Green energy - house of cards.....

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iceworm said:
Petro -
Where do you think the banks get this money that gets invested? It sure didn't come from anyone living paycheck to paycheck.

ice
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Umm, you think rich people have their money in savings accounts?!? It's actually the paycheck to paycheck guys who generate billions for the banks in service fees.

Some of the ways banks make money:

-Charging a fee every time to you or the vendor you swipe your credit or debit card
-Selling your mortage to investors/servicing loans
-Holding the money when you deposit a check for 24-48 hours before making available to you
-Check cashing fees
-Exchange fees
-etc. etc. etc.

Banks don't need guys like Romney around to make money. In fact, guys like Romney who keep their money in offshore accounts don't do a heck of a lot to help US banks other than use them for credit/debit transactions which do generate some cash flow.
 
PetrosA said:
Umm, you think rich people have their money in savings accounts?!? It's actually the paycheck to paycheck guys who generate billions for the banks in service fees.

Some of the ways banks make money:

-Charging a fee every time to you or the vendor you swipe your credit or debit card
-Selling your mortage to investors/servicing loans
-Holding the money when you deposit a check for 24-48 hours before making available to you
-Check cashing fees
-Exchange fees
-etc. etc. etc.

Banks don't need guys like Romney around to make money. In fact, guys like Romney who keep their money in offshore accounts don't do a heck of a lot to help US banks other than use them for credit/debit transactions which do generate some cash flow.
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Rich people like Romney invest their money to make more money, the tax code punishes people who try to make money, so they have to shelter it somehow. The evil 1% pay the majority of the taxes, while 49% pay nothing. If you keep doing t he same thing that made you poor, you are going to remain poor. The rich keep doing things that make them richer, so of course they make more money. If you only want to work 40 hours or less a week, of course you will never legally get rich.
 
PetrosA said:
Umm, you think rich people have their money in savings accounts?!? It's actually the paycheck to paycheck guys who generate billions for the banks in service fees.

Some of the ways banks make money:

-Charging a fee every time to you or the vendor you swipe your credit or debit card
-Selling your mortage to investors/servicing loans
-Holding the money when you deposit a check for 24-48 hours before making available to you
-Check cashing fees
-Exchange fees
-etc. etc. etc.

Banks don't need guys like Romney around to make money. In fact, guys like Romney who keep their money in offshore accounts don't do a heck of a lot to help US banks other than use them for credit/debit transactions which do generate some cash flow.
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There is a completely different type banking available for business investment purposes. Your savings and paycheck deposits have very little to do with that segment of banking.
 
Brazil imports zero oil. The cars down there run on ethanol in way higher concentrations than 10% like we see here, they are more like 90% mix. Sugarcane is the source. Texas, Mississippi (has?) , Louisiana (has) , Alabama, Florida (has), Puerto Rico (has), and Hawaii (has) , are all places where that can be grown well.
 
macmikeman said:
Brazil imports zero oil. The cars down there run on ethanol in way higher concentrations than 10% like we see here, they are more like 90% mix. Sugarcane is the source. Texas, Mississippi (has?) , Louisiana (has) , Alabama, Florida (has), Puerto Rico (has), and Hawaii (has) , are all places where that can be grown well.
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You don't get as much fire out of ethanol as you do out of gasoline...period. Hydrocarbons win every time. End of story. Done.

What could possibly be the rationale for converting resources, here on the mainland of the USA, from what can be used to feed people into fuel for cars?
 
weressl said:
There is a completely different type banking available for business investment purposes. Your savings and paycheck deposits have very little to do with that segment of banking.
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I understand that. My point is that projects aren't always funded out of pocket by the super rich since their money isn't in savings accounts or other liquid forms that the banks can loan out. It wouldn't make good business sense to lock up your capital in something that may not give you a return as fast as other investments will over a given period of time. In effect, the same way banks separate their commercial and regular banking, the super rich separate what they allow to "trickle" down and their real, personal money, as do the corporations (persons too, in our legal system) that they run.

