pbmus
pbmus's JournalWTF ...65
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More than 100x cheaper in 35 years
For those who still doubt that solar power is about to shift into high gear and play a much bigger role, look at the graph above. It shows the price per watt, starting in 1977 at over $76/watt all the way down to $0.74/watt in 2013. While it's already very competitive with dirty sources of power in large parts of the world, a few more years of this and solar will simply be too cheap to ignore, even without a price on carbon emissions.
You can see a higher-resolution version of the graph here. 
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"WTF ...59
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and anybody that comments that this doesn't matter can't say that about my income taxes because the IRS still sends me letters and deducts what they want from my SS check, so it must matter to someone...
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An Imaginary Budget and Debt Crisis = Krugman
For much of the past five years readers of the political and economic news were left in little doubt that budget deficits and rising debt were the most important issue facing America. Serious people constantly issued dire warnings that the United States risked turning into another Greece any day now. President Obama appointed a special, bipartisan commission to propose solutions to the alleged fiscal crisis, and spent much of his first term trying to negotiate a Grand Bargain on the budget with Republicans.
That bargain never happened, because Republicans refused to consider any deal that raised taxes. Nonetheless, debt and deficits have faded from the news. And there’s a good reason for that disappearing act: The whole thing turns out to have been a false alarm.
I’m not sure whether most readers realize just how thoroughly the great fiscal panic has fizzled — and the deficit scolds are, of course, still scolding. They’re even trying to spin the latest long-term projections from the Congressional Budget Office — which are distinctly non-alarming — as somehow a confirmation of their earlier scare tactics. So this seems like a good time to offer an update on the debt disaster that wasn’t.
About those projections: The budget office predicts that this year’s federal deficit will be just 2.8 percent of G.D.P., down from 9.8 percent in 2009. It’s true that the fact that we’re still running a deficit means federal debt in dollar terms continues to grow — but the economy is growing too, so the budget office expects the crucial ratio of debt to G.D.P. to remain more or less flat for the next decade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/opinion/Paul-Krugman-An-Imaginary-Budget-and-Debt-Crisis.html?_r=1
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Member since: Wed Aug 22, 2012, 08:01 PMNumber of posts: 12,422
