How about the New Green Deal? 100% renewable energy, retrofit every building, making transportation green, getting rid of cow burps, guaranteeing jobs (doing what?), free college, requiring trade partners to pay their workers wages that we consider fair, free healthcare, and guaranteed affordable housing.
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So this quick, rough cost estimate — which doesn’t include all of the promises listed in the FAQ — adds up to about $6.6 trillion a year. That’s more than three times as much as the federal government collects in tax revenue, and equal to about 34 percent of the U.S.’s entire gross domestic product. And that’s assuming no cost overruns — infrastructure projects, especially in the U.S., are subject to cost bloat. Total government spending already accounts for about 38 percent of the economy, so if no other programs were cut to pay for the Green New Deal, it could mean that almost three-quarters of the economy would be spent via the government.
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https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/ar...s-unaffordable
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A wholesale breakdown of the U.S. economy wouldn’t do much to arrest climate change, nor would it provide an enviable example to the rest of the world, upon whose emissions reductions the planet’s future actually depends.
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Arizona's largest power company apparently decided that solar batteries make sense and they are seemingly committing over a billion dollars to power 200,000 homes for three to four hours after dark.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/mone...id/2911299002/
There are three million homes in Arizona:
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/az
It would cost 15 billion to power every home for three to four hours after dark.
Would thirty billion be enough for Arizona's 7 million people? Then in ten years you need to replace everything?
That works out to 3 billion per year, $428 for every man, woman, and child.
"Lithium is mined on six continents. Even if the market triples, there are 185 years' worth of reserves in the ground, Deutsche Bank estimates."
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2...attery-future/
They show a chart projecting electric car sales will increase twenty-five times between 2017 and 2030. According to the AZCentral article, APS is planning on putting in 850 megawatts of battery storage, while the entire U.S. utility industry added 338 MW last year. Arizona will account for a 2.5x increase over the entire U.S. although spread out over a number of years.
Clean transportation and energy would require far more than trebling lithium consumption, but if it increased ten times it we would have enough for 55 years.
That article says cobalt is far more likely to increase in cost over time, increasing the cost of its products. It is also far more dangerous, and Musk has committed to stop using it.
I know that we have discussed multiple times and in multiple threads how much cows burp. I do not really see the Impossible Whopper fixing that.
I am always glad that I earned my Bachelor's in Spanish, but I cannot tell you any way that it has improved my life. My ex got $13,000 in debt to become a dental assistant, considered it her greatest achievement, and then worked as a rent-a-cop and at a frozen yogurt place.
Post-secondary training is great and wonderful as long as it leads to a job. If you feel the need for a PhD in Esperanto you should finance 100% of that yourself. If you want to be a teacher, a doctor, or something else where we have a huge shortage, then I think that it makes absolute sense for the government or someone to finance your education, as long as you meet their criteria.
Here is a depressing article about the working conditions in the third world:
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-...ladesh-factory
The minimum wage in Arizona is $11 an hour. How many people in third-world countries earn less than $11 a day with twelve-hour shifts in horrible conditions? How much more would our stuff cost if the people who made it had humane living conditions?
How many jobs would shift back to the U.S.--or to automation?
Yeah... healthcare...
I turned forty and have been sick three times in three months, but I spent $471.81 at urgent care and Walgreens. When I had a full-time job I paid $500 a month, so did the district, and I never used it.
Why did the district and I spend $9,000 for nothing? Why did the cost of insulin triple between 2002 and 2013 and increase 64% since then? Someone posted on Imgur that a restaurant manager could not afford insulin, began rationing it, and died. People said that insulin cost $400 per month in the U.S., but only $40 in Canada. I guess that includes both slow- and fast-acting:
https://www.goodrx.com/blog/how-much...ompare-brands/
Is four hundred dollars a month to stay alive reasonable?
Bloomberg did not try to figure out guaranteed affordable housing, although it seems to be at odd with retrofitting every building in the U.S. This says that homes cost much more to build than just ten years ago:
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2018/05...ability-crisis
These are genuine problems, I do not feel the New Green Deal actually tried to fix anything. It was just politics. Let's promise the world and then blame our enemies when we don't get what we want. Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Doug Jones, each democrats, voted against it. Everyone else voted "Present."
Politics is people picking teams and saying "Hooray for our side."