Do you have faith that eventually America will catch up to the rest of the world again?

As soon as you learn to not do the polar opposite of what works for everyone else, because you think you are so special and exceptional.
So, the answer is no.

I think we were doing OK…until Trump. I thought we were doing great under Obama.

No, we will just continue to go backwards. Our education system sucks, reputable science is constantly being questioned, the oligarchy is taking over; I could go on and on. Other countries are trying to entice those with science backgrounds to their own countries. I’m glad my life is half over and that I am leaving no children behind.

Solar was not economical until very recently. A good portion of new generation coming online here in the states is solar, combined cycle or nuclear. Coal fired power plants are not coming back, they’re all going away regardless of Trumps claims. They’re simply too costly to run and the industry has been slowly shutting them down for over 20 years. Also slapping up solar arrays or solar collector sites can’t meet the base load demand here until residential renewable power is the bulk of generation. We are about 15–20 years from that becoming a reality and will likely lead that trend.

Do you think all houses in the future should be built with their own source of energy, be it wind or solar? So they can power themselves?

Yes, but it may take 25 years if we have good leadership in the US (by which time I’ll be dead), or it may not ever happen.

THe US was on a decline, and has been ever since the Reagan years largely due the polarized Reagan Republicans. And things just got worse.

And then there was Mickey Mouse George Bush and the stolen election…

This is generational, and maybe multi-generational. We will not see a positive, leading, honorable USA for 20–30 years.

Shotglass vision.
Utility companies profit from the status quo.
Take action, and make independent power a reality. Quit waiting for one man to take you by the hand and do everything for you.

I love Words! So does trump.

Good for you! Put some to work where they can make a difference.

I have all the best Words! Nobody has words as good as mine.

I don’t know that we are either ahead or behind of the rest of the world. Do I think we can make renewable energy more efficient? Sure. But does that mean it is there yet. One thing to note with the article cited is that it addresses a new solar power station in Morocco, which is mainly desert.
The thing that will ensure we do not lead the world is if we kill the entrepreneurial spirit. What made the USA a world leader in the first place was not trying to keep up with the rest of the world and do what they did. It was thinking outside the box, being bold, being creative and driving for success despite all odds. If someone figured out how to make electrical losses from transmitting electricity from one place to another, figured out a more efficient way to store batteries, came up with a better, more consistent/reliable energy source than solar or wind…that would be an effort that would make us leaders. Pick any topic and you will find that attitude will always make you a leader.

In my small rural town we have lots of solar and people selling it back, and right outside a huge solar farm. As @ARE_you_kidding_me said, it’s getting more affordable, that was the hold up.

From what I’ve seen, and from what I understand, @seawulf575, Trump has put the brakes on searching for alternate energy sources. He thinks it’s all a hoax anyway. Am I wrong guys?

Lots of innovation is taking place.
Schools everywhere are putting challenges to the students, and results are often smashing.
The problem is getting behind all that innovation.
If there is no foreseeable profit, it is real tough to get anyone behind those innovations.
If Ben Franklin were to invent the lightning rod today, I wonder at the outcome.

@Dutchess_III Yes, he says it’s all about jobs, I think it’s the blue collar votes he loves and probably some money. I am a huge fan of trees and clear unpolluted streams. The alternative is not very pretty.

Again, bringing in Trump.
Have you any others arrows in your quiver?
Innovation can move ahead without consulting POTUS.

May I ask….if you’re going to vote in November @KNOWITALL….?

@Dutchess_III Of course! I don’t roll 100% with any party and frankly don’t believe much of what I hear from them or the msm. It’s a tough time for people like me.

Part of the problem with Wind and Solar in the USA is that it is not economically feasible. The only way it makes any profit at all is because of subsidies. From that aspect, all it is doing is making energy company execs rich at the taxpayer expense. Again, though, I would welcome strong efforts to find ways to make it more affordable.

Well, northern Oklahoma is covered with wind turbines! Seems that way, anyway. It’s pretty trippy at night when thousands of red lights are flashing in the sky. I don’t know why they’d do that if it’s not economically feasible.

Utility companies are already transitioning into other things. All those power line routes already double as fiber optic routes. Industry and infrastructure will still need the grid. Residential will go off grid so quickly in the next 20 years it will make your head spin…. and it can’t come soon enough.

Hoping

Oh but you’re already way ahead, no other nation in history, with the possible exception of Belgium & Germany, makes so many people laugh so long & so loud.

As long as we have rednecks and “so called” Libertarians shouting that they don’t need to know stuff, or do things that are beneficial to the majority of our people, and continue to say, “I do what I want!” at the expense of the health and progress of our citizens, then no.

They hold back nobody but themselves.

