I'm getting rather annoyed about I keep hearing on television. Economists keep saying that spending is the key to economic growth and it's how we're going to be pushed out of this recession. I'm not denying that spending is part of the economy, but spending inevitably falls under supply and demand. It naturally gravitates to a balance and I think people are missing that.

The main thing that annoys me is that people like Robert Rice and other economists keep saying if the government cuts taxes, bails out the people, gives refund checks that people would save their money or pay off debt. OH THE TRAGEDY!!!! The horrors of saving your money. Oh no!! Paying off your debt. That's treason!!!

There needs to be a balance between capital and spending. Saving your money, paying off debt, investing all falls under the category of capital. Spending is when you consume. Obviously a business will do better if more people buy, but there needs to be capital too. You can't make loans, without capital. You can't make investments without capital.

Americans have been spending way too much and saving too little. Like, this is an undisputed fact. The fact that saving rates have been growing is good. The fact that people are taking any extra money and paying off their debt is good. If you want a credit crisis to be fixed, let people pay off their debt, let people save money. The more capital a bank has, the more money they can lend.

Obviously the government just wants to spend because that's what the government does best. Government spending will never fix this problem. Money that the government spends comes from someone else. The money leaves the economy and comes to them as tax or the money leaves the economy and comes to them as purchased bonds. There's no net gain, just a distortion between capital and spending.

I'm sure I'll get a typical response like "well what would you do?" It's suddenly implied that something must be done. The market is correcting itself from a distortion and that's what has to happen. No amount of spending will change that. When the correction is finished, the economy will be able to get back to business. Cutting taxes would help, but it's not going to change much. The correction will still need to occur.

The only remedy for this problem... is time.

I really wanted to mix a little science and politics today. I'm very passionate about this issue because I am an electrical engineer and I did major in power systems. I've had the chance to study, design and work with the "renewable energy" sources that are so hyped by the government. Well, are wind turbines good enough? I would argue no.

Everyone that reads my blog is always suspicious about my motives since I'm a capitalist and obviously wouldn't support such things. With all the subsidies and slimy businesses involved with the government to produce this stuff, it should be enough to make my point, but I'm going to talk to you about the realities.

When I hear Obama talk about solar panels and wind generators, I think he's talking about this new utopia. The talk that we can get off foreign oil and things like this make me laugh.

Wind turbines produce power, but they're just not good enough and here is why...

Space - The amount of space that is required to generate a sufficient amount of power is massive. I don't think people understand the gravity of how much space is required. You need tens if not hundreds of thousands of wind turbines to generate the same amount of power as a single nuclear power plant. This means that huge portions of land (or water) have to be used.

Man Power - Wind turbines require maintenance. The need for millions of people to do all this maintenance will be needed. Let me repeat that... millions of people to do the maintenance.

Doesn't Follow Load - Wind turbines will never become a significant electricity source because they are unable to follow the load of the grid. Nuclear can follow the grid, gas can follow the grid, coal can follow the grid, dams follow the grid. Wind turbines can't because you have to take what you get. If the wind is blowing 30km/hr, that's what you get.

Essentially all power generation (besides the solar panel) is based on a rotors. Wind turbines, nuclear power, dam power, etc is all done through spinning a rotor. This rotor will have magnets on it. When you rotate a magnetic field around wires, you'll generate a current (ie: electricity).

For the sake of efficiency and cost, you want to have less rotors. Rotors are physically moving parts and they will break. Anything that moves will break. Anything that breaks will need to be fixed and undergo maintenance. The less rotors, the better.

That means we need to find a solution where we can produce more power with less revolutions of a rotor.

Nuclear power is by far the superior option. It's safe (despite what ignorant idiots would tell you). A single nuclear plant will have maybe 4 or 8 rotors and power a lot of cities. You'll need hundreds of thousands of wind turbines to produce the same power.

Doing maintenance on 4 to 8 rotors in a single building is a lot cheaper than doing maintenance to 100,000 rotors stretched over 1000's of acres.

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I'm sure with me making this post that I'll get some very ignorant replies from people telling me I'm wrong. They won't have engineering degrees or know anything about what they're talking about, but I'll get them. Some people have been so indoctrinated by this that they can't accept the fact that it could be bad technology.

There are two types of people that scare me; those that are really into their religion and those that are into the communist/socialist ideology. People often view the religious right as a polar opposite of communism. We have people on one side voting conservative and people on the other side voting liberal. Both hate each other with a passion and would be offended by being linked to the other group. That's what I'm going to do.

Communism and the religious right both have a philosophy for which they live their lives and view the world. Behind that philosophy comes the concept of values and morality, which both contain. All these beliefs, views, political stances are defined on the values and morality (right and wrong).

