Even if you have a solar power system of your own, you will also be paying for your neighbor's as well. And, the more systems that are installed, the more you will pay.
As much as 30% of the cost is offset by using tax dollars in the form of rebates, tax credits, and other incentives. With actual installed costs being between $15,000 and $29,000, the buyers of solar get taxpayer-supported subsidies of as much as $4,500 to $8,700; certainly making the upfront cost a lot more palatable.
But, it doesn't just stop with your dollars.
Every time a personal solar power system is installed, the local commercial power company loses some revenue. However, that company cannot reduce any costs other than fuel because they still have to provide power to that house for those times when the sun doesn't shine. So, simply, you have a formula for rate increases. It's a problem similar to the electric car. Electric cars use the same road that all of us use but pay no gasoline taxes towards the building or maintenance of those roads.
Now, to the big kahuna of why your paying for your neighbor's solar: Net Metering. In 44 states, net metering means that the public utility must buy back any excess power production from a solar installation at, usually, retail pricing. And, retail includes all the costs to upgrade and maintain the electrical grid and engineer and bill for it. Costs that the residential solar customer doesn't incur. Thus, some public utilities must raise prices to cover operational costs that have been lost to net metering. However, now with the advent of smart meters, the utilities are in the position to measure how much excess energy they are paying for and are better positioned to only pay wholesale for it; a fact that has greatly increased the breakeven point that the customer would see when making a decision to buy solar.
The reality is that solar is not cost effective and in order to make it cost effective, every non-solar customer is paying heavily. This is especially true for the poor, who in no way, could afford to shell out thousands of dollars for a solar power system; even if their home was large enough and strong enough to support it.
References:
Federal, state and local solar tax credits and rebates: http://www.solarcity.com/residential/solar-energy-tax-credits-rebates
Cost of Solar Power: http://www.sunrun.com/solar-lease/cost-of-solar
Nevada could lose 6,000 jobs without net-metering cap hike: http://www.reviewjournal.com/business/energy/nevada-could-lose-6000-jobs-without-net-metering-cap-hike
Showing posts with label cost. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cost. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2015
Monday, December 8, 2014
The Financial Consequences of Amnesty For 4.5 Million Illegals
Just recently, the White House admitted that President Obama's executive action giving illegal immigrants permanent residency, would also give them Social Security and Medicare benefits. In defense of this, they are claiming that this will actually benefit programs like Social Security because these people will now be paying payroll taxes in support of those programs. This in turn, will help balance out our aging population
Well, on the surface that all sounds great. However, a majority of those who would benefit from Obama's executive order can't speak English; have few, if any, high level skills and little education. Many are functionally illiterate in their own language, and as a result, are incapable of learning English. Over their entire lifetimes they will only be able to work in low level jobs. Taking all this into consideration, you have to understand that the President will be creating a large and permanent underclass. In this country, those kinds of people will always take more from the government than they put in.
Take, for example, paying taxes. Only 53% of all Americans pay any federal income tax. However, most of those who make up the remaining 47% -- especially those who have low incomes -- actually get money back from the government for having children and by qualifying for Earned Income Tax credit. So, if most of these people are low income workers, what benefit are they going to be to our tax system when they don't pay income taxes?
Then, there's Medicare and Social Security. The White House claims that these programs will only be strengthened by having them pay into the Federal Insurance Compensation Act (FICA) fund (the payroll tax that collects the funds needed to support Medicare and Social Security). Of course that would be true only if they weren't so far skewed to the low income side of the equation.
You see, the FICA tax is a fixed percentage tax on your gross wages. The amount paid diminishes with low income individuals; meaning that he middle class and the upper middle class will foot the bill for most of the future payouts. Thus, when a low income worker goes on Medicare, he/she receives the same benefit as everyone else; while having paid relatively little into the system. The same is also true with Social Security. Therefore instead of strengthening these two benefit programs, these newly minted beneficiaries are only going to help speed them toward insolvency. If you don't think this isn't already a problem, just look at this chart on Social Security:
Of course, this projected insolvency was calculated before Obama's action on immigration. There might be a short term increase in funding from these younger workers paying into the system, and thus, delaying insolvency. But, when they do start retiring, the impact on will be significant and rapid because too few dollars were added to the fund to pay for their benefits.
