If you spend $100 billion and make $1 billion, you are better off than on organization that spends $1 million and makes $1 billion?
First off we’re talking about PROFIT. Profit is defined as money gained AFTER all expenses. Let’s change the sentence. Only a little more realistic.
If you spend $100 Billion to make $4 billion PROFIT…you ARE better off then an organization that spends $1 Billion and makes $1billion PROFIT.
There isn’t a company in the world that won’t increase their spending 100 fold to make 4 times the profit. If you can put 4 times the amount of money in your pocket even though you have to drastically increase spending…your damn right you would…It’s been done and is being done all the time.
Just a comment…subsidies will never and should never be applied equally. We elect and support officials to do things for the public good. If we can sit here and continually support alternate forms of energy from oil, the politicians in Washington should hear us and supply subsidies to Teslar and the like. Car companies ARE NOT interested in building the viable electric car unless coerced, mandated and subsidized into doing so. They are not profit makers.
A question I have relative to oil companies is, with all the subsidies and tax breaks we give them while still providing safe shipping lanes thanks to the US navy, why not bill them ? Some are all in favor of free enterprise with government help as for as businesses are concerned, but never as far as the individual. Heck, they don’t even want them to organize and practice free speech. Corporations are people in their eyes, but real people aren’t.
Lithium Batteries… There is a HUGE Lithium deposit in Chile…A dried up inland seabed, fairly easy to mine. The Chileans have refused foreign companies efforts to come in and extract the Lithium and export it to consuming nations…They have seen how that works out for the exporting country in the past…Instead, they want foreign INVESTMENT in building the extraction plants and the Lithium batteries in Chile so they get the full value from their precious natural resource…Of course, Wall Street doesn’t see it that way but eventually, that’s how it’s going to play out…
Mike,I really like your post on page six,somebody has to actually work to create wealth,nodding ones head or signing paper isnt really producing anything-to much wealth has been created out of thin air,sooner or later the chickens come home to roost.Somehow, someway there are poor people paying for others goodlife ,by thier efforts or exclusion.someday more of the human race may have parity-Kevin
Unfortunately, once a regulatory agency is created in response to legislation it often grows to supercede the power of the original legislation. And its regulations often are driven by its administartive cabinet heads. The philosophy of the one for who the cabinet heads work is generally enforced through selective enforcement and often through regulation promulgated.
Just as the Carter adminiatration ordered that federal highway funding be withheld from all states that did not lower their speedlimits to 55mph, and the current administration has ordered the U.S Attorney General to file suit against Arizona for writing laws to enforce immigration policy that the administration did not want enforced, the administration often exercises its power.
Yeah, there were roads outside the city, but as with today the EVs were impractical outside the city. I too believe that EVs will eventiually be common.
Mike, I thank you for the correction on this. I was wrong, and it was not just a misspeak.
It also corrects another statement I’ve made that there was never a “national speed limit”
No, just and added thought on my part done without thinking. Like salt and pepper, macaroni and cheese, Carter and Reagan just seem to go together. There is a big tendency to diss Carter and praise Reagan, even amoung many of his so called supporters.
“There is a big tendency to diss Carter and praise Reagan…”
An excellent example of how people seem to think that the President controls far more than he actually does. Carter didn’t control the Iranians. They cut a deal with Reagan to spite Carter. And Reagan receives credit for the great economic growth in the 1980s. But it was really the silicon industrial revolution, not him.
I have come to believe the president controls more than we think by what he doesn’t do. It isn’t called the administration for nothing. Failure to enforce the regulations that the legislature has passed, can have profound effects. Judicial appointments and budgetary influence are areas the administration has dramatic long and short term effects. As his party’s head, he can set the agenda which either moves or stalemates progress. The president is a single person, co equal with each of the houses of congress. That makes him pretty influential.
Reagan’s great economic growth was done at the expense of a level of indebtedness that far exceeded Carter. His administration helped take deficits to historical levels.
I don’t mean to imply that the President of the United States is powerless. I do believe that he is lauded or blamed for far more than he should be, though.
"I don’t mean to imply that the President of the United States is powerless. I do believe that he is lauded or blamed for far more than he should be, though. "
I think that’s particularly true as far as the ability of government to quickly affect the economy. I once heard it compared to some ants riding a log floating down the rapids - they might run around trying to change things, but the log’s going to go pretty much where the rapids send it. But the ants will convince themselves that they missed a particular rock because they all ran in one direction at a certain point…
That said, governments can CAUSE economic problems quite easily.