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One problem with those wind turbines is the huge blades
Turbine blades can last up to 20 years, but many are taken down after just 10 so they can be replaced with bigger and more powerful designs. Tens of thousands of aging blades made of fiberglass and plastic resin are coming down from steel towers around the world and most have nowhere to go but landfills.
Thank you for bringing that up. There is nothing "green/renewable" about EVs, wind turbines, or solar panels.
IF YOU HAVE AN ATTACK OF COMMON SENSE
You may question their veracity and intentions.
Why?
Usury (interest) has been a con job for over 3500 years, denounced by all religions, as well as being mathematically unsustainable in a finite money token system due to the exponential equation used for COMPOUND INTEREST. (Curious that academically trained eCONomists are unaware of this fact)
Then there is that pesky problem with taxing labor and industry... you know... socialist taxes to "help" the working man when he loses his job.
Except that when you tax something you ... RAISE THE PRICE.
Tax American labor and industry, and you get INFLATION. (Whoa, isn't inflation caused by TOO MUCH MONEY chasing too few goods? Yup, but we're suffering a money drought these past 87 years. Bill Gates is not bidding up the price for milk and cookies.) Taxes on American business and labor DESTROYED jobs, creating more unemployment. (Thank you, socialists, for that one)
Socialist taxes destroyed the profitability of American industry, so they relocated or went bust. That took jobs away. And indirectly subsidized foreign producers who did not export their taxes hidden as inflation.
Finally, when you TAX something you indirectly subsidize its opposite.
TAX labor, subsidize automation.
D'OH!
I saved the 'best' for 'last' - remember that thing called legal tender? Pursuant to 12 USC Sec. 411, those "dollar bills" (federal reserve notes) are IOUs - debt - denominated in dollars. They are NOT dollars. Only when redeemed with lawful money, would you have a dollar.
Since no one is using lawful money to pay debts (as required by the USCON), all transactions are privileges subject to an excise (sales) tax.
Congress only has the power to COIN MONEY (stamp bullion) or BORROW MONEY. If it had the power to create bullion, why need the power to borrow money?
And to "Borrow" fresh crisp new dollar bills requires DEFICITS. So we have a mad hair brained system that must have endless deficits to authorize more dollar bills (to pay the usury, dummy).
And those dollar bills are SCARCE, and in high demand. (Try cashing out a lump sum of money over $5k at your local bank. They do not have the funds available.)
All this madness can be easily remedied. Repeal all taxes on labor and industry. Watch the rush to repatriate businesses seeking "Tax exempt" USA. JOBS JOBS JOBS. No benefit to automate. JOBS JOBS JOBS
(And there goes all the incentive to hire illegals / undocumented labor under the table!)
More fun - use barter as much as possible - because once there is no money involved in your transactions, there's NOTHING TO RECORD, REGULATE OR TAX.
Finally, start using your own legal power to create a medium of exchange to facilitate trade when barter is insufficient. That cuts out the banker / usurer. And the gubmint. Don't need public charity when any unemployed worker can emit a note : "Pay to the bearer on demand x hours of my labor" and "Spend" it into circulation. Now, we would have a money token system that would match the marketplace of goods and services. The more laborers available, the more coupons they'd have emitted. The more businesses selling products, the more coupons could be in circulation with which to "buy" them.
Boo hoo, bankers go bust.
The national debt is void for fraud. (Congress never borrowed 27+ trillion dollars, gold or silver)
Which then wipes out the federal reserve note (which is part of the national debt)
Overnight, billionaires become zero-aires.
Fun, fun, fun.
Thank you for bringing that up. There is nothing "green/renewable" about EVs, wind turbines, or solar panels.
I agree. While there may be an element of conservation of materials on the end-user side due to their recyclability, there is definitely not a net-positive energy savings in most, if not all supply chains, because at some point there is still fossil fuel used in some stage of manufacturing or logistics for the raw materials, final assembly, or delivery process.
In short, yes, we're getting a lot of practice reusing more of the materials over and over again, but from a business sense, it comes at a greater processing cost and is exponentially more labor-intensive than non-recycled sources.
An electric vehicle is a bridge technology. It uses existing energy sources and technology while it can be adapted to a future technology that abandons those energy sources and battery technology entirely. All the arguments here fall by the wayside.
The main thing is that 5G is going to make remote transactions so much more effective than even now. A lot of transactions between customers and business and government will be handled by phone or by video. Anything in person will be handled by a skeleton staff or by appointment. It is about communications, not automation. The reason why the smartphone became a viable tool was the development of the broadband wireless chip in 1999 which enabled imaging and video to stream over wireless networks.
Automation = increased productivity. This is always a good thing. People who lose jobs can spend their time adding value somewhere else.
The problem is there's a whole segment of society whose value is in their brawn more than their brains. Not everyone has the intellectual wherewithal to be an engineer or a programmer or a lawyer or financial analyst. When there was still a need for lots of manual labor, these people still had something valuable to provide to society. But the more we become an information economy, the less value those people have, to the point where we now have millions of people in our country who have literally nothing to do and very little value they can add to an information economy. What do we do with these people?
Create new jobs, implement a UBI, or some combination.
“Prediction is very difficult, especially when the future is concerned” - Niels Bohr
Yes, this is why UBI has been under discussion in various countries for roughly 10 years or so. Euro countries have been way ahead of the US in this regard, naturally.
But that doesn't really answer all the questions the OP raises. What will happen if a significant percentage of the population doesn't have to work, in order to scrape by? What about all the people, who don't really know how to occupy themselves constructively, when given a lot of free time? There could still be crime, even if people's most basic needs are adequately met. There could be mental illness, from people feeling useless. Domestic violence happens, in areas with high unemployment, even if people are on welfare and other benefits.
It's not so simple, as throwing money at the problem.
Yes, this is why UBI has been under discussion in various countries for roughly 10 years or so. Euro countries have been way ahead of the US in this regard, naturally.
We already do UBI, we just do it piecemeal in the form of numerous welfare agencies and bureaucracies who dole it out after taking a 75% cut for themselves.
We could simultaneously cut our welfare bureaucracy by roughly 80% and double the resources provided to current welfare recipients if we just cut out the multiple layers of middlemen and sent a check straight to the recipient to do with whatever they will. But then too many people in power would lose key constituencies so it won't happen without a momentous political fight.
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