In my opinion, the long-term survivability of the benefits to our nation's seniors is being put at risk so this President can garner future Hispanic votes for Democrats. Similarly, this nation's debt will only increase as we payout an increasing number of tax dollars in Earned Income Tax Credit refunds. This is why there should have been a fully explored and debated reform of immigration through Congressional means. Instead, we have another go-it-alone action that will have far reaching consequences; long after Obama is out of office. Then some other President or Congress will be saddled with the cleanup.
References:
Under Executive Action, Immigrants Are Entitled To Social Security Benefits: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/03/368216062/under-executive-action-immigrants-are-entitled-to-social-security-benefits
Illegal immigrants could receive Social Security, Medicare: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/illegal-immigrants-could-receive-social-security-medicare-under-obama-action/2014/11/25/571caefe-74d4-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html
Commonsense Immigration Reform Will Strengthen Social Security: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/07/01/commonsense-immigration-reform-will-strengthen-social-security
TPC Tax Topics | Who Doesn't Pay Federal Taxes?: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/federal-taxes-households.cfm
Policy Basics: The Earned Income Tax Credit: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=2505
What is FICA? - CNN Money: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson18/index4.htm
Social Security to Become Insolvent Far Earlier Than Expected: http://www.mrctv.org/blog/chart-social-security-s-end-date-fast-approaching-far-earlier-expected
Chart: Medicare insolvency projection: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/7305-08-exhibit-6.png
Well, on the surface that all sounds great. However, a majority of those who would benefit from Obama's executive order can't speak English; have few, if any, high level skills and little education. Many are functionally illiterate in their own language, and as a result, are incapable of learning English. Over their entire lifetimes they will only be able to work in low level jobs. Taking all this into consideration, you have to understand that the President will be creating a large and permanent underclass. In this country, those kinds of people will always take more from the government than they put in.
Take, for example, paying taxes. Only 53% of all Americans pay any federal income tax. However, most of those who make up the remaining 47% -- especially those who have low incomes -- actually get money back from the government for having children and by qualifying for Earned Income Tax credit. So, if most of these people are low income workers, what benefit are they going to be to our tax system when they don't pay income taxes?
Then, there's Medicare and Social Security. The White House claims that these programs will only be strengthened by having them pay into the Federal Insurance Compensation Act (FICA) fund (the payroll tax that collects the funds needed to support Medicare and Social Security). Of course that would be true only if they weren't so far skewed to the low income side of the equation.
You see, the FICA tax is a fixed percentage tax on your gross wages. The amount paid diminishes with low income individuals; meaning that he middle class and the upper middle class will foot the bill for most of the future payouts. Thus, when a low income worker goes on Medicare, he/she receives the same benefit as everyone else; while having paid relatively little into the system. The same is also true with Social Security. Therefore instead of strengthening these two benefit programs, these newly minted beneficiaries are only going to help speed them toward insolvency. If you don't think this isn't already a problem, just look at this chart on Social Security:
In my opinion, the long-term survivability of the benefits to our nation's seniors is being put at risk so this President can garner future Hispanic votes for Democrats. Similarly, this nation's debt will only increase as we payout an increasing number of tax dollars in Earned Income Tax Credit refunds. This is why there should have been a fully explored and debated reform of immigration through Congressional means. Instead, we have another go-it-alone action that will have far reaching consequences; long after Obama is out of office. Then some other President or Congress will be saddled with the cleanup.
