"Indeed, a very quick search of "polysilicon" on DOE's website reveals
the following examples - each bragging about how federal subsidies
helped bring new polysilicon capacity online:
- $44.85 million to Pennsylvania's AE Polysilicon via the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit (aka "Section 48C");
- $154 million
to Washington's REC Silicon via the same Advanced Energy Manufacturing
Tax Credit — "the highest amount awarded to a recipient under the
Recovery Act" (woo hoo!);
- $275 million
loan guarantee to California's Calisolar Inc. (which also apparently
benefited from millions of dollars worth of R&D subsidies through UC
Berkeley);
The 2010
IRS factseet on the $2.3
billion in Section 48C tax credits also shows a $128 million subsidy to Wacker Polysilicon and
another
$51.6 million to Calisolar. (These are just the ones I could quickly
pinpoint with "polysilicon" in their names; no doubt there are other
producers who received 48C tax credits and/or one of the many other
state and federal subsidies available to green energy producers.).".....................................................................There it is again, people. This time Mr. Lincicome is taking his data DIRECTLY FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY'S WEB-SITE. The federal government was putting hundreds of millions of dollars into subsidizing silicon and it was this that directly went against the Solydra business model (which ostensibly somebody in the federal government knew about) of making solar panels that consumed significantly less of it. Unbefrigginglievable.....................................................................................As for Mr. Lincicome working for Cato, I have yet to come across a single person from Cato who wasn't significantly smarter than Paul Krugman or any of those other idiots. And they're a libertarian think tank that is relatively nonpartisan (they think highly of Reagan and Clinton and poorly of Hoover and FDR), not a Republican talking-point machine. To try and tar them is utterly low-ball, in my opinion.
5 comments:
Some libertarians themselves have told me that while they like Reason and Cato for their work, they really donate to the Mises Institute and believe that's the sort of de facto resource on libertarianism because one would always know where they stand on things. Almost as if they were the purest form of libertarian while everything else that tries to be more pragmatic isn't viewed as highly. The fact is that anarcho-capitalism, especially the form tinged with natural rights, won't happen anytime soon, and that what a lot of the ones I've talked to are.
I think this kind of dogma has turned some people off, including the libertarians more influenced by libertarian with a small l Milton Friedman. This is part of the reason why I really don't consider myself to be a libertarian and why I don't want to explicitly ally with any sort of political party or movement. It just seems like a lot of trouble having to worry about "principles" that I have to adhere to. Every so often, I read from Reason, Cato, and the Mises website, even if I don't agree with everything they have to say.
Was there someone giving you trouble in the comments? I see that you've enabled comment moderation. Bet it had to do something with that "wd" character.
Rob: yeah, comments that call people who choose to work at a place and who earn fair compensation for their work "slaves" can be silly, and in this case, it had become a cliche.
I agree, dmarks. That does sound silly. The "wd" character said that? That guy better be careful. He might be at risk for developing a certain illness, given how much Liberal BS he was regurgitating here.
Don't get me wrong, Roberto, I love the guys at Mises (Murphy, Woods, Horwitz, Block, etc.) and the older Austrians (Hazlitt, Von Mises, Hayek, etc.) for sure. I just think that the guys at Cato are more realistic and practical. In other words, exactly what you said.......Yeah, dmarks, slave wages is a silly construct. Half the people who work for the minimum wage are kids who live at home and the other half are retirees and second wage earners. And pretty much everybody (save for perhaps a certain person) moves up the food chain over time. This whole idea that people are somehow stranded in life is isn't at all born out by the data.......Yeah, Barlowe, wd is exceedingly orthodox and his comments absolutely make me cringe, too.
"Wave slave" is one of those phrases made up by people completely ignorant of economics that does two bad things
1) it levels a nasty insult at working people.
2) It trivializes real slavery, by implying that experience of real slaves isn't any worse than that of some kid from a well-fed family working at Starbucks whose only worry that he might not be able to afford trading in his iPhone 4S for an iPhone 5.
Such things are born of the Mom's basement mind.
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