Yes. or in other words: "hmmmmmmm...... revenues!!"

please remind me where the muni people are dumb enough to deliver the keys to one of their system to a private enterprise on the assumption that "they will act in the best interest of the community", and forget about it. I have to delete my tax records.

not in the US, but something akin to that is happening here in Italy.... to me. the law says that speed traps must be preceeded by a road signal, BUT that without additional evidence the judgement will always be in favour of the police. Mind you, I have a dashboard camera.

since I saw that there was NO sign, I save the file with the timestamp, a good image of the police officer etc, and wait. when the ticket arrives, I contest the validity of the ticket, enclose a cd with the file , a short memo, and wait. Lo and behold, the law enforcement officer sends the ticket back to me doubled, saying that "my video was not valid". Meanwhile, the "official" photo has arrived, and there is no sign of the signal, even tough the field of view is wide enough. mind you, it's difficult not to see the road signal in an empty three lane motorway, so in all fairness they should have put me in for another driving exam, since I should have been drunk, blind, incapacitated, or a combination of the three to miss it.

way too costly. it's a specialistic sniper weapon, while the Lee Enfield, well let's say costs are pretty all amortized by now.

Or, they had a certain upbringing of duty , honour, country, and they would blow the whistle on things not done properly.

Good question!
join me in a crusade to save one country of the planet which was mistreated by nature and politics. It's a mountain country, covered in snow most of the winter. arable land in valleys is scarce, and one of the staple products is cheese. there are no mineral resources to speak of, and the country was so well known for the war like nature of the inhabitants that it was specifically forbidden to send its men to serve abroad, which was a major source of money remittances at the time. What else? oh yeah, there are four languages formally spoken, so it's a natural candidate for a bloody break up. it is moreover, landlocked: there's no way out for any local products unless through another country for further export or resale. It is formally hated by its neighbours, which went so far to flout any established principles to actually pay spies to damage it.
so do a well meant action today. pay one Euro for Switzerland.

first off, let me thank you for the link. I will most certainly read it in full, but if I may, there's a phrase at page 5 which put my nose slightly out of joint:

It 's my view that no serious analyst would be caught writing such a phrase in a study summary, and I'll show you why.

Imagine that the total available energy pool at the grid operator is 100 units, of which 85 is fossil, 10 is nuclear and 5 is renewables. in a "neutral" world, subsidies per unit would be equal (or zero, which is a subset case), and subsidies to fossil fuels would dwarf subsidies to renewables 85 to 5. So, knowing that fossil fuels get mmore money does not show or imply any preference or disdain against any particular source, unless some other information is added. in my view therefore calling that page a summary is an insult to the english language, or an ode to gullibility. As Dr. Evil said, " I am the boss, need the info"

There, fixed it for you.I was talking about a 1500 MWh plant, functioning about 96% of the yearly available hours. that includes nights and winters, btw. that means that you would need about 8,4 million plants like yours, plus an intermittent generating capacity that big to cover nights, bad weather etc.
calculations look like this:
1.500 MW/h plant;
365 days a year;
24 hours a day;
yearly availability stats, 96%;
kilowatts instead of Megawatts, multiply by 1.000;
there it is, 8.409.600. multiply by two, because the sun sets, winters bite ( I live at 42 north myself ) etc.

That's no surprise. the surprise is finding people with no skins in the game that actually believe, and finding out that they do not change attitude, consumption habits etc.
In my experience, one of the things I found out is that many of these people, while being mostly able in basic math/science/problem solving, are utterly unprepared in the "analyse" department. they seem unable to gather data, see which is relevant, build a logical thought model and then deciding: the process is inverted, they jump from conclusions to (agreeable) facts, not the other way around.
One day, one of these people was extolling the virtues of Solar energy, while saying that he hated nuclear. I live in a region of Italy, Piedmont, which is weaseling about that, since we get about a fourth of our electricity from French nuclear plants upwind from us, about 250 km away as the crow flies. When I told him and asked if he had already cut a fourth of his electricity needs, his jaw dropped. I then showed him some quick excel calculations about how big an area was needed to replace that with solar, and the attending costs after subsidies, and he went pale. then I added back the subsidies. Ooh, the joy of seeing ignorance squirm!

mind you, I am in exalted company. one of the more interesting factoids about the Euro is that the Bundesbank wanted another denomination printed: the 1.000 Eur Banknote, which belies an attachment to paper money as a store of value alternative to the bank accounts that is remarkable. Germany had the 1.000 Dmark note, issued by the same people who came out of the war on their knees, which tends to instil more paranoia that I can shake a stick at.

not imprecise but incomplete. See, if I leave my money in my country's banking system and or in an electronic form, not only as you just said it is fiat money, BUT, the government can skim how much money they want during a weekend with nobody being the wiser. Here in Italy, it really happened like that years ago, in the process of joining the Euro . It happened in 1992, under the premier Giuliano Amato, and it was enacted retroactively . If I hold US dollars at home, I do not have European fiat money risk, and the currency cannot be "devalued" by MY political masters.

Interestingly enough, when Greece went practically bust, one of the wild stories going around was that banks would freeze account with a view to going back to drachmas. Vigorous capital controls at the frontiers would be enacted, and Euro banknotes would only be exchangeable at the banks. To put some kind of money in circulation, there would have been an interim period in which Euro banknotes would be "stamped" by the banks to recycle them. Seriously, you cannot make up such stupidity alone. my usual question was what happened to a greek citizen who held a bond issued by an American entity denominated in Euros, in the local branch of a German bank. The company issuing the bond HAS to pay Euros, through the central depository. all the rest is a mix of stupidity, fantasy and the ability to discard all the experience accumulated since the Sumer regulated financial transactions in 3.000 BCE.

that's the bits and pieces. the other is that this would have been any dictator's wet dream but that's a sideshow, really.
over and above fiat money, the fact remains that money is a representation of wealth, and it's the only direct representation which you can own and have custody of irrespective of the banking system. that's the principal issue, but a secondary and even more useful to citizens is that cash is a good tripwire on faith in the political system, for the obvious but not so widespread reason that you can always own currency by another country. so the funnel of doom looks like this:

1. use credit cards;
2. use cash;
3 OWN cash in the house as a precaution;
4. own another country's cash.

the abolition of printed cash drives a wedge between 2 and 3. at the first whiff, run.

need facts? the net tax intake from fossil fuels is quite high, here in Italy it's over 80% of the final price. substituting recipients of subsidies only impacts the industrial price, while switching fuel sources in a revenue neutral way means imposing taxes on renewables equals to 80% of their final industrial price.
, Now who's volunteering to tell goverments that they shall rely on 10% less overall revenues to"redistribute"? the government here in Italy is already sweating a diminished tax take in the order of 5% from fossil fuels, obtained through a mix of the economic crisis impacting on family expenses, including car travel, and drivers being more careful fo fuel consumption when they drive.



anybody spot the error yet? OK, I'll show you.

to make it revenue neutral, taxes on renewable energy should be 400% of the final industrial price. that comes by dividing 80% by 20%, which is the correct answer, since given 100 as the final price of fuel, 80 is taxes and 20 is the oil industry revenue. That's taxed as well on earnings, but that's another story, and most probably covered by subsidies.