References:
Under Executive Action, Immigrants Are Entitled To Social Security Benefits: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/12/03/368216062/under-executive-action-immigrants-are-entitled-to-social-security-benefits
Illegal immigrants could receive Social Security, Medicare: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/illegal-immigrants-could-receive-social-security-medicare-under-obama-action/2014/11/25/571caefe-74d4-11e4-bd1b-03009bd3e984_story.html
Commonsense Immigration Reform Will Strengthen Social Security: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/07/01/commonsense-immigration-reform-will-strengthen-social-security
TPC Tax Topics | Who Doesn't Pay Federal Taxes?: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxtopics/federal-taxes-households.cfm
Policy Basics: The Earned Income Tax Credit: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=2505
What is FICA? - CNN Money: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/money101/lesson18/index4.htm
Social Security to Become Insolvent Far Earlier Than Expected: http://www.mrctv.org/blog/chart-social-security-s-end-date-fast-approaching-far-earlier-expected
Chart: Medicare insolvency projection: https://kaiserfamilyfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2014/07/7305-08-exhibit-6.png
Monday, March 17, 2014
What Raising The Minimum Wage Will Cost You
We are a country of about 317 million people. Of that, approximately 70 million are under the age of 18 and are presumed to be living with their parents and off their parent's incomes. So, essentially, there are roughly 250 million people who should be receiving some form of income. That's how many would be affected by higher prices that would be passed on by raising the minimum wage by $2.85 an hour to the proposed $10.10/hour.
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), raising the minimum wage for the 1.6 million workers who earn that wage would actually result in a total of 16.5 million workers seeing their incomes increase. The reason for this is that when you increase the bottom salary level by an extraordinary 41% (as this increase would do), all the salaries above that level will have to be adjusted upwards in order to maintain equity in any typical company's pay scale ladder. The head of Obama's National Economic Council, Gene Sperling, predicts an even higher number with as many as 28 million seeing their incomes increased.
Now, if we use the 34.2 hours that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average American works each week, and we assume the CBO's 16.5 million number that a $2.85 per hour increase results in, an annualized cost of almost $85 billion will be passed on to us in higher prices. Divide that by the 250 million people who pay the bills and that's a per person cost of $350 year; or, $700 per family. If you use the Sperling's 28 million, you're talking about almost $600 a year per individual or $1200 per family. Obviously, Obama and the Democrats don't seem to think you'll miss all that cash.
Like it or not, after the minimum wage is increased, 250 million of us will be $350 to $600 poorer each year; and, on an ongoing basis. For many, that extra cost may have just wiped out any raise they may have received. Especially hurt are the unemployed; the poor; people on fixed incomes; and, those 2 million workers who aren't even paid a minimum wage.
What does that say about Obama's pet topic de jour: Income Inequality? The simple fact is that when prices are pushed up by wage inflation, the majority of Americans will only get poorer. It has just the opposite effect of minimizing poverty. Job creation and low unemployment are the real means by which poverty is reduced. When there are too few workers competing for far too many jobs, employers are necessarily forced to pay higher wages in order to fill openings and keep good people. That's how it has worked for years.
We currently have the highest minimum wage in decades and, at the same time, median incomes are down almost 8% with still high unemployment and we have a record number of Americans -- 46.5 million -- who are in poverty. And, let's not forget, the recession ended nearly 5 years ago. I personally believe that the reason this has been one of the worst recoveries in our history is because or economy is still trying to recover from increases in the minimum wage that took place during the heart of this last recession. I also believe that our slow growing economy will be even worsened further by another massive increase in the minimum wage. It is just folly to believe that forced wage increases won't have serious economic consequences.
References:
Raising the minimum wage would help 16.5 million workers but could cost 1/2 million jobs: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/minimum-wage-hike-could-kill-500000-jobs-but-help-alleviate-poverty-cbo-reports/2014/02/18/d171c130-98de-11e3-80ac-63a8ba7f7942_story.html
Increasing the nation's minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would help between 24 million and 28 million people: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/05/obama-frames-minimum-wage-fight-in-global-terms/
Characteristics of a Minimum Wage Worker: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm
Average Weekly Work Hours: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), raising the minimum wage for the 1.6 million workers who earn that wage would actually result in a total of 16.5 million workers seeing their incomes increase. The reason for this is that when you increase the bottom salary level by an extraordinary 41% (as this increase would do), all the salaries above that level will have to be adjusted upwards in order to maintain equity in any typical company's pay scale ladder. The head of Obama's National Economic Council, Gene Sperling, predicts an even higher number with as many as 28 million seeing their incomes increased.
