Sunday, August 18, 2013

True America: Power on the Land

It may hard to believe that as late as 1940 75% of American farmers and their families were without electric power. Private electrical companies thought it too expensive to connect rural areas of America; cities with dense populations of potential customers was a market based solution. Of course farm life has all changed since the Department of Agricultural's Rural Electrification Administration began providing farms "government power" in 1935. So has the social structure of farming in America. It is no longer dominated by family operations and cooperatives, but replaced by profit corporations operating on industrial scale. Whether this transformation has been good for the land and its products is questionable. Many Americans are returning to foodstuffs produced organically and by local farmers. Nevertheless, this nostalgic and somewhat romanticized video produced for the REA is a revealing look back at the way it used to be without the power and running water we now take for granted:



Is it too apostate to ask something like a "Solar Electrification Administration" be created to subsidize the installation of residential solar electrical generation across the United States? Oh, US Person forgot, that's too socialist! Well, the family in the video looked pretty happy with a socialist program. And don't tell those go-go Silicon Valley marketeers they benefited from 40 years of government subsidies and loans*. But nooooo, austerity for you! Just sit back, enjoy the wildfires and floods on TV, don't worry, and be happy!

Part Two
Part Three

*To take just one current example: Tesla, the electric car maker, recently paid off its $465 million loan from the Department of Energy thanks in part to brisk sales of its Model S. Each customer buying an expensive Model S receives a $7500 federal tax credit. Tesla received $68 million from sales of its California clean air tax credits to other carmakers to post a modest $11 million profit for the first quarter, 2013.  Of course, Musk claims Tesla would have been a success without the government loan, but before he got it, Tesla had to slash its workforce in 2008.  Tesla raised just $278 million before the Model S made it to market.  After mostly good reviews an IPO raised $226 million more.  Because the start-up is profitable, CEO Elon Musk (with a name like that, how can you loose?) realized a gain of $2 billion on his shares from May 8 to July 12th.  Tax subsidies to high tech firms are coast to coast from California and Oregon to North Carolina amounting to hundreds of millions.  See the article, "Free Ride" in the September-October issue of Mother Jones.