Subsidized, mandated and now trade-protected?
From the Wall Street Journal:
A group of U.S. solar-panel makers Wednesday called on the federal government to punish Chinese rivals with extra duties for allegedly dumping their products on the U.S. market…
The U.S. makers are asking the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission to impose a duty on panels imported from China, a market that totaled $1.6 billion in the first eight months of 2011. SolarWorld accused Chinese manufacturers of selling solar panels at less than half of what the production costs would be in a comparable free-market economy, and is asking for tariffs to make up the difference.
The solar companies are correct that it is difficult (impossible?) to compete against low-/no-wage Chinese workers, but even with the requested tariffs, solar power still won’t be able to compete on its own merits against fossil fuels.
Terry, I’ll question whether there is dumbing down. While there are significantly more topics and less depth is covered, leading to some embarassing gaps in average education, I doubt that it is that much worse than in the 50s, where dropping out of high school to join the army was an acceptable and even honorable way to celebrate your eighteenth birthday.
Furthermore, in the 50s, or even the 80s you wouldn’t dream of having a Calculus class in High School (in October Sky, the main character impresses the teacher with basic trigonometry). However, in my school, anyone in the top 10% of the class who didn’t take one of the calculus classes or AP (college credit) sciences was considered to have taken the lazy route.
The decline of the current generation has been greatly overstated.
Basic: We do not want to bail out every company, support/protect every single country, and pay all illegal aliens bills, including their college education, when we are BROKE. Our present “public opinion” shows what happens with decades of dumbing down public education, in favor of indoctrination to Marxist bs.