America Under Siege: The End of Innocence Message Board

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Politics : America Under Siege: The End of Innocence

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To: White Bear who wrote (14800)	4/2/2002 7:22:44 PM
From: blue_lotus	Read Replies (1) of 27666

Hi Sahara, I am no liberal...actually I find myself among the liberals on some issues and then among the conservatives on many others. What I am is a hard core capitalist (and proud of it) and so here is my purely economical solution... A) Impose extra taxes on Gas. B) Uses the proceeds from those extra taxes to subsidize the use of alternative energies like Solar, Fuel Cell etc. I know on the surface this doesn't seem to be that good an idea....After all who wants to pay more for Gas... I already pay $1.5 /gallon. But stay with me for a little while longer.... What will A) do: Well by increasing the cost of Gas we will i) Reduce the consumption a little bit (not a lot since Gas consumption is not a very price sensitive) May be we will get people to think twice before buying an SUV. ii) But more importantly we will make it economically viable to use the Canadian Gas (Canada has vast amounts of Gas reserves in Alberta that can be used but became economically viable only when per barrel Gas prices are above $30). Once the cost of gas is higher it will be more economically viable for various alternatives to kick in. What will B) do: i) CA already subsidizes solar power installation by up to 50%. The cut-even on what would seem an initial $20k investment for a average home installation is currently between 12-20 years. If the government subsidizes it more and/or the cost of electricity goes up (see A) and the cut-even is brought to under 7 years....well lots and lots of folks are going to reduce there dependence on Gas generated electricity by installing solar or other alternatives. ii) There can even be subsidies on Fuel cell technology or other future stuff making them viable sooner. Ofcourse, I am no economist and thus may have overlooked a lot. Also, I do agree that in the short term higher Gas prices may again hit the economy... But we may need to scarifice in the short term to free our selves in the longer run. Just my 2 cents. -Raj P.S: Ofcourse this may hit the energy industry the most and thus may be Politically very difficult to do. Solution throw a few subsidies at them to research/implement the alternatives.

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