There isn’t enough time, seeing as where and how fast we’re going. And what our mental attitude is…

If the country stops voting in Neanderthals.

Regarding power, I think we will. I’m not sure how long it will take. I’d love to know how much solar really costs to produce. I think in America the prices might have been much higher than it needed to be. In sunny places builders should have been making entire communities with solar roofs, especially in sunny places. There is one small builder doing it where I live.

We can do it grass roots, people need to start demanding it. If all the houses in a community have solar, then they don’t have to worry about losing money on it so much when it comes to house value. If you’re the only house, and it cost you $15k to install, when you go to sell, I bet if your lucky you sell for $5k above the other houses in the neighborhood.

Renewable energy keeps getting cheaper. We will eventually run out of fossil fuels. It is just a matter of time for all energy to be renewable.

^ I meant “for” not in, above.

I have serious doubts. I think we have passed the tipping point.

For some insight as to why I would recommend reading Morris Bermans’ Trilogy of works on the decline of the American Empire: The Twilight of American Culture, Dark Ages America and Why America Failed.

Back in 2000 Bergman cites four factors leading to the decline of the country: growing social and economic inequality, declining returns on investment in societal structures, the erosion of intellectual standards and critical thinking, and what he called the“spiritual death” of the country. And I believe that since first posited it has become progressively worse not better.

By spiritual death he does not mean the death of religion, believing that Nietzsche was right and when we accepted that we sought spirituality in other philosophies such as communism, fascism, and yes, capitalism to fill the void but these too have failed us. After these systems also failed us (and that capitalism is presently in its death spiral), we no longer search for anything requiring any depth of thought or consideration; that we have become so shallow both in our wants and our needs.
As he stated in a recent article “You’ve got a deep systemic emptiness. This comes from the fact, in the case of consumerism, capitalism and so on,that you’ve embraced an ideology without knowing it’s an ideology, whose basic philosophy is ‘more’.” and that “more”, particularly when the focus is on the acquisition of “physical stuff” is not a spiritual path.

Among first world nations America is without doubt the world leader in demonstrating the extent to which commercial interests can be asigned priority to the detriment of the public good. This trend is verified in virtually every category of statistics applied to first world nations.

@stanleybmanly Really? Can you prove that?

You mean do I have statistics handy? No. But the claim is broad enough that if refutable you should have little difficulty demonstrating it. Pick a category, and see where we stand in comparison to our peers.

Health care for one….

One problem I see is that one election year we vote in one POV and the next election year we vote in the other. The next time we swing back the other way and then, we swing back, reversing course yet again. How can anything get done when the whole business is, by it’s nature, wishy-washy??
We’re doomed!

Well, I think the electoral college is mostly responsible for that. The popular vote would have put two democrats in, back to back.

@Dutchess_III But the point of the electoral college is to help ensure all of the USA is represented, not just a few big cities. It is designed to help levelize the voting so that rural or even suburban USA isn’t continually slammed. Want to change the electoral college? My suggestion is to take each county as it is currently drawn (in the case of NYC, each borough counts as a county)...not in a week, not in a month…as it is today. Let each county get one electoral vote. No state is winner take all. The candidate with the most electoral votes at the end wins.

I know what the original purpose is. It’s obsolete now. They should get rid of it completely.

Why is it obsolete now? If you take NYC, LA, and Chi, you have 4.6% of the population of the country. However, it only accounts for 0.1% of the area. Meanwhile, the farmer in Nebraska that has huge acreage doesn’t have the population, but does provide grain or corn or something else to support people. But if you go solely on population, he then becomes a slave since his opinion means nothing. It also negates whole states since their populations are less than, say, NYC. In fact, there are 39 states that have a smaller population. In fact, the 8 states with the smallest populations, if you combine their populations it is still smaller than NYC. So basically, those people would get no say whatsoever. Going strictly on population, you negate the opinions of whole sections of the country. That is what the electoral college is designed to avoid.

What you are saying is, that the vote of someone in one state, is worth more than one from another.

Exactly. The electoral college was started at a time when voting often required an arduous round trip that many couldn’t afford to make. They needed someone to stand in for them. There is no excuse not to vote any more.

And it is not like the states are not already sufficiently represented by their senators.

There are states like Montana and Alaska with virtually no voters. They get one House representative, because that is the minimum allocation. They get an extra 2 electoral votes for their senators. That gives them a huge per voter electoral vote count. What did thy do to deserve that? Why should their votes count more than those in larger states?

@seawulf575 Clearly there are disturbing implications to the argument that representation should be apportioned according to acreage. If 2 or 3 votes in NYC are required to cancel a single vote in Nebraska, that is hardly an equitable example of democracy. The compensating factor in our system is supposed to be the Senate where Idaho & Alaska have the same weight as California or Texas. You will have a tough time convincing me that a state is entitled to preferential voting privileges because no one wants to live there.

