I tend to agree that there are better places to put public money. But at
the moment, given the sums going to the military, to homeland security, to
tax breaks for the rich, to ethanol subsidies, to other farm subsidies for
rich farmers, giveaway of public electronic spectrum, I'm not going to
complain when money is spend on something that is actually socially
beneficial, even when it is not spent in an optimum fashion.  Right now
when so much is spent on awful stuff ,I'm not going to complain about
government spending on nice things, even if it is not my first choice of
nice things. (Hat tip Atrios for this way of putting it.)


On Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 10:08 AM, Eugene Coyle <[email protected]> wrote:

> Quite a lot of public money, Federal and State, is being offered, and
> used, to subsidize solar energy.
>
> But solar energy remains quite expensive.  One reason for subsidizing it
> is to promote hoped for technological breakthroughs.  A second is to
> produce cleaner power to reduce GHG emissions as solar replaces dirtier
> sources, particularly coal.  But this is a trivial dent in the problem.
>
> Whatever about the reasons, public money spent to promote solar is now
> going mostly to the affluent rather than lower income people.
>
> Why not put the solar on public buildings?  Schools, office buildings,
> public housing (is any left?), etc.  There are plenty of flat-roofed
> schools where the panels could go.
>
> Present policies, well-intentioned on environmental grounds, are flowing
> money to the least needy residences.
>
> Gene
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