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Urban Legends
Last Post 05 Feb 2011 10:29 PM by engineer. 68 Replies. |
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Tommyboy
New Member
Posts:6
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| 20 Jan 2011 10:02 AM |
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Ouch! Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. Didn’t want to get into politics but, since “tax breaks” are the only way Geo is feasible right now, I have another well-known myth for you.
“I’m with the government and I’m here to help you!”
I agree we need to use less fossil fuel. I installed a geo system, even though I didn’t think it would pay out. I just don’t think government has any business being in our business. They get everything wrong. Why would their stance on Geo be any different? Do you want the same kind of government oversight for Geo that we have running our Post Office and Welfare system? Get rid of the waste in government spending, give me a tax break that reflects that, and I can easily buy my own Geo system without government “help”, and have money left over.
There are only a few who can afford to build a new house in this economy. And because things are so tight, they are forced to look for the cheapest way to heat and cool, or a tax break that makes it the cheapest way. The government thinks they know better than the rest of us and makes regulations about things they know nothing about. I doubt anyone in government understands Hydro Fracturing or even knew what a BOP was until they saw one on live TV. Government is continually expanding their ranks to have more people to make and enforce more regulations, and taxes the heck out of us to pay for all this. More regulations and more taxes are sending our jobs and our money overseas. We would all like to say we are doing things to help the planet. But because of our “government”, we can’t even afford to buy reusable bags at the grocery store, much less afford to buy Geo systems, solar panels, or hybrid cars, as we would like.
We need a MAJOR reduction in government programs and personal. We need to stop regulating and taxing our businesses to death. Get the US back to being the manufacturing and technology powerhouse that it should be. Put people back to work in the private sector, and give them the pride they had in their jobs after WW2. Then we would all be buying new houses with Geo systems, and hybrid or electric cars, just because it is the right (green) thing to do, and we have the money to do it. You would sell a lot more Geo systems in a world like that.
Now I expect to get bashed by those who think big government is a good thing, oil and gas are evil, and meat and vegetables are made at the grocery store. Unfortunately these are the same people who think they know enough to write regulations and set tax rates. |
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Looby
Basic Member
Posts:401
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| 20 Jan 2011 11:47 AM |
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Don't like government? ...then you'll LOVE Somolia.
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| One measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions. |
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In the know
New Member
Posts:14
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| 20 Jan 2011 01:49 PM |
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> Tommyboy<
I agree 100%. < smaller,smaller government is the only answer.
Thank you. |
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Tommyboy
New Member
Posts:6
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| 20 Jan 2011 02:08 PM |
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Posted By Looby on 20 Jan 2011 11:47 AM
Don't like government? ...then you'll LOVE Somolia.
Like big government? Then you will LOVE Hugo Chavez. If it is that important, maybe we should just nationalize the Geo industry. |
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Cgallaway
New Member
Posts:47
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| 22 Jan 2011 07:53 PM |
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Urban Legend: You don't need a manual J calc, I've been doing this a long time, in houses this size.
Urban Legend: wind and solar are dependable sources of energy
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joe.ami
Veteran Member
Posts:4377
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| 23 Jan 2011 09:21 AM |
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Posted By Tommyboy on 20 Jan 2011 10:02 AM
Ouch! Didn’t mean to touch a nerve. Didn’t want to get into politics but, since “tax breaks” are the only way Geo is feasible right now.. Good one Tommy. While some percieve tax breaks are the only way geo is feasible, when propane is 2.50/gal or fuel oil 3.00 the annual fuel savings equals the price of a system in about 5 years (in my area). As prices are that high again....... You assume too much. I continue to be astonished that people opposed to be geo would hang out at a geo forum. joe |
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Joe Hardin
www.amicontracting.com
We Dig Comfort!
www.doityourselfgeothermal.com
Dig Your Own Comfort! |
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Cgallaway
New Member
Posts:47
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| 23 Jan 2011 09:49 AM |
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"Get rid of the waste in government spending, give me a tax break that reflects that" If you are paying so much in taxes, you probably could afford to buy your own geo system outright. Also, I would guess that you could afford to heat and cool your home without a geo system. However, since the median income in the U.S., over the last 3 yrs is less than $70,000....I doubt many people have the excess cash on hand to (wisely) make such an expenditure. And I doubt that whatever tax saving you would see (should you get rid of the waste in government) would be more than the current tax break for geo allows. I highly doubt that most people have enough deductions to make it feasible to reject the standard deduction at the end of the year, and therefore would save enough on taxes to make up the difference of the existing geo tax cut. The average tax paid by people with an income of $67,280 in 2008 was 15.68%, or roughly $10,550. Again, the likelihood that you would save all that money just by the feds cutting waste out is ridiculous.
