This bill ensures those in power increase their power. The transfer of wealth continues and wealth inequality grows. From their point of view, mission accomplished. They don’t care if people or the Earth itself are harmed. They actually enjoy that it harms others.
I keep saying this, but I have to say it again. They are just evil. When you accept this, everything about the right wing is easy to understand.
The problem is that if you look at the detail it's far less obvious, and to see this one needs to be sceptical of the stories one has been led to believe.
Things to get you started:
- look up energy return on investment (ERoI) by different energy sources
- look up lifetime co2 cost of different energy sources
- look up recent grid interconnection fees by generation type
- look up Spain's recent power outage and things like "inertia"
- look up how much waste is create by different energy sources over their lifetimes, and consider that nuclear plants will probably be pushing 100+ years eventually
- consider that having solar panels in some parts of the world don't work in winter so it means you can't actually get rid of older infrastructure at all (and hence you need to keep it running)
- on electrification of transport ask yourself why we choose to put extremely valuable electrical energy into locomotion when alternatives exist
- consider that when we "greenify" our grid through solar panels we often only export that pollution abroad
- consider why all these things need such massive government subsidy
The only real solution to our electrical problems is a combination of nuclear and gas, and the reason we haven't chosen more nuclear is entirely self inflicted.
Remember that in the US, since its early days, money is everything (and money is amoral in itself)
Regarding the energy topic and stuff, check out "breeder reactor" in the internet. It's a kind of nuclear reactor which was discarded half a century ago because uranium is cheap and because we do not care about nuclear waste.
The interesting thing is, they consume almost all the energy from the raw material, leaving a worthless waste (half-life: around 30 years => not an big deal)
They are a bit more expensive (probably due to being 50 years late in innovation), but nothing dramatic
Their outputs are equivalent to light water reactors (most common types of power plant)
India has been working on this for decades, because it can work with Thorium (and there are massive deposite on it on their soil)
m101•8mo ago
There are so many problems with this article.
Let's just go with the headline- so it might raises energy bills by $250, but on the other hand cut taxes by $500?
Most things that require subsidies don't work because they are more expensive solutions than the alternatives that exist in the market. Supporting those programmes will necessarily cost more overall (hence the 500 number I made up above is bigger than the 250 number they made up).
micromacrofoot•8mo ago
tzs•8mo ago
Markets can get stuck in a local minimum where even though there is another local minimum that is lower than the current local minimum the market on its own won't move to that lower minimum because the cost to get out of the current local minimum is more than individual actors can afford.
Also in the case of clean energy there are benefits that aren't captured in the market price of clean energy or the price of fossil fuels, such as the effects of pollution. Pollution from fossil fuels leads to a lot of health costs in humans and also significantly reduces crop yields for example.
m101•8mo ago
Renewables are also extremely polluting. Wind and solar as well as high upfront have relatively short lived and create a lot of physical pollution at the end of their useful lives (~20 years).
In contrast nuclear power plants may be pushed to 100+ years.
Markets can get stuck in a local minimum sure, but governments can get stuck there longer.
micromacrofoot•8mo ago
Solar vs wind vs nuclear is also a lose-lose sort of debate where you're ultimately disparaging a form of energy that is better than what most people are using today (coal and gas).
If we could get solar or nuclear or wind or just about anything ahead of coal and gas it would be a massive improvement.
1659447091•8mo ago
The context is, operating cost is minimal. Resources that power the generation is zero, being that wind and sun are not commodities bought from suppliers. Coal and gas need to be bought first, before generating power. Without tax breaks to build renewables, gas and coal goes up with demand creating long term cost that will far out live temporary tax cuts. Cuts in a bill that will increase the debt by over 3 Trillion, and 5 Trillion if the temporary cuts get made permanent by 2034.
It's not $250+ electric bill but ~500 in tax cuts. Cuts are temporary (3-4 years? unless renewed) but the electric bill will just keep on chugging.
They could do things like restore ATM collection above 400k (+300B), Corporate SALT caps (+400B), expire the 199a pass-through above 200/400k (+470B), dont extend lower Intl rates for business (+165B), remove the extend & expand Estate cut (+210B), set the top rate to 39.6% above 400k (+650) [0]
Thats 2.2T or so using a bit of your math while leaving in most tax cuts for people making under 400k. And Trump gets to keep his vanity "Trump Account" that will cost 17B. Win Win for the majority of the population.
Letting the tax rate cuts expire would create ~3.4T in revenue instead of burden us for decades. Wasn't that the whole thing in the first place, reduce debt? Not increase it? Or just let the tax rates go halfsy and come away with 1.6T plus some of the 2.2T.
The IRA cuts are only a ~570B gain , part of that was for training and hiring workers, with a goal of a ~million jobs (iirc, I won't cry over its loss, but it's spending is a net good compared to the wastefulness of many of the tax cuts). This bill is going to cost us far more than the temporary tax saving for us, and more cuts for companies at the expense of the people.
[0] https://www.crfb.org/blogs/breaking-down-one-big-beautiful-b... a few of the proposed cuts comes from links within this OBBBA breakdown