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[mainiac]

Looks like you have a smudge on your sarcasm meter readout.

Census tax FTW!

[Zangi]

Clearly the fairest thing to do would be flat taxes across the board, ie everyone pays the same no matter their income.

I'm sure a flat tax of 50 grand for everyone, even the poor will work out super.  It'll be 'fair' to everyone involved.  I don't see any potential problems in the horizon at all.

[DJ]

People that don't have cash to pay the tax could just work it off. Building monumental tombs for the presidents or something like that.

[scriver]

I understood DJ as advocating a flat percentage rate, but I guess he wasn't. Also wasn't serious, maybe.

[Durin]

This whole flat tax thing has been debunked ad nauseum. Wages are artificially driven down by a whole host of regulations specifically designed to put power in the hands of a few. The ostensible purpose for things like I.P. laws, limited liability (corporations), and so forth is to make sure technical issues do not get addressed by an uneducated populist system incapable of properly handling technical problems, but the upshot of all of this is that money remains largely in the hands of a very few people, and those at the bottom use a disproportionate amount of theirs on things like food, clothing, and shelter.

The rich pay taxes from the excess they garner by having resources purposefully channeled to them. The systemic problem we have is wealthy people wasting the money they have on themselves and not reinvesting it into the giant organizations designed specifically to take advantage of cooperation, economies of scale, and so forth.

Flat tax is a non starter, so give it up already. It's the furthest thing from fair that one can propose in our current economic system.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

About Fracking, it scares me to think of how much of the eastern Midwest will be swallowed by the giant Shale Companies that will come to monopolize the resource and destroy communities and aquifers. What's so bad about solar energy? It still blows my mind that it's been 20 years and I've still yet to see a solar energy plant get setup in Richland, our local apocalyptic wasteland. Absolute waste to do anything BUT invest in solar energy at this point in history.

[Duuvian]

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2012/02/27/obama-touts-algal-biofuels-14m-in-new-r-2-28-per-gallon-algal-biofuels-in-sight/

From http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/biofuel/4213775 :

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga's body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.

[mainiac]

Biofuels that cheap would be a game changer.  Like completely upend the entire world order.

[Sirus]

I'm not up on my biofuels. Would they work in a normal gasoline engine?

[mainiac]

Diesel engine.

I seriously doubt they'd go for the price in that article though.  But hey, what do I know?

[Durin]

I was recently poking around concerning solar myself, and the problem is that it is not cheap to make the panels. Oh, they are easier to make than semiconductor CHIPS, but they are still not cheap, and they do wear out over time, meaning that there is a continual cost of maintaining an already expensive physical structure.

So that's why that is not working out as hoped.

The hard truth concerning fossil fuels is they represent millions of years of stored energy, they are relatively easy to get at, and if we do not use them other countries will. So this idea that we should artificially make them expensive in order to drive energy innovation is basically self destructive.

If fossil fuels are as bad for the environment as the left says, then we really have almost no choice but to go to war with China and then suffocate the developing world. I somehow doubt that is the appropriate way forward. I suspect the real issue is that the rich in America and Europe are going to have to start sacrificing a lot of their affluence in order to share clean energy with the rest of the world and help build the worldwide energy infrastructure. Places like China and India also need help with other industries as their agricultural practices are part of what make them such horrific places for the environment compared to western countries.

The more you look, the more it seems unrestrained wealth accumulation in the hands of a tiny western minority has led to mismanagement of worldwide resources. When western working class folks finally snap to that, hopefully sooner than later, we can begin the somewhat daunting task of determining in what manner to also lift the working men and women of the so called "third world" out of the cesspool our leaders have made out of their lands.

[Reelya]

It's not "the left" making claims of environmental damage, it's almost all scientists who are in the fields of climate, ecosystems etc. Global warming is based on scientific, not political roots. And the vast majority of working scientists are not "lefty" hippie types. It really doesn't go with the research scientist lifestyle (working for large universities or large corporations).

