There is always going to be a need for some people to have personal vehicles and electricity is a damn sight better than gasoline. Used correctly, a subsidy is an incentive and a support for something which may not be able to be very profitable on its own but which is still worth having around and investing in.
The problem is that they are so often misused especially by two North American countries and things go south.
Public service spending isn’t a subsidy but I also didn’t directly call it that and I think you missed the message I was sending. The point is that sometimes you want something that cannot be directly profitable but which is of a certain benefit to society.
There is always going to be a need for some people to have personal vehicles and electricity is a damn sight better than gasoline.
When that electricity is generated from solar panels and wind turbines that require endless mining of non-renewable sources, and create endless landfill, no, it’s not a damn sight better than gasoline. It’s causing significantly more environmental damage than gasoline is.
The point is that sometimes you want something that cannot be directly profitable but which is of a certain benefit to society.
You want that to be publicly owned, not lining the pockets of private enterprise. If a private company needs subsidies to exist, it should be left to fail. If it needs subsidies, it should be publicly owned.
It’s actually still much better even to use an ICE generator to charge an electric car than to attach that engine directly to a car and that’s the least efficient way to use non-renewable resources to charge an electric vehicle. Generators are smaller and built to run at a peak efficiency vs cars where they’re almost never there and often keep running even when stopped.
That aside, subsidies are not inherently bad but they are very easily misused. Yes, if a corporation claims it needs to be bailed out then in many ways it should be taken over as it proved that it couldn’t handle the task but that is a different scenario, albeit similar.
There is always going to be a need for some people to have personal vehicles and electricity is a damn sight better than gasoline. Used correctly, a subsidy is an incentive and a support for something which may not be able to be very profitable on its own but which is still worth having around and investing in.
The problem is that they are so often misused especially by two North American countries and things go south.
Public service spending isn’t a subsidy but I also didn’t directly call it that and I think you missed the message I was sending. The point is that sometimes you want something that cannot be directly profitable but which is of a certain benefit to society.
When that electricity is generated from solar panels and wind turbines that require endless mining of non-renewable sources, and create endless landfill, no, it’s not a damn sight better than gasoline. It’s causing significantly more environmental damage than gasoline is.
You want that to be publicly owned, not lining the pockets of private enterprise. If a private company needs subsidies to exist, it should be left to fail. If it needs subsidies, it should be publicly owned.
It’s actually still much better even to use an ICE generator to charge an electric car than to attach that engine directly to a car and that’s the least efficient way to use non-renewable resources to charge an electric vehicle. Generators are smaller and built to run at a peak efficiency vs cars where they’re almost never there and often keep running even when stopped.
That aside, subsidies are not inherently bad but they are very easily misused. Yes, if a corporation claims it needs to be bailed out then in many ways it should be taken over as it proved that it couldn’t handle the task but that is a different scenario, albeit similar.