Domestic Policy
Domestic policy will be broken up into numerous sections as the candidates go in depth on plans for numerous topics. See also Part 1, Part 2, part 3, part 4, part 6 and part 7. Again, all of these policy statements are taken from the candidates' campaign websites.
| Hillary Clinton |
John Edwards |
Barack Obama |
| Economy |
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| Taxes |
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- Expand the child tax credit
- Provide marriage penalty relief
- Expand the earned income tax credit
- Expand the child care tax credit
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- Create a new "Get Ahead" tax credit to match up to $500 a year in savings for families earning up to $75,000
- Expand the child care credit to pay up to 50 percent of child and dependent care expenses up to $5,000
- Triple the earned income tax credit for single adults and cut the marriage penalty
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- Create a tax credit providing up to $500 per person, or $1,000 per working family
- Create a Universal Mortgage Credit that even tax payers who don't itemize are eligible for
- Triple the earned income tax credit; increase it six fold for people caring for a child or paying child support
- Eliminate income taxes for seniors making less than $50,000
- Simplify filing tax paperwork by allowing the IRS to supply pre-filled 1040EZ forms to people who request it
- Increase the child and dependent care tax credit and make it refundable
- Reduce the self employment tax
- Eliminate capital gains taxes on start-up companies
- Clean up the corporate tax code
- Create an International Tax Evasion Watch List to apply pressure on countries acting as tax havens
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| Mortgages and other debt |
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- Develop strong licensing standards and require federal registration for mortgage brokers
- Eliminate prepayment penalties on mortgage products
- Expand Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's foreclosure prevention efforts
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- Pass a law that will strengthen underwriting standards to ensure that borrowers receive affordable loans suited to their means
- Create a new Family Savings and Credit Commission to protect consumers
- Cap interest rates on all payday loans at 36 percent
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- Push the STOP FRAUD act through Congress, strengthening the ability for the government to fight mortgage fraud
- Create a fund to help homeowners refinance mortgages
- Create a credit card rating system enforced by the FTC
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Establish a credit card bill of rights:
- CCs have to get consumer assent to change the agreement
- Interest rate changes only affect future debt
- Prohibit interest on fees
- Prohibit a change on interest rate based on failure to pay a third party
- Require CCs apply payments to highest interest debt first
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| Jobs |
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- Nothing specific available on her site.
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- Raise the minimum wage to at least $9.50 an hour by 2012 and then index it to inflation
- Create a million short-term jobs to help individuals move into permanent work
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- Increase federal investments into transitional jobs
- Index minimum wage to inflation
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| Miscellaneous |
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- Insist on a move back toward a balanced budget and surpluses by funding new expenditures with new revenues or cuts in other areas
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- Create a million vouchers over five years to help low-income families move to better neighborhoods
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18 comments:
Here's an idea for candidates to float:
End the mortgage interest deduction.
Why? Because it artificially raises the price of housing and the only beneficiaries of the deduction are those in the highest tax bracket.
If a person is in a low tax-bracket, he pays proportionally MORE than a person in a high tax-bracket.
Meanwhile, most developed nations get along fine without this giveaway. Canada, England, Germany, Australia, to name a few.
Without the subsidy, the price of houses would decline. The initial decline would reflect the difference in the tax impact. Thus, lower income people would find it easier to buy homes.
Meanwhile, the best way to create jobs is for the government to get out of the way and let private industry get on with it.
Of course the easiest jobs to create would be in the oil industry if oil drillers were allowed to exploit domestic reserves. Wages for skilled workers would rise and new jobs would emerge as drilling offshore and in harsh environments increased.
Next, we need to increase the number of H1-B visas. As you probably know, these are the visas for foreign tech-workers.
It's far better to employ them here in the US if the alternative is to send the jobs to them in other countries. Meanwhile, the well known economic multiplier effect would do its usual magic.
More tech workers in the US means more US residents spending money purchasing goods and services here, from domestic vendors.