At this point you see absolutely no similarities, but it isn't until you look at the core of the philosophies that you can truly understand the nature of both these beasts.

Sacrificing The Individual

Both of these groups believe (at the core) that sacrificing the individual is what needs to be done. Value and morality all come from the sacrifice of the individual.

Communists believe that the individual must sacrifice themselves to the "common good". From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs is derived from self sacrifice. Essentially the "common good" is God and you must sacrifice yourself to God to be a moral person.

The religious right believe that the individual must sacrifice themselves to the "will of God". This is where the concept of "social conservatism" comes from. It has nothing to do with the conservative philosophy itself, it is a branch of religious belief working with government to sacrifice the individual.

Self Sacrifice

Self Sacrifice is the goal of both groups. The communist utopia is a government-less place. There is no government there forcing you to sacrifice yourself to the "common good". For it to work, you must want to do it.

The religious right probably wouldn't fear the communist utopia if they could worship God. It would be their perfect society too. They could sacrifice their well being to other people. They could work for the well being of others, donate money to charities and attack those that dare put their self-interest first.

Self Sacrifice is a feeling created inside people through guilt and fear. A communist would say "how dare you spend your pay check on yourself when people are suffering?" The religious right would say "how dare you spend your pay check on yourself without giving to your fellow man? You'll be going to Hell, soon enough."

Forced Sacrifice

We live in the society of forced sacrifice. Through government, the religious right and communists run their agenda on people. We pay taxes while money is moved from those of ability, to those with needs. Homosexuals are denied the same contractual rights as heterosexuals.

The individual is constantly under assault.

The Morality is Altruism

I'm going to define this as a religion and it does encompass both groups. This is a moral view that the individual must be selfless, must put themselves second to the will of others.

Charity and welfare are the same things, except the religious right like charity and the communists like welfare. Each one defines value and goodness from an individuals ability to sacrifice to another.

...But Isn't Giving Good?

Why is giving good? Most of us accept at face value that giving is good and self sacrifice is a virtue. We're taught that from childhood. Have you actually asked why?

Why is it moral to not consume for yourself and let someone else consume on your labor?

Why is it moral to sacrifice the productive to the unproductive?

Why is it moral to put your self-interest below someone elses?

There is an inherent contradiction in this morality, which makes it moot. It's moral to give to someone else, who will use it for their own self-interest, but if you don't give and use it for your own self-interest - you're sinning (you're greedy, piggish).

I don't expect to get through to communists because from what I understand with interacting with them is that they don't have a concept of morality (right and wrong) or a concept of rights and things of this nature. They sacrificed themselves to the "common good" along time ago.

I don't expect to get through to the religious right either since they've sacrificed themselves to God along time ago.

I just wanted both of you to know that you walk hand-in-hand in the destruction of the individual. And even though you view yourselves as opposites, you actually believe in the same things, just not the same methods.

I thought it was important to talk about the failure of stimulus. I've always been against this, but to really understand, you have to recognize why they believe it to be true. We all believe in things, but often why you believe in it is more important.

There are inherent problems with the philosophy behind this stimulus. You'll be noticing a few very important things. The first is that the average Joe and below (Middle Class to Poor) are the ones that will be stimulating. Secondly, the belief that consumption is the key to stimulus. Lastly, that money can be taken from producers to fund this.

I suppose the whole philosophical backing comes from the idea that consumption is the key to stimulus. I often hear people say that if people would just spend there money, there wouldn't be a problem. Even though spending is part of what makes an economy run, it really isn't a stimulus. I don't like the word stimulus, so I'll just call it by what the objective is, more wealth for the economy. That's essentially what we want.

We all know that if the government taxes people in the economy and gives it to other people to spend, we haven't created new wealth. All we've done is redistributed wealth, not increased it.

The government has choices and it appears like this one is going to take from the productive and give to the middle class and poor. They'll give this through rebate checks, bigger welfare checks, bigger unemployment checks, etc. The idea is that the little guy needs to spend their money to stay afloat and that will force them to use it, instead of saving it or paying off debt.

The real heart of the economy comes from the producers. People like to think that pieces of paper in their wallet are wealth, but they're not. They're only representations of wealth in the economy. Just because the government gives you more paper, doesn't mean the producers have created more wealth.

That's my whole beef.

It is the producers that create the wealth, the jobs, and the standard of living we have. Despite all the anti-capitalism and anti-profit people in Washington, this fact will remain. You can curse them out and hate them all, but they're the ones producing.

What Washington and all the other governments around the world need to do is make it easier for the producers to get to work. That means corporate taxes need to be cut or eliminated. That means capital gains taxes need to be cut or eliminated. Red tape needs to be cut back or eliminated.

If you want people to be working, you need to allow producers to produce because that is the only thing that will ever create a job.