Can This Country Afford To Continue Green Tech Subsidies?
The $64,000 question (I know, I'm dating myself) is: can we afford to continue green tech subsidies? Europe, especially Spain, could not, so why do we think we are any different? Sure, green jobs are nice. But, in the present economy, they cannot sustain themselves. And it is not the government's job to subsidize them or to force us taxpayers to pay for them. If one or more companies that don't receive government subsidies want to sponsor green tech, that's fine. When/if the technology is ready and can sustain itself, the sponsor companies will make a lot of money. There is a name for what I propose: capitalism.
But that's just my opinion.
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Article comments
1 - jamminsue
You mention a "get a plant usually used to make vegetable oil to produce jet fuel" This fuel works, it was recently tried on fighter jets.
2 - facetime
German is also one of the largest exporters of wind turbines and solar panels world wide, second to china
3 - Igor
Every major industry in the USA was supported by the Federal government and US taxpayers in it´s infancy. Take transportation, for example: the tall Yankee Clipper ships right after the Revolution were subsidized by the government and soon came to dominate worldwide deep water shipping and that took years to payoff for the general population, but it did. We even sent Marines to The Shores Of Tripoli to knock the pirates around and discourage them from attacking the Clippers. The US government subsidized transcontinental railroads with direct subsidies as well as huge land grants and it took 40 years before that was profitable. The American taxpayer subsidized the aircraft and flying industries with airplane contracts, mail contracts and public financing of airports and the FAA and other support agencies. The US taxpayer supported the automotive and trucking businesses with subsidies, fleet contracts, and road construction.
Every major business in the USA profited from the huge capital investments of the USA during the WW2 in new factories and machinery for the war effort that they kept after the war for private enterprises. That was the foundation for the postwar boom in American manufacturing.
Throughout American history capitalism has turned to the taxpayer for financing of major new industries. Capitalism would simply NOT have been able to thrive as it has in America without the constant support of taxpayers in new ventures.
New athletic stadiums always contain a huge public investment.
New medicines and drugs are developed at NIH and publicly-funded university labs by scientists and doctors on the public payroll and then turned over to private companies for distribution.
The computer industry was substantially developed by government funding of UNIVAC and many other machines.
The internet itself is the child of ARPA. Without ARPA we´d be stuck with something nasty like IBM´s SNA, and there´d be about a hundred computers on it and they´d have black-and-white displays, about 80x24 characters.
Basically, private companies, capitalists, have gotten a free ride on the government gravy train since this country was founded.