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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (228012)	4/6/2005 11:04:02 AM
From: 10K a day	Respond to of 1573458

>The issue isn't whether reducing oil consumption would be good for our economy. The matrix starts with every little transaction and decision you make in your head. With the fear and poverty mentality you stop doing business with people. If you feel fraud and abuse within yourself that's all your going to see in others. No money in the system. Nobody going to pay their bills. Too much money in the system from easy come easy go and the money just flow around from one lotto winner to another. I dunno man. Government just expecting fraud and abuse and terrorism. that's all they see in others. All they see is people killing people (shiavo) because thats what they'r doing. All they see is money wasted on SS and Medicare because they are diverting funds to a general fund and don't want to admit it. All they see is what they can't stand in themselves. It's pretty sad. It's just going to continue until it doesn't... Oh well. Hav a nice day.

To: TimF who wrote (228012)	4/6/2005 11:22:34 AM
From: Road Walker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573458

re: The issue at question is if government intervention to initiate a large change such as trying to replace almost all cars in the US with hybrids within 10 or 15 years would be good for the economy, or a good idea in general. In principle, it's not a bad thing to structure taxes to achieve political or economic objectives. Every tax has winners and losers and is meant to benefit a portion of society. A tax based on fuel consumption is a good idea. Presumably gas purchases would go down, feeding new money into the economy. Also, with reduced demand, the commodity price of oil should go down, compounding the effect. I think I read that oil represents ~25% of our trade deficit, so reduced consumption helps in that regard. Politically, we can import a larger percentage of oil from friendly countries, instead of being at the mercy of the marketplace and forced to deal with "enemies". "Enemies" that could cut us off at their political whim. Sorry if I repeated anyone else's arguments. I haven't been following this discussion. John

To: TimF who wrote (228012)	4/7/2005 8:29:09 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573458

First off, the objective of gov't investment wouldn't be to induce and early replacement of cars that are perfectly fine and in service today. It would be to provide incentives to switch to a hybrid or fuel cell when the old cars reach their end of life. So the capital expenditure by everyone who owns a car would have to be made anyway. The problem today is that the car industry isn't spending enough money on getting these cars to market quick enough, nor mass producing them quick enough to bring the prices down. In addition, the massive infrastructure to provide for fuel cell refueling stations would have to be built if we were to move to a hydrogen economy. So there is a chicken or egg problem here, because people don't want to buy a car that is inconvenient to refuel. You seem to be pretty savvy on economics and market forces. You should know that sometimes market forces don't do what is right for the long term of the economy. For example, an inventor had developed a laser technology that would eliminate the need for sutures or stitches and would result in an almost scarless recovery. Johnson & Johnson bought the technology and shelved it because their silk suture business was a $1 billion a year business. With oil, there are huge market forces that do not want to see us change until every last drop of oil is used. These same market forces aren't going to willing jump into the hydrogen economy without some powerful inducements. Government forces can be used to provide that inducement and in this case, I think it is warranted.