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Seems to be the trend in america... Tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations, with no consideration for what the impact will be in 10-30 years... Until we,

Seems to be the trend in america... Tax breaks and subsidies for big corporations, with no consideration for what the impact will be in 10-30 years... Until we, as a nation, can get past this pattern we will never improve our climate/water/sustainability. Though this goes beyond renewable/climate... Chip shortages are a national failure.. we allow companies to go rock bottom dollar to the point we have virtually zero capability to function industrially as a nation without other countries. Having some overseas products and imports is one thing, but when you have to import 90%+ of it, we're losing. And the same can be said about mega corps... They do great things, but we should not allow them to grow so large they purchase other billion dollar companies to avoid competition... Capitalism doesn't work when a company gets so large they can suffer billions in losses for years to ensure they are the only one in the country. We need to ensure the damage we do to the environment is not ultimately taxpayer funded expense... It's like a backwards subsidy.. sure we don't give them money to move in, but we bare the burden of the millions of dollars in recovery once they abandon the area or declare bankruptcy to avoid the clean up of the forests/rivers/etc.

djoldman 6y ago
> Having some overseas products and imports is one thing, but when you have to import 90%+ of it, we're losing. I think it's more complicated than this. If China sells steel at a sufficient quality at a far cheaper price, why make it in the US? If the concern is national security, make a stockpile sufficiently large to suffice while a steel industry is restarted locally. It doesn't make sense to employ protectionism - it's bad economics and rent seekers come out of the woodwork. The goal of any nation should be to move its workers up the skills pyramid to work on more complicated products. We don't want to be making shirts in the US, we want those people to be doing higher skilled jobs.
- ldoughty 6y ago
  I certainly didn't mean to suggest we do everything internally... Just that we have some meaningful production capability at home.
  - lazide 6y ago
    Do you have any ideas on how to do that if it isn’t naively economically viable?
- lazide 6y ago
  Which is great until the country who is making all your shirts decides they don’t like you and stops selling you shirts. Unless you like being shirtless I guess? You can’t have a strategic reserve of every major good large enough to actually get through something like that realistically. Things change too quickly, and most of the really important imported goods we can’t store enough of anyway. Are we going to have a strategic CPU reserve? IPhone reserve?
lazide 6y ago
Being involved in timber management (owning non industrial timberland in California), the rules themselves (as stated) often exclude/disadvantage larger producers in many ways (including taxation). The way they help larger producers and produce a rather toxic effect in many ways is with their complexity. In theory on paper, they often help small producers with carve outs, however the the record keeping, paperwork, and compliance processes are so onerous that anyone who isn’t a professional getting paid to figure it out is going to run screaming in the other direction - even if it is literally free money (grants). Hiring help and doing mountains of paperwork is expensive. If you’re a large producer the economies of scale make it a small line item, and if it is your primary business then it’s a business expense like doing your taxes that is a full write off. If you’re some poor sap that inherited some timberland and are trying to not have it burn down or get double taxed while maintaining it? Good luck. In the middle of historic fire season, a grant from CalFire has taken me 3 years of paperwork to get approved and ground work ready to start to reduce fuel loads in high risk fire area of no other interest or complication, and with professional help. Your average person has zero chance. The more complicated the rules are, the more the only people who can comply/get approved will be big corps.

djoldman 6y ago

> Having some overseas products and imports is one thing, but when you have to import 90%+ of it, we're losing. I think it's more complicated than this. If China sells steel at a sufficient quality at a far cheaper price, why make it in the US? If the concern is national security, make a stockpile sufficiently large to suffice while a steel industry is restarted locally. It doesn't make sense to employ protectionism - it's bad economics and rent seekers come out of the woodwork. The goal of any nation should be to move its workers up the skills pyramid to work on more complicated products. We don't want to be making shirts in the US, we want those people to be doing higher skilled jobs.

ldoughty 6y ago
I certainly didn't mean to suggest we do everything internally... Just that we have some meaningful production capability at home.
- lazide 6y ago
  Do you have any ideas on how to do that if it isn’t naively economically viable?
lazide 6y ago
Which is great until the country who is making all your shirts decides they don’t like you and stops selling you shirts. Unless you like being shirtless I guess? You can’t have a strategic reserve of every major good large enough to actually get through something like that realistically. Things change too quickly, and most of the really important imported goods we can’t store enough of anyway. Are we going to have a strategic CPU reserve? IPhone reserve?

lazide 6y ago

Being involved in timber management (owning non industrial timberland in California), the rules themselves (as stated) often exclude/disadvantage larger producers in many ways (including taxation). The way they help larger producers and produce a rather toxic effect in many ways is with their complexity. In theory on paper, they often help small producers with carve outs, however the the record keeping, paperwork, and compliance processes are so onerous that anyone who isn’t a professional getting paid to figure it out is going to run screaming in the other direction - even if it is literally free money (grants). Hiring help and doing mountains of paperwork is expensive. If you’re a large producer the economies of scale make it a small line item, and if it is your primary business then it’s a business expense like doing your taxes that is a full write off. If you’re some poor sap that inherited some timberland and are trying to not have it burn down or get double taxed while maintaining it? Good luck. In the middle of historic fire season, a grant from CalFire has taken me 3 years of paperwork to get approved and ground work ready to start to reduce fuel loads in high risk fire area of no other interest or complication, and with professional help. Your average person has zero chance. The more complicated the rules are, the more the only people who can comply/get approved will be big corps.