Now, if we use the 34.2 hours that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average American works each week, and we assume the CBO's 16.5 million number that a $2.85 per hour increase results in, an annualized cost of almost $85 billion will be passed on to us in higher prices. Divide that by the 250 million people who pay the bills and that's a per person cost of $350 year; or, $700 per family. If you use the Sperling's 28 million, you're talking about almost $600 a year per individual or $1200 per family. Obviously, Obama and the Democrats don't seem to think you'll miss all that cash.
Like it or not, after the minimum wage is increased, 250 million of us will be $350 to $600 poorer each year; and, on an ongoing basis. For many, that extra cost may have just wiped out any raise they may have received. Especially hurt are the unemployed; the poor; people on fixed incomes; and, those 2 million workers who aren't even paid a minimum wage.
What does that say about Obama's pet topic de jour: Income Inequality? The simple fact is that when prices are pushed up by wage inflation, the majority of Americans will only get poorer. It has just the opposite effect of minimizing poverty. Job creation and low unemployment are the real means by which poverty is reduced. When there are too few workers competing for far too many jobs, employers are necessarily forced to pay higher wages in order to fill openings and keep good people. That's how it has worked for years.
We currently have the highest minimum wage in decades and, at the same time, median incomes are down almost 8% with still high unemployment and we have a record number of Americans -- 46.5 million -- who are in poverty. And, let's not forget, the recession ended nearly 5 years ago. I personally believe that the reason this has been one of the worst recoveries in our history is because or economy is still trying to recover from increases in the minimum wage that took place during the heart of this last recession. I also believe that our slow growing economy will be even worsened further by another massive increase in the minimum wage. It is just folly to believe that forced wage increases won't have serious economic consequences.
References:
Raising the minimum wage would help 16.5 million workers but could cost 1/2 million jobs: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/minimum-wage-hike-could-kill-500000-jobs-but-help-alleviate-poverty-cbo-reports/2014/02/18/d171c130-98de-11e3-80ac-63a8ba7f7942_story.html
Increasing the nation's minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would help between 24 million and 28 million people: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/03/05/obama-frames-minimum-wage-fight-in-global-terms/
Characteristics of a Minimum Wage Worker: http://www.bls.gov/cps/minwage2012.htm
Average Weekly Work Hours: http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
The Latest ObamaCare Lie Is Exposed
When the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was days away from passage, Nancy Pelosi infamously said that "you have to pass it to see what's in it". At that time, the Democrats used every possible accounting trick in the books to keep the 10-year costs below $1 trillion. Even going so far as to say that ObamaCare would reduce the deficit by $143 billion in ten years.
Well, we're well past the passage of ObamaCare and it appears that the American public have been ripped-off by the Democrats. The new 10-year costs have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and ObamaCare will now cost the American taxpayer $1.7 trillion dollars over 10 years. Worse yet, it is also estimated that, next year, that 10-year cost will zoom to nearly $2.65 trillion or almost 3 times the bogus numbers that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama fed this country.
Bernie Madoff only stole $10 billion (relatively speaking) and was convicted and sent away to Federal prison to serve 150 years. So, what to do with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats after they cheated and lied to the American public to the tune of $2.65 trillion dollars? Hopefully, the American voter will be the judge, jury, and executioner in this Fall's elections.
Well, we're well past the passage of ObamaCare and it appears that the American public have been ripped-off by the Democrats. The new 10-year costs have been scored by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and ObamaCare will now cost the American taxpayer $1.7 trillion dollars over 10 years. Worse yet, it is also estimated that, next year, that 10-year cost will zoom to nearly $2.65 trillion or almost 3 times the bogus numbers that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama fed this country.
Bernie Madoff only stole $10 billion (relatively speaking) and was convicted and sent away to Federal prison to serve 150 years. So, what to do with Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid and the rest of the Democrats after they cheated and lied to the American public to the tune of $2.65 trillion dollars? Hopefully, the American voter will be the judge, jury, and executioner in this Fall's elections.
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