Meanwhile, we need a guest-worker program to eliminate the need for illegal workers to sneak into the country.
Nest, I'd eliminate the Minimum Wage. It's a job killer. We'd still have kids pumping gas in this country if the minimum wage was less than the cost of installing credit-card readers and other advanced payment systems at gas pumps.
The same change is coming to supermarkets and other sites of merchandise sales. Self-checkout counters are appearing everywhere.
I believe Target is attempting a trial putting electronic price tags on all items and allowing the customer to pass through an unmanned checkout aisle.
With a guest-worker program and no minimum wage, the country would find a balance that is not possible in the current low-skill labor environment.
Next, I'd cut capital gains taxes to a lower rate, and I'd cut the taxes on dividends to ZERO. Then I'd cut Corporate Taxes to ZERO.
Why? Because when corporate taxes are zero, the concept of depreciation becomes meaningless. When that happens, the true earning power of an organization becomes visible.
Businesses would grow -- or shrink -- based on economic forces rather than tax policy.
Furthermore, without burdensome taxes to pay, companies have more cash to devote to research & development aimed at building the business.
Something else would happen in a low-tax environment. Companies from other nations would move more operations here. Car-manufacturing, for instance. More of them would move their facilities here, especially if the dollar stays cheap relative to other currencies. From the foreign perspective, the relatively low cost of acquiring assets, the relattively low cost of labor, the skilled workforce, and the low tax burden, would combine to make the US ideal.
Next, I'd decriminalize drug use and treat it as a medical issue. The government has created two unintended consequences with our drug policies. First, lots of people are unnecessarily in prison. Second, we created a tariff on drug sales that is collected by foreign smugglers and passed along to consumers. This is the opposite of what tariffs are intended to do. The tariff is supposed to flow to the nation accepting the imports. Instead, it goes the other way.
There is no reason to put drug users in jail. However, drug users who shoot or commit violence against others in the pursuit or use of drugs deserve what they get.
But the republic won't fall if we acknowledge that it's okay for people to enjoy some recreational substances.
However, a change like that would unleash some problems. Some drugs -- like crystal meth -- are truly bad news. More truly dangerous drugs would emerge from garage laboratories all over the country.
The changes I have suggested are achievable. They require nothing more than a little clear thinking and the understanding that almost all Americans go in the right direction without being told.
How does the mortgage interest deduction inflate the cost of buying a house? Anyone who would pay $500,000 (over the 30 years) to get a $200,000 house and $300,000 deduction on your gross income (maybe a $100,000 total tax reduction) is an idiot. The reason housing prices have gone so high over the past six years is not tax deduction speculators, it is housing speculators that expected to be able to sell the house right away again for a couple thousand dollars.
The deduction helps lower and middle income families (I fall into the latter) actually be able to afford the house. But with the way rents are going up on an annual basis, I would be paying almost as much this year for an apartment that fits my family as I will for this house's mortgage. After the tax credit, I will be paying significantly less.
For jobs, government has been staying out of the way. Now unemployment is at 5%, wages for non-executives have been stagnant if not having fallen, and we have a growing portion of society untrained for the jobs that are left in the country. These plans all directly address these shortcomings.
Oil drilling in ANWR, even if it were a good idea, would create at best 10,000 jobs, and most of them would require specialized training which our current unemployed workforce doesn't have.
H1-B visas are a good thing to look into, my only reservation with these is that we are currently graduating more scientists and engineers than there are jobs for, according to recent statistics. It is better to employ them here than in their native country, but I would rather employ an American citizen here who is qualified, knowing that 100% of their paycheck is going back into the American economy, than a foreign national who will eventually at least, take much of that money back to their motherland.
