America has lots of room compared to the rest of the world (no issue of overcrowding) and we have a slight demographic issue with too many retirees and the associated social security payments.

In a more general sense, it is because we want America to remain a strong vibrant country. That small dip in your paycheck today ensures that your child will live in a great economy.

Routinely the best and the brightest of foreign nations come to the United States. We get the cream of the crop. They come here, build, reinvigorate, and rejuvenate. They form dynamic networks allowing the US to sit in a privileged seat in the center.

Does America produce enough smart, dynamic people? Sure – why not. Can you ever have too many smart, dynamic people? No. Study and study has shown that immigrants contribute more than they take.

Hispanics are less of a mixed bag than you think. Older Hispanics tend to be mixed with a strong influence on where they came from. Young Hispanics skew heavily democratic. And it is the young Hispanics that is the faster growing group. As a Republican, I am very sad at how the Republican leadership (in particular the last presidential primary) are wooing the older white voters with the boggy man of illegal immigrants.

I am for increasing immigration and immigration reform but this remark is off base.

Most illegal immigrants are drawn to America for its economic opportunities and are not seeking asylum due to prosecution from back home (political, religious, etc.).

Because you are now touching on one of the more interesting issues / intractable issues when it comes to closing the "gender gap". IIRC women who have the same skills and job experiences as their male counterparts earn 95% of what they earn. The reasons why women earn far less than males is that they tend to choose careers which have a better work / life balance.

You can take 5 years off from being a HR person and you skills won't be out of date. Harder to say for a engineer. A saw one study that women who graduated from law programs had lower average wages than their male counterparts not because they were women but because of what type of law their practiced. Family law pays less than corporate law but offers better work / balance than corporate law. Women tend to pile into family law. Those women who go into corporate law earn about the same as males. The studies did adjust for the school and rank where they graduated.

In addition, because women tend to pick these types of jobs one has many women pilling into the same workspace depressing wages. High supply of applicants and a fixed demand. Males have a much wider dispersion in careers chosen.

This is why HR departments tend to be stuffed with women.

Amazon tends to be tight lipped on they actually will make money on new things (and they like getting into new things) but I would guess

Delivery: Amazon is slowly / experientially pushing into delivering goods for the last mile. They are building out their delivery service for same day delivery of many goods. Here may be another way to squeeze value out of their delivery trucks.

Amazon Prime / Fire table & phone service: Less sure exactly how this would make money, but in general making their services a bit more sticky, taking a deeper peek into consumer wallets, etc.

Maybe. The point of a carbon tax is to wring out the largest effect at the lowest cost. This leads to what the correct carbon tax should be. Set the tax too low and not much will happen. Crank it up and you will keep on insulating until that point – ignoring other factors such as poorly designed insulation can lead to interior air quality problems. The carbon tax sets the marginal rate on insulation, solar panels, etc.

The cost of carbon sequestering has been suggested as a logical upper end. I doubt if we can successfully do carbon capture on an industrial scale, but if we could then yes.

Because we don't care how much emissions that your TV or heater makes. We care about total emissions. It does not matter if we reduce emissions form one source or the other – just that total sources are reduced.

Assume you only have 2 choices. I could spend $40 for solar cells to generate electricity reduce the carbon emissions from your TV. I could spend $20 to insulate your home and reduce the amount of natural gas you need to heat your home. From an environmental viewpoint they both do the same thing. The rational thing to do is keep throwing on insulation on your home until the marginal benefits decrease to $40 a ton. Then you switch to putting on solar cells.

Because there are not enough wires today. One should not put the cart before the horse.

And at 7% per 4k miles (if it were only that easy – in practice it is very difficult to do) that push other solutions, such as wind and increased efficiency, ahead of solar.

Or I could install $40 in insulation, cut 2 tons, and put $20 in my pocket.
      Or maybe that $20 subsidy could be better spent on health or education?

Or I could install $60 in insulatoin and cut 3 tons.

Solar tends to be a feel good solution rather than the most effective solution. (And at this point I feel like I am overselling my case. There are cases where solar will win but that is part of the beauty of a carbon tax – you get the most efficient solution.)

No, they receive subsides. Can you tell me the right tax scheme for coal, nuclear, wind, electric cars, etc.? I have mentioned this in this thread that carbon taxes are the right way to go. It covers all sides of the issues in the most efficient manner.

Sadly for Germany it is spot on. Solar is variable and the backup is coal. It is fixable. Natural gas can be spun up faster than coal, the energy grid could be upgraded, storage could be added, etc. But until these fixes are put in investing in solar makes no sense.

After. And the costs get worse when you start factoring in capital costs, opportunity costs, etc.

True, but there are cheaper and better ways of reaching those goals.

No. Germany and Hawaii are special cases where wind and solar have hit saturation points. In these cases
1. The renewables are a large percentage of supply
2. Are variable
3. Coal is the backup, which takes hours to cycle up and down.
Germany last year had to pay wind and solar producers to go off line because their electrical grid could not shuffle the power around and they could not bring down the coal generators fast enough. A rare case put it does nicely frame the issue.

I hate people wasting money on things that look good rather than things that are good.

For nuclear plants, the fuel is the cheap part. An Germany can buy fuel from a wide variety of sources. If it dislikes the ethics or warmongering of one supplier of uranium to can go to another. It does not have that option for natural gas – they must buy the bulk from Russia.

But why? They are low hanging and high hanging fruit. You pick some of the low hanging fruit, life is good. Then you start picking some of the high hanging fruit while leaving other low hanging fruit on the branch. Why waste energy on second rate solutions when there are first rate ones still available?

Ummm. It is about $20 per ton. Yes, it costs thousands to do. Over 10 years it saves thousands of tons of carbon. Cost in $ / Tons in Carbon saved = 20 dollars per ton (about). For newish homes yes it is expensive, probably above $20. For oldish homes way below $20 – clear savings to be had here. For homes being built, it would be cheaper to up the insulation than to add solar cells except for the subsides built into the solar cells. If a carbon tax was in play I am sure we would see more new construction cavity walls and other such things.

This is what makes me grind my teeth. Society is paying extra money (via taxes and subsidies) for second rate solutions because of some vague notion of being "green."

I think you missed my point on the carbon tax. Right? Let's unpack your argument which has some good points.

Increased efficiency => increased productivity => Increased GNP => Increased Energy Usage.

Increased energy usage implies, but does not mean, increased carbon emissions. Increased efficiency can be applied either to the production (e.g. solar cells) or use (e.g. energy efficiency). Increasing either does not automatically reduce carbon emission. I can point to places in Africa where installing a few simple solar cells has drastically increased productivity, raising income where people can buy motorcycles and cars – dramatically increasing population.

So neither choice offers a magic bullet which is where a carbon tax comes into play. A carbon tax would help optimize the mixture of production and consumption improvements that need to be made.