No cheap solar power for you

Who's your daddy?  

Capitalism, freedom and the American Dream are being destroyed by special interests.  If citizen-consumers are not free to choose what to buy and use to improve their own lives, how free are theY really?  When government steps in to favor one company (crony capitalism) in the marketplace, the impact to the rest of us is a limit on what we can do with our lives.

Our choices are being limited to a select few government-approved companies and goods rather than allowing a plethora of products and ideas to compete for our approval. In the marketplace. If choices are artificially curtailed this time, what else might have come to market that was, is and will be discouraged by government favoritism, and how will you know what you have lost?

Any voting that takes place on what products and ideas should survive, ought to be done by citizen-consumers who do the voting with their own hard-earned property (money).

O say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave,

O're the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

WSJ. September 13, 2017. By The Editorial Board
Solar Power Death Wish
Subsidies aren’t enough. Now solar-panel makers want tariffs.

Bil­lions of dol­lars in tax-payer sub­si­dies haven’t made the U.S. so­lar in­dustry com­pet­i­tive, and now two com­pa­nies want to make it even less so. Suniva Inc., a bank­rupt so­lar-panel maker, and Ger­man-owned So­lar­World Amer­i-cas have pe­ti­tioned the U.S. In­ternational Trade Com­mis­sion (ITC) to impose tar­iffs on for­eign-made crys­talline sil­i­con pho­to­voltaic cells.

So­lar cells in the U.S. sell for around 27 cents a watt. The pe­ti­tion­ers want to add a new duty of 40 cents a watt. They also want a floor price for im­ported pan­els of 78 cents a watt ver­sus the mar­ket price of 37 cents. In other words, they want the gov­ern­ment to dou­ble the cost of the main com­ponent used in the U.S. so­lar in­dus­try. So­lar elec­tric­ity prices could rise by some 30% if the ITC says they’ve been in­jured by for­eign com­pe­ti­tion—a de­ci­sion is due by Sept. 22—and the Trump Ad­min­is­tra­tion goes along with the tar­iff re­quest.

U.S. man­u­fac­tur­ers won coun­ter­vail­ing and an-tidump­ing du­ties against im­ports from China and Taiwan in 2012 and in 2015. But now they’re re­sort­ing to Sec­tion 201 of the Trade Act of 1974 be­cause they don’t need to show they are vic­tims of dump­ing or for­eign gov­ern­ment sub­sidies. They only need to show that im­ports have harmed them.

The harm is real but that’s due to changes in the mar­ket­place. The U.S. so­lar in­dus­try has dis­covered that its com­par­a­tive ad­van­tage lies not in mak­ing pan­els, a ba­sic prod­uct, but in adding value to imported cells and mod­ules. This involves mak­ing and installing rack­ing or framing sys­tems and incor­porat­ing in­no­va­tions like track­ers that ori­ent to­ward the sun.

To turn sun­shine into en­ergy re­quires in­vert­ers that trans­late the en­ergy cap­tured on a so­lar panel into some­thing that can be sent on the elec­tri­cal grid. While there are fewer than 1,000 jobs in U.S. panel man­u­fac­turing, some 260,000 jobs rely on ac­cess to imported pan­els.

Higher prices for pan­els will also hurt util­i­ties that have in­vested in re­new­able fu­els. In an Au­gust 21 let­ter to the ITC, Di­ane Den­ton of Duke En­ergy wrote that over the last five years Duke has in­vested heav­ily in so­lar and has plans for more. But Duke needs “ac­cess to so­lar CSPV mod­ules at glob­ally-compet­i­tive prices” so it can “pro­vide cost-com­pet­i­tive so­lar power to our customers,” Ms. Den­ton wrote.

The ITC hasn’t in­ves­tigated a 201 trade case since the Bush Ad­min­is­tra­tion slapped a 30% tar­iff on steel im­ports in 2002. That fi­asco cost an es­ti­mated 200,000 jobs in U.S. steel-con­sum­ing in­dus­tries be­fore the Ad­min­is­tra­tion dropped the tar­iffs 18 months later.

So­lar tar­iffs would be an­other de­struc­tive ex­ercise that ben­e­fits a hand­ful of Suniva and So­lar­World in­vestors at the ex­pense of every­one else—in­clud­ing the rest of the so­lar in­dustry. This is protectionism at its worst.  

Mental health through social media

Who and what is controlling your thoughts?  How about your kids?
My son gets the news and information that shapes his world view from his Facebook account.  Given recent revelations about how Facebook and Google manage - censor - filter - cleanse - manipulate - news, information and opinions to suit their cultural bias, I consider this dangerous.

Social media use can be dangerous because information that goes out to, a or is filtered for, a vast portion of the population, especially younger people, is biased and does not tolerate differing points of view.  For all intents and purposes, Facebook and Google (and most likely other) corporate media giants whose owners and/or employees have strong political views are indoctrinating our youth, and adults to a lesser degree.  You receive a product for one purpose, for free, and in turn get heavy doses of biased political content for the favor.  Nothing is really free.

But what affect is this having on our society?  My son is convinced that whatever he reads on Facebook is the whole truth and is unwilling to be challenged by any other opinion or fact.  He knows what he knows; His belife's are (nearly) unshakable, especially within the last year of the all-out, hostile "Resist" movement.  Social media is a contributor to our cultural divide. Social media makes us stupid.

Dangerous too is the general unhappiness - the depression, anxiety and loneliness connected to use of social media.  (Read the Atlantic article below.)  No wonder our country is becoming emotionally fragile.  The group-think fostered by social media explains how young people split into identity groups.  They belong to larger packs rather than become more independent thinkers and doers.  Without the group, they don't even have much of an identity to cling to. Sadness, disconnection, anxiety, lack of confidence - these are not the traits of a healthy, adolescent or adult human being.  What are we being fed and where are we headed?  Can this be changed?

USC NOTE:  My personal bias is that social media is overrated and I do not have any social media accounts.  Even this blog and all the research I do takes up too much of my time.  I don't know how anyone does it.  Plus I hate being tied to a computer - there are too many other things I want to do with my life before I call it quits!

There is a great article on the Atlantic website,  "Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?"   Researcher from UCSD takes an-in depth look at how a whole generation is being affected by a technology that is novel to all previous generations, and it's not pretty.

"More comfortable online than out partying, post-Millennials are safer, physically, than adolescents have ever been. But they’re on the brink of a mental-health crisis."

The subject of the Atlantic article has to do with adolescents' use of smartphones, however other  studies link the use of technology by adults to their mental state also.  This article,  "You asked: Is Social Media Making Me Miserable?" in Time magazine online speaks to these issues and gives a bit of history to those who don't remember a time without computers, much less mobile phones.

"Back in 1970, the technology writer Alvin Toffler published a book called Future Shock, which became an international bestseller. The book is about how humans struggle with too much technological change in too short a time—and it's all-too relevant today. Social media now dictates how people interact with friends, read the news and navigate their day-to-day existence.

One recent study examined the links between Facebook use and wellbeing. “We found that the more you use Facebook over time, the more likely you are to experience negative physical health, negative mental health and negative life satisfaction,” says study author Holly Shakya, assistant professor and social media researcher at the University of California, San Diego."