Everything you think is bad is from this mythical "the left"? That means as much as saying "they" did it or "it's the system, maaaan".

It's not the left, it's people who read the science journalism and since we're not scientists in those domains (specialists in a particular field) we need to assume that the people who do work in a field are actually the people who know more about that than "john doe" you or me. If there are credible people within a field disputing the findings then you can weigh what they're saying (STILL with a lot more FAITH than knowledge, because just reading a debate doesn't make you an expert able to judge) and see who seems more credible.

Politicians and other people who aren't experts in a field, are not credible to talk about it.

[darkflagrance]

I was recently poking around concerning solar myself, and the problem is that it is not cheap to make the panels. Oh, they are easier to make than semiconductor CHIPS, but they are still not cheap, and they do wear out over time, meaning that there is a continual cost of maintaining an already expensive physical structure.

So that's why that is not working out as hoped.

The hard truth concerning fossil fuels is they represent millions of years of stored energy, they are relatively easy to get at, and if we do not use them other countries will. So this idea that we should artificially make them expensive in order to drive energy innovation is basically self destructive.

If fossil fuels are as bad for the environment as the left says, then we really have almost no choice but to go to war with China and then suffocate the developing world. I somehow doubt that is the appropriate way forward. I suspect the real issue is that the rich in America and Europe are going to have to start sacrificing a lot of their affluence in order to share clean energy with the rest of the world and help build the worldwide energy infrastructure. Places like China and India also need help with other industries as their agricultural practices are part of what make them such horrific places for the environment compared to western countries.

The more you look, the more it seems unrestrained wealth accumulation in the hands of a tiny western minority has led to mismanagement of worldwide resources. When western working class folks finally snap to that, hopefully sooner than later, we can begin the somewhat daunting task of determining in what manner to also lift the working men and women of the so called "third world" out of the cesspool our leaders have made out of their lands.

We'd have to break the power that the interests tied into energy control have over the government, fund alternate energy research, and hope desperately that it gets cheaper and better. If research gets alternate energy sources competitive with fossils, and developing nations can be made to change over through the use of other incentives (popular pressure, government planners persuaded to take environment into account, less economic imperialism by the World Bank), market forces should facilitate the shift on their own.

Of course, that's a really big IF. ;P

[Durin]

It's not "the left" making claims of environmental damage, it's almost all scientists who are in the fields of climate, ecosystems etc. Global warming is based on scientific, not political roots. And the vast majority of working scientists are not "lefty" hippie types. It really doesn't go with the research scientist lifestyle (working for large universities or large corporations).

Everything you think is bad is from this mythical "the left"? That means as much as saying "they" did it or "it's the system, maaaan".

It's not the left, it's people who read the science journalism and since we're not scientists in those domains (specialists in a particular field) we need to assume that the people who do work in a field are actually the people who know more about that than "john doe" you or me. If there are credible people within a field disputing the findings then you can weigh what they're saying (STILL with a lot more FAITH than knowledge, because just reading a debate doesn't make you an expert able to judge) and see who seems more credible.

Politicians and other people who aren't experts in a field, are not credible to talk about it.

I'm talking about leftist politicians. The scientific community is pretty leftist, sorry to disturb your world view, but I am specifically talking about leftist politicians scare tactics on the issue. If we are inches from global disaster, and China is a gigantic source of the kinds of environmental damage that is leading us there, whereas the U.S.  and other western nations mitigate a lot of their CO2 footprint with more modern practices in fuel consumption and agriculture, then we need a war with China.

Or are you arguing we need a war with China?

Or did you just not care to address the rest of the post at all and wanted to whine about people identifying leftist political agendas?

I guess the funniest part of this is that a lot of what I expressed is supportive of a lot of what comes from the left. Just apparently not quite leftists enough to suit you.

[mainiac]

Yeah because war with china or let the earth burn are the only possible avenues...