"We'd still have kids pumping gas in this country if the minimum wage was less than the cost of installing credit-card readers and other advanced payment systems at gas pumps." So your desire to stay out of cold, harsh conditions is more important than making sure the person who is doing that is paid fairly? It is a false dichotomy anyway as most people wouldn't work for wages as low as it costs long term to install the CC readers. Just using rough guestimates it costs at most lets say $3,000 per pump, this is $30-36 thousand at most for a station (some have more, but most have less). To get the coverage necessary for 6AM to 7PM, you would need to hire 3-4 people for a week. You would have to pay them $10,000 or less per year to not save money by using technology instead. No one can live on that little money, especially if the business is planning out more than the savings of one year.
"I believe Target is attempting a trial putting electronic price tags on all items and allowing the customer to pass through an unmanned checkout aisle." Thats Wal-Mart, IIRC, and it is still in the early planning stages with lots of complaints against it that they still have to deal with (mostly privacy issues tied in with the RFID technology they plan on using).
Your plan on removing the taxes would make that even more apparent, completely extinguishing the cost of the equipment. This plan would also unfairly improve the tax burden on the poor. The upper echelon of society (I can't off the top of my head give percentages) would pay next to no taxes as most of their income isn't from employment but from capital gains. Not to mention the fact that the amount of money the federal government would lose would be unimaginable.
"Next, I'd decriminalize drug use and treat it as a medical issue." I agree, but this isn't a job issue and I am not going to go into it at the moment.
john j, you asked:
"How does the mortgage interest deduction inflate the cost of buying a house?
Easy. Suppose someone buys a house and obtains a mortgage of $100,000 to finance the purchase. A $100k mortgage at 6% leads to monthly interest expenses of about $600.
Or interest payments of $7,200 in the first year.
Let's ignore all the other fees and expenses and any issues surrounding downpayments and focus on the impact of federal taxes only.
If the homeowner is in the 15% tax bracket, his after-tax cost for this mortgage is $6,120, leading to tax-driven savings of $880.
On the other hand, suppose the homeowner is in the 35% tax bracket. His after-tax cost is $4,680, resulting in tax-driven savings of $2520, almost triple the savings of the person in the lower tax bracket.
Putting it another way, the person in the higher tax bracket pays a lower after-tax interest rate than the buyer earning less pay.
Sounds like things were turned upside down to me.
However, if mortgage interest were not deductible, the housing market would adjust. Interest rates would adjust downward till reaching an equilibrium point. And house prices would decline too.
The situation would compare with municipal bonds and corporate bonds. Non-taxable interest versus taxable interest. As you know, the interest rates on municipal bonds are lower than the rates on corporate bonds, the difference mainly reflecting the tax status of the bonds.
Take note that people in the lowest tax brackets are advised NOT to buy municipal bonds because the tax benefits don't reach them. Municipal bonds are for those in higher tax brackets. Simple math tells the individual if municipal bonds are the right or wrong investment.
It's fascinating that no one mentions the same bad deal when it appears in the housing market.
john j, you wrote:
"The reason housing prices have gone so high over the past six years is not tax deduction speculators, it is housing speculators that expected to be able to sell the house right away again for a couple thousand dollars."
This idea is silly. It defies all the realities of the housing market.
Yes, it's true that some people own "investment property". Nothing new there.
It's true that some people have "flipped" real estate. But people who "flip" real estate buy and sell in a short period. Hence, they keep some parts of the real estate market moving. That does not increase prices.
Prices of anything and everything under the sun reflect the amount of money chasing the thing that people want to buy.
Thus, supply is, as always, a key factor. And demand.
Supply is easy to calculate. Demand is fuzzier. However, the population is always rising. Hence, there are obvious forces driving demand higher.
The wild card is credit. When the number of people able to obtain mortgages increases, and the amount of money obtainable also increases, then you can be sure that prices of real estate in most parts of the country will rise.
Meanwhile, the speculators in the real estate business are the builders. Not the buyers.
I suppose you can call the "flippers" speculators, but their goal is to sell -- not hold.