I know people personally who have limited their kids' trust funds to 18 million dollars, supposedly to teach them responsibility. The trickle down from these people looks very, very small, considering how tight they are with cash and how socially disconnected they are from average people here and around the world (I think they'd consider themselves rich first, then American). Others that I know do have a sense of social obligation and responsibility and the local trickle down from them makes a difference to their communities and the country, but they seem like a dying breed. It's because I know all kinds of rich people, some good, some bad, some despicable, that I react to comments like hillbilly's that we need more trickle down economics. It doesn't always work. What we need are more rich people with a sense of moral, ethical and social obligation to their country and fellow citizens to make a real change.
 
iwire said:
And isn't that what we all really want .......... for everyone to do things how we want them to. :D
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A clip from Chairman of the Bored: For them to say the things I truly feel and repeat my words like ones who kneel
 
The quickest and cheapest green energy is conservation. Convert from incandescent to fluorescent to LED lighting. Add insulation to buildings. Convert from resistance heat to heat pumps for electrically heated buildings. Upgrade to higher SEER air conditioning.

The next thing to look at is co-generation ... use the waste heat from power plants for process heat or district heating/cooling instead of generating clouds or heating rivers.

Large scale ocean wind power has enough diversity to provide constant power (law of large numbers).

The Chinese have driven down the cost of PV so much that it is getting into the realm of economic feasibility. In areas with summer peaks (air conditioning) it provides "automatic" peaking power.

Let's be creative rather than retrograde in our thinking.
 
ActionDave said:
Sounds like what you want is for people to do what you think is best rather than what they choose.
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I guess you could say I want that, but probably for a pretty unusual reason. When I was in 8th grade I was going to a VERY conservative, rural, public school - the kind of place you could get sent to the principal for saying "Oh, God!" in the hallway (yes, it happened to me...). Anyway, in that ultra conservative setting, our history teacher explained to us how the next big dividing conflict to take seed in the world after WWII and the one my generation was going to have to deal with was the one between the "haves and have-nots." At that time we understood that we and other developed countries were the haves and the third world was the have-nots. Since then things have changed a bit and clarified themselves, and I think that our rich population (and I include large corporations among them) sees itself as separate from us more and more. That brings that conflict closer to home. Twenty years of shipping jobs overseas and getting silly rich sends a certain message to the rest of the people living here as they watch the world around them go to hell and struggle to support their families.

So, yes. As far as how we behave as citizens of the same country, I expect people to act a certain way towards each other for the safety and security of us all. They're certainly free to do otherwise, but as history teaches us, that will have its own set of consequences...
 
ActionDave said:
You don't get as much fire out of ethanol as you do out of gasoline...period. Hydrocarbons win every time. End of story. Done.

What could possibly be the rationale for converting resources, here on the mainland of the USA, from what can be used to feed people into fuel for cars?
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You don't get as much fire out of gasoline as you do diesel. It is just refined to a different level. The whole idea of using ethanol is to reduce the need for as much petroleum, not necessarily completely eliminate it.

As far as making ethanol - I think it can be made from lots of things, corn just happens to be most easily grown thing in midwestern states. Other places, as mentioned sugar cane is used.

There is a lot of other products that come from corn. Most of the corn grown is not a direct food product either, it is not the same variety or hybrid of corn that we serve on the table. It is not really suitable for human consumption. There are food products extracted from these varieties of corn though. It is fed to livestock, which becomes another branch of the food chain. It usually needs grinding, cracking, roasting, or even some livestock producers actually make "corn flakes" which are not much different than the breakfast cereal to feed to their livestock. The nutrition in the corn kernel is made more available to the animals by processing in these methods. Raw corn has more tendency to just pass through with little nutrient absorption by the animals, which is bad economics - yes there is a lot of science and economics in agriculture. The sugar is the main part needed for ethanol production, and the remaining byproducts that have higher protein content after extracting the sugars are still fed to livestock.

Ethanol production from corn does not really take away from the food chain as much as some might think. I will not say it has not helped contribute to rising food prices though, but I don't think it is the only contributing factor either.
 
PetrosA said:
I guess you could say I want that, but probably for a pretty unusual reason. When I was in 8th grade I was going to a VERY conservative, rural, public school - the kind of place you could get sent to the principal for saying "Oh, God!" in the hallway (yes, it happened to me...). Anyway, in that ultra conservative setting, our history teacher explained to us how the next big dividing conflict to take seed in the world after WWII and the one my generation was going to have to deal with was the one between the "haves and have-nots." At that time we understood that we and other developed countries were the haves and the third world was the have-nots. Since then things have changed a bit and clarified themselves, and I think that our rich population (and I include large corporations among them) sees itself as separate from us more and more. That brings that conflict closer to home. Twenty years of shipping jobs overseas and getting silly rich sends a certain message to the rest of the people living here as they watch the world around them go to hell and struggle to support their families.