Something you all forget is that each state provides something. I’m not suggesting voting be based on acreage, but farmers or ranchers or any of the food producers do take more acreage than a city dweller that might not have 1000 sqft. Not that the city dweller does nothing, but why should the person that is raising the food be punished for doing so? You are all negating that. The other thing you are all negating is that we aren’t a democracy. In a democracy, popular vote would carry the day. We are not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. The Constitution is supposed to protect the inalienable rights of all citizens, not just those in the nebulous majority. But let’s think about it a step further, if you wanted to say that democracy was what you wanted (which is amusing from a group of socialists), then things like court rulings that support a specific viewpoint could be outlawed by a simple vote, or just overturned if the majority don’t support it. And let me remind you that up to 70% of the nation felt the country was going in the wrong direction under Obama. So while you think it would be great to elect another Democrat, that wasn’t popular with the majority, or at least the policies put forth by the Dems were not popular. But let me guess…you don’t really want a democracy, you just want the liberal strongholds to control the vote. Pretty close to the truth?

The truth is if the bulk of the population concentrates in the cities, their vote should not be diluted as a consequence. The fact that such places may be liberal strongholds is irrelelvant. The “nebulous” majority is still the MAJORITY. And as things stand, contrary to penalizing those producing the food, that majority heavily subsidizes those producers and actually pays them frequently to produce nothing. Before dogging socialism, you might consider that predatory capitalism is directly and obviously responsible for the fact that farmers can’t make a living. And whether you realize it or not YOU are telling us that the nation REQUIRES the SOCIALISM of the places generating the money diverting their profits (through taxation) to support the struggling and impoverished redlands. YOU ignore the fact that due to the glories of capitalism that “nebulous” majority concentrates in the cities because THAT’S WHERE THE MONEY IS as well as the JOBS. Now you make the claim that the vote must be rigged because there are too many people in pursuit of the capitalist dream? Even if you conclude that the “nebulous” majority punishes farmers and ranchers you needn’t ask why it should be allowed. You should be overjoyed at the fact that “THAT’s HOW CAPITALISM WORKS!!!

Oh, good point @stanleybmanly. Just because a “majority” is of any certain bent does not make them invalid. They are the majority. And that’s what our election system is based on; the majority rule.

Actually, I thought our system was designed to prevent, or at least minimize, the tyranny of the majority.

That is what constitutions, basic rights, and separation of powers is for.
You might as well argue that every citizen should have a veto right, because his vote is drowned out by 300 million others.

The Constitution provided for one place, the Senate, where all states have the same power. We do not need any more.

@rojo We govern by “The majority rules.” That’s how virtually every decision that’s put up for a vote is determined. It’s not about tyranny.

Read the article @Dutchess_III. There was, and is, inherent dangers with direct democracy which is one reason why we do not have one. ”... and to the Republic, for which it stands…”.

@rojo
Nobody has said anything about direct democracy.

@ragingloli true but I was mainly addressing the majority rule aspect of @Dutchess_III prior post.

@rojo you do understand which majority they’re talking about. Just who are the majority, and who is seeking the protection?

I disagree @rojo What our laws and constitution are supposed to prevent is a complete take over by some wild eyed minority. That’s why it prohibits government involvement in religion. That’s why it allows for votes for public offices. That’s why it allows for specified lengths of terms for presidents.

I’ll take our checks and balances to deal with the pitfalls of direct democracy. It’s try, majority rule can be a huge problem, but we have congress and the courts to help.

@Dutchess_III the Constitution also prevents against the rabid minority from taking power. But here’s a thought: Those on the left only comprise about 21% of the population. Those on the right are about 41%. So why is it that we aren’t swinging all to the right?

@stanleybmanly As I have mentioned before, I disagree with subsidies as well. I suggest we let the market set the price. I would venture the opinion that if you were to do that then the socialists in the crowd would start screaming about how the government should take over all farming and food production. But I am against paying people for doing nothing. Always. Hand up not hand out….that’s my view.

Because more conservatives vote.

@seawulf575 It isn’t socialists in the crowd who would start screaming. It would be all of those solidly conservative farmers who don’t even realize that capitalism has screwed them mightily. The poor gomers would look at their plight, then do something idiotic like vote for Trump, gang up on refugees or join up with skinheads. Like yourself, they don’t have a clue.

@seawulf575 Where do you get those 41/21% statistics? They are are clearly erroneous.

We don’t exactly govern by “majority rules.” The majority may decide that it’s a good idea, but the President and congress have to OK it, and it has to pass muster with the Supreme Court to see if it is legal, and constitutional. Three branches of government, remember??