If a buyer is a true investor, he rents his real estate. Maybe he buys a two-family house.
But this strategy makes no economic sense if the rent fails to cover the borrowing costs. Not that sound thinking is always evident. Anyway, real estate investors, like any investor, sometimes face setbacks. Sometimes they lose their properties. Big deal! So what!
If a first-time homebuyer is offered a dirt-cheap mortgage AND a lender will let him borrow the downpayment too, how can he say no?
If the payments are even a little more than rent on the same property, who would say no?
The risk for the occupant is no greater as renter or owner. If the bills are not paid, eviction might lie ahead.
But the increase in credit is not the problem in the current mortgage uproar.
The problem arose when people bungled their finances. Either they lied to themselves and the lender about the size of the payments they could afford, or they took equity out of their homes and spent it foolishly.
I'm sure there were a few cases of lender fraud. But as everyone should know, if you are in the lending business, you cannot earn a profit if your borrower refuses to repay his debt.
Thus, a few cases of fraud do not account for the above-average default rate.
john j, you wrote:
"Oil drilling in ANWR, even if it were a good idea, would create at best 10,000 jobs, and most of them would require specialized training which our current unemployed workforce doesn't have."
I'll accept your estimate of 10,000 jobs in Alaska. However, you are mistaken about the absence of a trained workforce. Like the auto industry, there are a lot of former oil-industry workers in this country. As jobs disappeared they moved to other ventures. It is well understood in the oil industry that some of these people would return if there were jobs available.
Meanwhile, perhaps some oilfield jobs require specialized training, like jobs involving the seismic mapping of reserves. But most jobs at or near the production sites require skills that exist in the workforce. Welding, metalwork, machine operation. Tradesmen with real and transferrable skills, but not nuclear physics. Hence finding workers for high-paying jobs is not a problem.
In fact, US oilfield workers are working in Canada these days. Way up there, in Yellowknife. Canada's annual oil output has risen 22% since 2000, with much of the increase flowing to the US. Canadian oil production is rising while US production is flat to slightly down. Yet our consumption is rising.
Canadian output will continue to rise as long as demand from the US continues upward. Amazingly, Americans don't think of Canada when the discussion of exporting jobs arises. Yet American car companies, steel companies, and many others have had factories and facilities there for years. Meanwhile, Canada and Mexico are our two biggest oil suppliers.
If you want the US to shift away from oil energy, there's no better inducement than running out of it. If we deplete our own reserves, innovation will kick in. That's how Americans are.
Necessity is the mother of invention, as they say.
Your calculations on the mortgage stuff is ignoring one thing, you have to pay, in one year, you have to pay $12,000 (trust me, your example is close to what I did pay so I know first hand) to get $2,000, that is a 1/6th return on investment. I may not be Warren Buffet, but that seems like a really idiotic tax shelter.
Meanwhile, speculators, as they were doing the past couple years, were buying a large number of the houses, reducing the number on the market. Demand outside of speculators was staying largely flat, especially the past couple years as interest rates were raising. This means that the demand was being driven by speculators artificially decreasing the supply and thus driving the prices up. That is where the price bubble came from.
"I'm sure there were a few cases of lender fraud. But as everyone should know, if you are in the lending business, you cannot earn a profit if your borrower refuses to repay his debt." False. If you have been paying attention to what has been going on in the mortgage market, the people who are making the mortgages, the brokers, keep the mortgage for at most a month or two. They then sell it for a commission to a bank or other organization, who the bundles it with a bunch of other mortgages and securitizes it and sells it on the open market. This encourages fraud on the part of the broker, and on the part of the bank. I would direct you to some previous posts of mine about how the mortgage problem started so you can see the level of these things.
Moving on to your next post, "Like the auto industry, there are a lot of former oil-industry workers in this country. As jobs disappeared they moved to other ventures." This would be true if the oil industry were facing the same hardships that the automotive industry is facing, but it's not. Halliburton, and it's subsidiaries, have been growing, especially in light of the Iraq war.
