this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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They manufacture it and sell it to us. The US led solar research. China organizations certainly contributed to research as well, but they're a much larger manufacturor than the US, despite the significant research advancement contribution by the US. US politicians failed to put any backing into domestic effects to manufacture solar and now it's second fiddle in an industry its research helped create. So, it's not in the stone age, because it's paying out the ears for it while other countries profit heavily.
So then we actually do "benefit from it", right? If we actually wanted to assemble the batteries, place thousands of components on circuit boards, whatever, we could.
If it's so disadvantageous, why don't you start a company to manufacture solar panels or whatever in the US and become super rich? Why doesn't insert random rich person do so if it's so obvious? The answer is because it's probably not so obvious: lots of regulations, expensive labor, etc.
What's your point? My comment was that the US missed out on the opportunity to be the dominant financial beneficiary in this sector. Is you point that it gets something out of it should and that should be good enough? That's silly.
It is obvious. For years the Chinese government has provided significant financial incentives for companies to manufacture solar panels. The US until recently has provided almost nothing, instead heavily subsidizing fossil fuels. The US does now subsidize solar, and people are making panels. Solar is one of the fastest growing industries in the US. A rich guy has gotten involved - Elon Musk, who owns Solar City. If the US has acted earlier, it would dominate the solar industry, and now it's a second-rate player. It's so tiring talking to people on the Internet. Did you look up any of this before forming your hypothetical questions? "Why doesn't a rich guy do it?" Ugh.
You didn't say that, you just said "benefits" in general as though you were talking about all the benefits. I was just responding to what you wrote: that was my point.
Fine though, now I understand you were just talking about a part of the potential economic benefit of manufacturing those products. In the future, you could make these kinds of misunderstandings less likely by being more specific.
Is it your position Solar city 1) currently manufactures its own solar panels and 2) doing so is currently profitable and the business is thriving? Because as far as I can see it's not even clear they're still manufacturing solar panels. They had a deal with Panasonic but Panasonic exited a year or so ago, presumably because they couldn't get enough of a compensation for their investment even with the subsidies. Even at that point, it seems like they were just assembling components at the most, they weren't doing anything like fabricating the chips themselves.
"A New York State Comptroller’s audit found just 54 cents of economic benefit for every subsidy dollar spent on the factory, and external auditors have written down nearly all of New York’s investment. Most of the solar-panel manufacturing equipment bought by the state has been sold at a discount or scrapped." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_New_York
Regarding effects after Tesla acquired Solar City: "By 2019, Tesla's solar panel market share was falling, prompting the company to cut its sales force. Revenue from Tesla's energy generation and storage operations from January to September 2019 fell 7% from a year earlier to $1.1 billion." — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity
My take away is Musk tried to milk as much as he could from the subsidies and generally for society the thing was a net value loss. That's in line with my conception of how he operates.
My comment did not say that the US did not benefit. My first comment did not even use the word "benefit" or any of it's varants. I've stopped reading your comment here, as you obviously are not doing people the curtousy of reading theirs.
My mistake, I thought you were the person I originally replied to. My post was also specifically criticizing how they said we didn't benefit:
"Quick, let’s sell this US funded tech to the Chinese or Japanese or Germans and not actually benefit from home grown research. This has happened so many times over the decades it’s disgusting."
I'm not sure why you'd reply to my post if you're talking about something different, but I'll admit I assumed responses wouldn't be non sequiturs.
Wow, what a crazy coincidence. You stopped reading right before the strong counterargument. Seems to happen a lot on the internet, people just randomly get bored right at that point or find some other reason to be offended and blame the other party.