So, yes. As far as how we behave as citizens of the same country, I expect people to act a certain way towards each other for the safety and security of us all. They're certainly free to do otherwise, but as history teaches us, that will have its own set of consequences...
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Most of the jobs sent overseas are jobs we are not willing to do anymore, at least for what they are worth. That is why we have the illegal immigration problem we have now, they are willing to do the jobs we don't want, or expect to get paid more than what they are worth. My wifes uncle had a great job years ago, he was getting paid $20 an hour to watch an automated lathe turn out cam shafts. This was big money 30 years ago, the Union got greedy and kept striking. Finally the company got fed up with it, and moved overseas. The place where my wife works has openings for 2-LPN nurses, 2 CNA's and 1 housekeeper. They do not have a single application submitted for these jobs. People have gotten used to the "Free" money the government is giving out, that they would prefer to have less money, than to have to work.
 
hillbilly1 said:
It's that trickle down economics that the President says doesn't work. Never seen a poor man give somebody a job.
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Trickle down economics says that if there are people living out of my garbage can, the solution to their problem is to give me more so that the quality of my garbage will go up.
 
If green energy is a house of cards, that is a very unfortunate thing for the human race because eventually it will be the only house we have.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Most of the jobs sent overseas are jobs we are not willing to do anymore, at least for what they are worth. That is why we have the illegal immigration problem we have now, they are willing to do the jobs we don't want, or expect to get paid more than what they are worth. My wifes uncle had a great job years ago, he was getting paid $20 an hour to watch an automated lathe turn out cam shafts. This was big money 30 years ago, the Union got greedy and kept striking. Finally the company got fed up with it, and moved overseas. The place where my wife works has openings for 2-LPN nurses, 2 CNA's and 1 housekeeper. They do not have a single application submitted for these jobs. People have gotten used to the "Free" money the government is giving out, that they would prefer to have less money, than to have to work.
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Depending on what things are like where your wife works, the LPN positions may get filled with someone that stays for very long, the other positions will have even larger turnover rate of people that accept the position and then leave because they either can't get along with other people, feel they are not paid enough for what they do, or feel they are treated unfairly, or combinations of all this.

If we are talking specialized care, the chances of retaining people goes up, they are generally paid more, and/or are just in a different work environment than people that work in general care areas, the worst usually being nursing homes and similar places.

Just talked to a friend yesterday that was the director of nursing at a nearby nursing home. She said when she had that DON position it was very hard - not one day went by where someone did not call in sick, or some other reason they could not come to work, creating scheduling conflicts and much employee frustrations and resentment of one another. (I think bottom line is they did not want to come to work, not necessarily because they didn't like what they do, they just did not want to put up with what went on there)

She works at a veterans hospital now and says the atmosphere there is completely different, everyone gets along with each other and wants to come to work in general and is just more pleasant place to work. Of course she does get paid more there than the nursing home paid also - and Uncle Sam is essentially her employer. I guess you have to take a job like that while you can, someday Uncle Sam will decide to change things and she may not have a job.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Most of the jobs sent overseas are jobs we are not willing to do anymore, at least for what they are worth. That is why we have the illegal immigration problem we have now, they are willing to do the jobs we don't want, or expect to get paid more than what they are worth. My wifes uncle had a great job years ago, he was getting paid $20 an hour to watch an automated lathe turn out cam shafts. This was big money 30 years ago, the Union got greedy and kept striking. Finally the company got fed up with it, and moved overseas. The place where my wife works has openings for 2-LPN nurses, 2 CNA's and 1 housekeeper. They do not have a single application submitted for these jobs. People have gotten used to the "Free" money the government is giving out, that they would prefer to have less money, than to have to work.
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$20/hr thirty years ago would have been pretty good. Now, it would just get you into the bottom of the middle class in some areas of the country with a pretax income of 40k/year. Nurses and other medical workers are in high demand and making huge money (60-100+k/year) so it sounds like your wife's employer isn't offering enough money.

A few guys around here would also prefer to sit at home than to lose money while working ;)
 
PetrosA said:
$20/hr thirty years ago would have been pretty good. Now, it would just get you into the bottom of the middle class in some areas of the country with a pretax income of 40k/year. Nurses and other medical workers are in high demand and making huge money (60-100+k/year) so it sounds like your wife's employer isn't offering enough money.

A few guys around here would also prefer to sit at home than to lose money while working ;)
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I have said that before about how I would choose to sit at home vs losing money while working. But there is a big difference between being employed @ $20.00/hr with no additional expense other than maybe what it takes for you to get to the job Vs. contracting yourself at $20.00 hr when your operating costs are more than $20.00/ hr.
 
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