"Welding, metalwork, machine operation. Tradesmen with real and transferrable skills, but not nuclear physics. Hence finding workers for high-paying jobs is not a problem." Welding a car (or technically running a machine that welds a car) is a lot different than working in an oil field, just like driving a car is different than flying an airplane. These are specialized fields.
"If you want the US to shift away from oil energy, there's no better inducement than running out of it. If we deplete our own reserves, innovation will kick in." Again, as I said before, that will be too late. Necessity is the mother of invention, which is why I support the plans outlined above that give a financial necessity to these companies. Right now there is no cost difference, outside of materials, between producing energy with oil/coal and producing it with wind/solar. Right now oil and coal cost less per kilowatt-hour than green technologies in the short term, but long term will cost the entire world much more. Those long term costs need to be made more immediate for corporations to see the ROI of going green.
john j, you wrote:
"If you have been paying attention to what has been going on in the mortgage market, the people who are making the mortgages, the brokers, keep the mortgage for at most a month or two. They then sell it for a commission to a bank or other organization, who the bundles it with a bunch of other mortgages and securitizes it and sells it on the open market."
Do you really believe sophisticated organizations sell debt to one another with no recourse?
Despite all the problems that you think you see, you do not seem to realize that IF the crime of fraud has occurred, the fraud is tracked to its origins and the perps face the usual criminal charges.
I can tell from your comments that you don't know how the securities markets work or what safeguards exist to prevent fraud. Like I said, there is always a little fraud in the works, but the problems that you think you've seen in the subprime lending industry are not the result of frau.
However, you can be sure that people will claim the lenders were engaging in deceptions. That's what anyone would say. However, current investigations show that about 70% of the borrowers who have gone into default lied to lenders, often engaging in elaborate schemes to appear more creditworthy than they were.
So if you want fraud, the place to look is at the borrowers. Not the lenders. Meanwhile, the homes are still standing, which means new occupants will move in soon, or deals will be worked out with the existing occupants.
HOwever, due to the way securities must be valued, things look far worse than they are.
john j, I think you see the world in theoretical terms rather than in concrete realities.
john j, you wrote:
"This would be true if the oil industry were facing the same hardships that the automotive industry is facing, but it's not."
As preface to the following and everything I've written so far, I am a securities analyst. Over the years I've followed many companies in a lot of industries. Oil is one.
In 1983, there were almost 5,000 drilling rigs at work in the US. The industry collapsed during remainder of the 1980s and the number of working drilling rigs dropped to about 500. These days it is up to about 1,000.
Thus, despite the rising price of oil, the US is producing less oil today than it did in 2000. And, as you might imagine, employment in the industry is far below peak levels.
Drilling is limited to certain areas. Hence, the employment growth is also limited. But there are 80 billion barrels of proved reserves off our coasts and in Alaska. We know where the oil is, and we know how to extract it. All that's necessary is government permission to go get it.
You said:
"Halliburton, and it's subsidiaries, have been growing, especially in light of the Iraq war."
Halliburton is a company that operates in several segments of the energy business. YOu can check the HAL website for job opportunities in Iraq. As you might imagine, only venturesome workers choose to go there. Each job listing includes a warning about working in combat zones or where enemy fire might erupt. That's a hazard that doesn't exist for Americans working on US soil, where a lot of HAL workers are employed. It's true, however, oil workers are flung across the world. And many would return to the US for jobs if possible.
You wrote:
"Welding a car (or technically running a machine that welds a car) is a lot different than working in an oil field, just like driving a car is different than flying an airplane. These are specialized fields."
Welding -- real welding, arc welding, oxyacetylene welding -- these are skills, not rare talents. I see people performing them every day in NY City, where buildings are constructed of beams that are welded together. Like most trades, the rudiments can be learned in an hour. But it takes some practice to become good and fast. The same is true for oilfield work.
john j, you wrote:
"Necessity is the mother of invention, which is why I support the plans outlined above that give a financial necessity to these companies."
