41–50 of 784 posts
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Not really. We need polluting energy sources to be charged for their pollution, ie stop using the atmosphere and land as a free sewer, which in turn will put renewables on an equal footing. Though even without that, solar, wind, and batteries are already cheaper.
Isn't that the same? You want to raise the price of energy to make wind etc competitive?
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Legal immigrants from the EU were not the only source of migrants to the UK. Many come from elsewhere, legally and otherwise. Guess what: we have Brexit but we still have immigrants - impossible?! Plus it was never about immigration, it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it.
> Plus it was never about immigration, It was partly about immigration. According to these surveys 43% of people that voted leave think immigration should be reduced. https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE9?:... > it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it. Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a…
My view is it’s actually about people being racist
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Go back to what the western world was doing in the 50’s. High tax and high public spending. In 1950 the US had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. The 50s were great, let’s do that again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/04/26/taxing...
Federal receipts as a % of GDP has gone up and down by a few % but is basically unchanged from the 1950’s: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ockN Meanwhile the income tax burden, specifically, has gotten considerably more progressive: https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxe...
Looks like NTU also is positing their stance on the ideology that the 1% are the only ones that create jobs but they are the ones to most likely invest in large corporations. There seems no prospect to help the mom and pop shops or small companies that have stronger solutions beyond what large corporate tunnel vision provides.
My personal taxes keep going up with these "Tax Cuts". I don't expect them to come down with the push for tax cuts for the wealthy. Nor has my income gone up.
Wouldn't buying more local would reduce energy used for transportation of goods and services?
I see less Amazon purchases and deliveries as a net benefit for the majority and a net deficit for the wealthy investors. Wealth that stays more in the community versus being shipped to Wall Street.
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Go back to what the western world was doing in the 50’s. High tax and high public spending. In 1950 the US had a top marginal tax rate of 91%. The 50s were great, let’s do that again. https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2021/04/26/taxing...
And then what happened to those nationalised industries? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O7PVEaPh6Fw&pp=ygUUYWRhbSBzbWl...
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> Plus it was never about immigration, It was partly about immigration. According to these surveys 43% of people that voted leave think immigration should be reduced. https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE9?:... > it was always - I think - a classic case of misinformation and greed from many places. Sadly many people fell for it. Why do many people assume that if someone thinks differently about a…
> It was partly about immigration My view is it’s actually about people being racist
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk...
There is in the section entitled "Preferences for different types of migrant: origin, similarity, skill level". (There doesn't seem to be a way to directly reference it in a document).
> Country of origin is not the only factor that people take into account when considering preferences on immigration. In the European Social Survey 2014, British respondents reported how many immigrants should be allowed based on a question that specified both the country of origin (Poland or India) and the skill level (professional or unskilled labourer). The results revealed that when migrants are professionals, opposition is low, and when migrants are unskilled, opposition is high (Figure 5). Research has shown that people’s general preference for high-skilled over low-skilled migrants is mainly driven by perceptions of their higher economic contribution
> The preference among the British public for highly skilled migrants aligns with previous research indicating that, when questioned about the criteria for incoming migrants, skills are considered more important than other factors such as race/ethnicity and religion.
Direct link to the stats:
https://public.tableau.com/views/Publicopinion2023/FIGURE5?:...
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Because climate change will somehow not effect the poor? 1) we need hire energy prices to match the externalities 2) we need subsidies to make the poor more efficient at using the power they can afford. I heard in England they don't have proper insulation in most homes. Building to passive house standards can completely transform an energy bill.
Good news is the UK government has been increasing, and wants to further increase*, the legal minimum energy efficiency of rental properties.
The bad news is the current* UK requirement is still so low that the 39 m^2 apartment I let out in the UK costs more to heat *badly*, than my 100-ish m^2 new passiv-ish house in Germany costs to be T-shirt temperature inside while watching the snow fall outside. (And that UK apartment is one of the better ones in the building; I used to live in it, one of my requirements when buying was double glazing, not all the apartments in that building had double glazing).
Also bad news is that my agency is telling me to not do anything more than the legal minimum to upgrade it, that I should instead wait for the requirements to get stricter before actually doing anything more.
Of course they absolutely do actually get things upgraded when rules change. In the UK, changing the rules does work.
* https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/improving-the-en...
Everyone who bought into neoliberalism in the 80s is now experiencing economies that are mysteriously failing to thrive. Correlation isn't cause, except when it is.
So what was the alternative? Continue with the disaster of central planning. Which is the actual thing that destroyed British industry.
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Sound bites drives political discussion. When a polluting industry poisons the air and the water and people go to the hospital because they are coughing or they have dysentery, who will pay to cleanup the mess? If you frame the discussion as about “price” it is a non-starter. I would argue it is better to talk about workers and their families. As in let us not shit in the river so our children don’t get sick and can…
This seems disingenuous twice: 1. You're welcome to argue that, but you haven't here. You've just stated it. 2. You shouldn't supplant one topic with another. High energy prices kill people, because energy drives the cost of everything, and people can direct less value into things that keep them healthy if they're spending a greater proportion of their income on survival. You can say "also air should be clean", fine,…
Aren't higher energy prices exactly what we need to combat climate change though?
The UK has a lot of wind (shallow waters, strong wind blasts from Atlantic etc) and wind is significantly cheaper, but because there's gas still on the grid everyone pays the higher gas based price even if energy is mostly coming from cheaper wind.
Yes, the renewable cleaner energy is actually cheaper than the fossil fuel it's replacing and in a perfect world should reduce bills.