trboyden

By comparison, the US only spends 3.4% GDP on the military per year.

If you plotted all the other things the government spends money on, pensions would be the biggest chunk. Stop being dense.

In case you need me to Google that for you some more...

US GDP is currently 21.43 Trillion dollars.

7% of that is 1.5 Trillion dollars.

The 2020 Federal budget was 4.79 Trillion dollars.

So, pensions are roughly a quarter of federal government spending every year and growing.

Yes, continue the explanation with your math, including the part where you don't actually get that rebate; as part of the solar program financing, you have to hand that rebate over to the bank to pay the finance fees, which is factored into the financing. Otherwise the monthly payments go up, and you end up paying more per month than you generate energy. I was in RI and RI rates and program is similar to NY's.

Hmmm. No. The payback is 20 years, which is the length of the panel life, and the limit on time the utilities have to pay you for the energy. After that, they get the energy from you for free.

Try $20k plus a re-roof at $10k. And that is for a small 1200sqft 3 bed/1 bath house that has full south-southwest exposure.

Doesn't work. Because corporations find loopholes around the law to achieve an "equivalent" of carbon reduction, that doesn't actually reduce it, but still call themselves green. If anyone thinks that planting a few trees actually reduces carbon given how much the Chinese pump out, I have a bridge in Brooklin to sell you.

It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the rest back into his business and his employees. Is he rich? No. That's the problem with ideological socialism. You just want to stick it to the guy who is rich on paper - it has nothing to do with actually improving peoples lives.

No, redistribution is organized extortion. I make $100, the government takes $50 of it, pockets $30 of that, and then redistributes $20 to those that will keep them in office (A.K.A. a bribe).

And your point is what? You just provided the exact evidence to what I already stated. Parts of the gas tax, excise taxes, vehicle sales tax, recycling fees, etc... are all fees that Americans pay that are supposed to go to addressing impact on the environment. But the government only spends 0.2% on it. Where did the money go? That is exactly my point. Most of it went to pay pensions that the government over promises on and doesn't budget enough for. Any business that did that would be out of business or switching to 401ks, which most have done.

Americans pay many fees and taxes that go to environmental concerns. They also see the government does not use that revenue to address those environmental concerns, because instead it goes to state and federal pensions. Therefore, the real issue is, what do Americans have to do to get the government to spend the money on the things they say it is supposed to go to? Until the government is willing to change their spending habits, yes, Americans will be unwilling to contribute more to the national credit card with no limit.

Quite a coincidence. My dad was an HM3 on the USS Frontier from 1964 to 1967. He also passed in 2016. He never talked much about his service though. I only remember one story he told where US soldiers were issued bullet proof vests for the first time, and they chose to try them out by shooting each other with M16s. The result wasn't pretty.