Creating a phony necessity through political intervention only causes problems. You have no examples of government interference succeeding as you hope it will in the energy business. As long as there is oil in the world, it will be drilled and burned for energy.
As long as the cost advantage is substantial, there is no way the world will give up oil.
You claimed:
"Right now there is no cost difference, outside of materials, between producing energy with oil/coal and producing it with wind/solar."
Okay. Now you are showing me what you don't know about wind and solar. First, though it is easy to convert wind energy into electricity, the total amount of available wind energy in the US is a drop in the bucket.
We have a rough idea of the number of barrels of oil beneath American soil. We also know all about the winds that blow over the country. We know the amount of wind energy available. The theoretical total might equal 5% of today's demand. However, the theoretical total will never increase. But US demand will increase as both the population and prosperity grow and spread. Hence, the percentage of total energy production available from wind will fall.
Then there are all the other real-world issues of wind, such as, it doesn't blow 24 hours a day. And to capture wind energy, you need a wind turbine. Guess what? Birds get killed by the turbines. I don't care, but opponents, like Ted Kennedy, got wind turbines banned from his Cape Cod neighborhood because they kill birds and because they are unsightly.
Then there is the storage issue. Once again, it boils down to batteries. Either you store electricity in batteries at your house, or you pump the electricity back into the commercial grid. But this leads to many difficulties.
Solar, if you mean converting solar energy into electricity, well, it's still in its infancy. Once again, it's only sunny part of the day. Meanwhile, you need to cover a lot of ground with solar panels if you want enough electricity to power your home. In general, this approach is no good for city dwellers who have no land for solar panels.
Solar, however, has far more potential for offsetting oil use than does wind power. But there is no reason to think the combination of both of them will add much to total energy production.
Without nuclear power, we cannot offset much oil use. Ethanol will help too, but world energy use is accelerating at an increasing rate.
YOu wrote:
"Right now oil and coal cost less per kilowatt-hour than green technologies in the short term, but long term will cost the entire world much more."
You've bought into the latest doomsday scenario. Like Thomas Malthus, the famous British economist, who 200 years ago said human population was headed for famine because people were reproducing at a rate that would outstrip the increase in global food supplies. He said that when the global population less than 1 billion.
Today the population is 6.5 billion and growing, heading for 9 billion in 40 years. I guess Malthus was wrong.
But that didn't stop others from writing, lecturing and warning about the Population Bomb in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. Same tired old song. Too many people, and our lives will descend into hell because our vast numbers will overwhelm our resources.
This time the resource appears to be breathable air. Well, plant trees.
By the way, if global temperatures rise and the ice on Greenland and the Poles melts, a whole lot of that fresh water will evaporate into the atmosphere. Warm air holds much much more moisture than cooler air.
The added moisture will fall from the sky onto previously chilly lands. But in the new warmer climate, we will most likely see a truly green Greenland. It might become one of the world's newest breadbaskets. Where's the problem?
Who cares about animal species? Lots have come and gone already. Like Dinosaurs. Personally, I can live my life without encountering a T-Rex or saber-toothed tiger.
You said:
"Those long term costs need to be made more immediate for corporations to see the ROI of going green."
That's totally phony economics in action. It's one thing to save money by building stuff that uses less energy. But that's nothing more than "optimization" at work. Value engineering. Cutting costs by being smart about design and operations. Only now it has a special name -- Green.
Meanwhile, if Earth's population is expected to reach 9 billion in 40 years, then by extrapolating US population trends, it's likely our population will reach 450 million in that period.
That's a lot of new cars, planes, trains, trucks, energy-consuming data centers, heating-ventilating-air-conditioning and who knows what else.
