use that argument. "You're not allowed to do what I keep doing!" is... well, bless your heart.

ThePrince14 t1_j8wdz7q wrote on February 17, 2023 at 12:51 PM

Nice, I struck Reddit’s nerve where they don’t have a rebuttal to actual data, so people just downvote and come up with generalizations. Why are you so against actual data, and just use clickbait articles to further your confirmation bias? Don’t you realize that’s exactly what the “other side”, who you hate so dearly also does?

HimEatLotsOfFishEggs t1_j8wffzg wrote on February 17, 2023 at 1:04 PM

Those’re a lot of important phrases and ideas you’re regurgitating there, bud. Remember to drink lots of water to keep your throat well-lubricated, and take thirty-minute breaks should you get tired!

ThePrince14 t1_j8wg16h wrote on February 17, 2023 at 1:10 PM

Oh man, do I love when I strike this nerve. You can tell that people have no actual knowledge, so they just resort to comments like this instead of being able to have an informed discussion about this stuff.

[deleted] t1_j8wn6h6 wrote on February 17, 2023 at 2:08 PM

[deleted]

ThePrince14 t1_j8wurxu wrote on February 17, 2023 at 3:01 PM

That’s because the original premise comes from the same old Reddit BS that the state of Texas is just a bunch of right wing nut jobs and is against anything progressive. The burden of proof is on OP to actually provide that evidence instead of parroting everything that gets said in every reddit thread. My rebuttal was actual data saying that there is actually a ton of renewable investment in Texas, and if Texas was as bad as Reddit wants to perpetuate, there wouldn’t be the massive amount of investment there is. If the most powerful people in the state are working so hard to discourage and ban renewables, then why does there continue to be a massive amount of investment in renewables in the state?

https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-clean-energy-bechtel-solar-hydrogen-construction/638739/

Reddit is so committed to the narrative that Texas is this terrible right wing devil that it refuses to look at actual data.

When it comes to fossil fuel “subsidies” that Reddit loves to bitch about, read up on what they actually are:

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs

Focusing on oil and gas, there’s two main direct subsidies received - intangible drilling credits and percentage depletion. These are “subsidies” or more accurately tax write offs similar to write offs any business in any industry would get. Intangible drilling credits just let the company write off part of their capital investment in drilling wells, which is the same as if an airline used capital to buy airplanes, that’s a write off against their profits.

The percentage depletion is also an accounting method that is used in many industries, like if a company built a factory producing goods, they depreciate that over a certain period of time, which is again a write off on taxes.

Then you have the indirect subsidies, which are again just the same accounting practices any company in the US would use.

So please use actual data to show my how my argument is actually shite instead of pulling a couple of clickbait articles and ignoring what Texas is actually doing in practice.

[deleted] t1_j8wxkrs wrote on February 17, 2023 at 3:20 PM