Phillips wins "L(ight bulb) Prize"

The target price was $22, but they settled on a $50 bulb. Does that sound like a government program?

Christopher A. Young Learn more about Jesus

Tomsic

"Stormin Mormon" wrote in news:3up6r.8350$ snipped-for-privacy@news.usenetserver.com:

From HeyBub's link:

"Energy legislation signed by President George W. Bush in 2007 introduced a ban on inefficient incandescent light bulbs, covering traditional 100-watt bulbs this year. Sales of traditional 75-watt incandescents will be prohibited next year, and 60-watt incandescents will go after that."

...and your point is?

" snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

You're highly intelligent. I'm sure you can figure it out.

I can. Bush did not pay an entity (Phillips, Solandra, et al) bucket loads of taxpayer cash to develop something nobody is wants or is willing to pay for.

but he of course did set in motion a set of circumstances that did, didn't he?

Silly idea. Your idea, taken to its logical conclusion, means that one should buy only those things produced by one's neighbors on the same block.

I remind you, once again, you should study one of your countryman's contribution to economics: "An Inquiry Into the Wealth of Nations," by Adam Smith. In a nutshell, he said a country should produce what it can produce best and most cheaply, then trade with other nations. To be self-sufficient in all things is a fool's errand and guaranteed to produce ruination.

If I give you five dollars for a tool, it's because I have more dollars than tools. You accept the trade because you have more tools than dollars. We both leave the transaction wealthier than before we entered into it.

The same for nations.

We sell a Boeing 737 to Japan Airways because their dollars are worth more to us than the airplane. Likewise, to the Japs, the airplane is worth more than the dollars used to buy it. Both nations are wealthier as a result.

The flaw in your reasoning is that you ignore the fact that Adam Smith assumed a fair competition, a level playing field, and wrote before unions were strong and raised the American worker's benefit package to well above the slave labor wages still paid today in the far East. You shouldn't directly apply pre-20th macroeconomics to 21st century conditions.

Add Milton Friedman quote I just copied from Facebook:

"Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property."

-Milton Friedman

It's the "trade deficit", Stupid!

I'll buy from any country where we don't have a huge trade deficit.

But that works to our benefit, doesn't it?

It's not a one-to-one, zero-sum game. We have a trade deficit with China, but China has a trade deficit with India. India, in turn, has a trade deficit with the U.S.

It averages out.

That's a GREAT quote. Saved it into my archives...

Ranks up there with Maggie Thatcher's "Socialism is a great idea, until you run out of other peoples' money"...

Until the Chinese own the United States, which will be soon.

Will your grandkids be slaves to the Chinese?

No, sorry. The leftist's brain is way beyond human comprehension.

I'd rather sell them Kalifornica.

" snipped-for-privacy@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

tag/2012/03/07/gIQAFxOD0R_story.h

Hint: GWB signed the bill that mandates this in 2007.

Oren wrote in news:hd8tl7dbaq60ob3478n7kqk6vbr3gf5eqe@

(Slaps forehead) Of course!!

te:

You couldn't sell it to anybody, you would have to pay them to take it.