Our energy supplies will expand to include solar, wind, geothermal, and who knows, maybe I'll discover a way to harness lightning and store it in batteries. But the bulk of our energy supplies will come from oil, gas and coal unless the idiots are overcome and we resume our nuclear programs.
"Do you really believe sophisticated organizations sell debt to one another with no recourse?" No, I don't believe it; it is a fact. Mortgage brokers had nothing to lose lending to people without looking closely into their backgrounds. There is also significant proof that many lenders paid assessors to inflate the value of the homes to make the mortgages seem better to banks that would buy and re-sell the mortgages as securities bundles. This has been reported in the New York Times, NPR, NBC, Bloomberg, and most other major publications covering this issue. Some borrowers were involved in fraud, and they need to be dealt with too, but a large part of the fraud was on the part of the lenders, either through some of the above mentioned means or more commonly through predatory lending practices.
The fact that you are an investor trading in oil (in part) gives light to the bias you are showing to oil based technologies. The fact is that wind and solar energy can supply 50%+ of the nation's electrical energy needs in the next 5 to 10 years if the infrastructure is invested in. Neither one on their own can supply 100% and even combined they will probably need other renewable sources (oceanic sources and nuclear are two that come to mind). Oil, while it is available, will have it's place, but our use of oil needs to be reduced.
"As long as the cost advantage is substantial, there is no way the world will give up oil." My point exactly, thank you for agreeing. Now lets back the initiatives these candidates are prescribing to do this.
"they kill birds and because they are unsightly." They don't kill birds any more than skyscrapers do, and I don't see any of them getting torn down. As far as unsightly, that is an ascetic issue and is a personal opinion.
"Like Thomas Malthus, the famous British economist, who 200 years ago said human population was headed for famine because people were reproducing at a rate that would outstrip the increase in global food supplies." I believe he was proven correct, depending on where in the world you look. Much of Africa and large parts of Asia have been facing famines for the past 30 years.
"This time the resource appears to be breathable air. Well, plant trees." - Part of Obama's environmental plan.
"The added moisture will fall from the sky onto previously chilly lands. But in the new warmer climate, we will most likely see a truly green Greenland. It might become one of the world's newest breadbaskets. Where's the problem?" Infrastructure isn't set up there, we don't know in the slightest whether the food produced in Greenland will offset the loss of production in current breadbaskets like the midwest, which will more likely than not become North America's largest desert.
"That's a lot of new cars, planes, trains, trucks, energy-consuming data centers, heating-ventilating-air-conditioning and who knows what else." Exactly why we need to start now, not 40 years from now.
Slappz, please, if you are going to contribute to the discussion, do more than say "Uh uh." or contradict yourself one sentence later. You have disclosed that you are directly involved in the securities market and so have a vested interest in these appearing to be sound ways of investing.
If you want to contribute, please come with facts (and preferably links to back them up) rather than just your rants.
you wrote:
"They don't kill birds any more than skyscrapers do, and I don't see any of them getting torn down."
You don't see them getting built. The existing wind generators were enough to start the legal wheels turning. Opponents use the argument that the generators kill birds. TAke it up with the opponents.
You wrote:
"As far as unsightly, that is an ascetic issue and is a personal opinion."
Aesthetic. Meanwhile, if you have a big piece of land away from othes, you can probably put up a wind generator. But there are no wind farms appearning because planning & zoning departments won't permit them. Like cell-phone towers, they face a lot of opposition in many areas, especially areas of high population density.
"You don't see them getting built." Yes, actually, I do, and so do you "I see people performing them every day in NY City, where buildings are constructed of beams that are welded together." As far as taking it up with the opponents, you appear to have made yourself one, so I did, if any others would like to share their views, let them.
Also, pardon my misspelling; it is a great weakness of mine, and the spell check in Firefox chose the wrong word. Your response to this was still just a "some people don't like them" which can be changed or overruled in the interest of public good. If you have evidence that they will cause greater harm than good, share it.
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