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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  1260 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Private-equity firm revives zombie fossil-fuel power plant to mine bitcoin

I don't know about Michigan, but both WA and CA have laws on the books that the power companies are required to buy power from you at the same rate they sell it. The windmill folx have dealt with this forever; Puget Sound Energy is the best battery you could hope to buy.

SoCal Edison, on the other hand, has absolutely no fucking idea how to deal with net power... because it cuts into their margins. So there are solar panels all over SoCal that can't spin your meter backwards. To no one's surprise this launched lawsuits and because it's California, Goliath slays David all the time.

DTE's concern, dollars to donuts, is that buying power at the prices they sell power is a stinker for them and rather than upgrade and face the future they'd prefer to kill hundreds of people.

    Similarly, what's going to happen to the roads when (very heavy) EVs are dominant (or even a significant proportion) and there is a huge loss in gas tax revenue? The price of driving an EV is currently subsidized by everyone not driving an EV and that has change and soon.

Counterpoint: the externalities of driving an internal combustion vehicle are currently subsidized by everyone breathing. Infrastructure is always something Democrats do and Republicans starve.





b_b  ·  1260 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    Infrastructure is always something Democrats do and Republicans starve.

100% But right now, at least in MI, the already shitty road infrastructure is funded in part by gas tax. When that dries up, are the GOP going to be OK raising taxes elsewhere to make up the shortfall? We both know the answer is no. I'm not trying to argue that EVs are better or ICs are better in any specific way. I'm only trying to argue that we need to invest serious political capital into modernizing the way we pay for things we depend on.

kleinbl00  ·  1260 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am firmly of the opinion that the Biden administration is fully at "Quick: Republicans are culture-warring - advance socialism!"

Tuning every country in the world to at least a 15% tax rate means they can drop the hammer on FAANG because while the composite tax rate in the US is a little bit lower than the rest of the developed world, the loophole soup we have here is principally what does it. The Biden administration can go through and kill loopholes that benefit large corporations and the public will be so busy arguing about Critical Race Theory that Amazon will be FUKT.

b_b  ·  1260 days ago  ·  link  ·  

We can all hope. I saw today that he instructed the FTC to change the way they look at mergers, non-compete clauses and other worker unfriendly rules. Incremental but at least in the right direction.

user-inactivated  ·  1260 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I really hope you're right, but to me it's looking like they can't manage to raise the minimum wage, pass any sort of voting rights laws, wealth taxes, etc, and Reps are predicted to take back congress in the midterms