Income source: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/data/statistics/index.html
Tax Source: http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
To the starter of this thread...sorry for getting into politics, I understand that wasn't the intent, but I can't just let misinformation go by unchallenged. the truth is that the tax credits make geothermal systems more affordable for people who choose to have it. We all know the monthly usage bills lower due to geothermal, and the less energy we need to get from other countries, the better our own stability will be. If we want to take into account the other possibility, that the government would help subsidize the costs of either building new power generators or rebuild existing ones, subsidizing geothermal makes sense, because it helps reduce usage on the existing power systems. And, it helps contractors stay busy, generating an income and therefore more tax revenue for the government. So for all our trying to stay off politics, it is difficult. Again, sorry I got off topic.
But, yet another urban legend: Everything the government does is bad: everything the government does is good; providing tax credits to push a certain technology is bad. |
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Tommyboy
New Member
Posts:6
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| 23 Jan 2011 07:07 PM |
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I said I have a Geo system myself and I love it. I bought it even though I doubt it will last the 10.4 years needed to pay it off. And you guys have changed my mind about big government. I now believe Geo is so important that we should add it to the health bill, or the energy bill, or just tack it on to one of the other many bills. Make it mandatory for everyone in the US to purchase a Geo system or be fined. Of course in order to afford this we will need to regulate how much drillers can charge to drill wells, and installers can charge to install the systems. Then we should probably just nationalize the factories that make the heat pumps like we did GM. Of course we will need a couple more government organizations and maybe another Czar to oversee all this. I am sure Drillers and installers will be so happy to stay busy that they won’t mind working longer hours at reduced rates so everyone can afford a new Geo system.
Your exactly right that if we don’t do this, our government might give a few billion dollars worth of military jets to the Saudis, so we can keep getting expensive oil. Or they will build some more coal, natural gas, or nuclear plants to make sure we have enough energy to keep up with our ever growing population plus the millions of illegal immigrants pouring over our borders.
All of us baby-boomers are starting to retire this year, and we demand heavily subsidized Geo systems, so we don’t have to spend our Social Security (don’t mess with that!) money on heating bills. We also demand that mailing payments and letters never cost more than 43 cents, and to be able to mail them on Saturday, no matter what it cost the government.
I am sure Geo contractors are happy about the tax breaks. The only thing that worries me is that there are enough people already getting government checks and industries getting subsides to be able to out vote the people who are actually paying for all of this. I think it was Franklin who said, “they won’t know the worth of water until the well is dry”. |
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geome
Advanced Member
Posts:987
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| 23 Jan 2011 07:26 PM |
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Posted By Tommyboy on 23 Jan 2011 07:07 PM
I said I have a Geo system myself and I love it. I bought it even though I doubt it will last the 10.4 years needed to pay it off. Would please start a new thread on why you don't think the system will last? Maybe someone here can help you if you are having problems. From what I understand, geothermal units last roughly 20 years on average. |
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| Homeowner with WF Envision NDV038 (packaged) & NDZ026 (split), one 3000' 4 pipe closed horizontal ground loop, Prestige thermostats, desuperheaters, 85 gal. Marathon. |
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docjenser
Veteran Member
Posts:1400
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| 24 Jan 2011 02:24 AM |
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Posted By Tommyboy on 15 Jan 2011 07:07 PM
It cost me $5,000 more (after tax breaks) than a new electric,... If it wasn’t for the tax breaks, it certainly wouldn’t pay. ..... I don’t like that the government is giving so much tax break just to sway people to Geo systems. .
I guess you are so obsessed with your anti government thoughts that you do not see the contradictions in your statement. You complain about the government swaying people into geo via the tax breaks...and you are the one then using that financial incentive.
In addition, I suggest that you might want to look a bit over the edge of the plate you are sitting on. You might realize that the 8 mostly economically advanced countries (G8), and in addition all the countries which score highly on the quality of life by the people living there (Austria, Switzerland, Scandinavia, Canada etc) actually do have a functioning government where people actually pay relatively high taxes. While none of them are perfect (china, russia...), they are in general doing better than the rest of the world. They all have in common that they have a government elected by the people living there (again, china being an exception), ...they are called democracies. And the people can get rid of the government soon or later, and that creates a balances.
Then you might realize that you are living in a country where, while again not perfect, most people not living in it (from countries with lesser government) would love to trade with you.
I guess the take home message is: Stop complaining, and start appreciating what you got! |
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| www.buffalogeothermalheating.com |
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joe.ami
Veteran Member
Posts:4377
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| 24 Jan 2011 08:26 AM |
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Thanks for keeping this A political Tommy. |
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Joe Hardin
www.amicontracting.com
We Dig Comfort!
www.doityourselfgeothermal.com
Dig Your Own Comfort! |
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toddm
Veteran Member
Posts:1152
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| 24 Jan 2011 08:58 AM |
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Just FYI Cgalloway, the tax foundation is a not a credible source for income tax statistics because it owes its existence to folks who think they pay too much. That has been a genuine problem since 2008 because the effective federal tax rate has dropped like a stone -- by some estimates to its lowest level for middle-class filers has since 1955. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3151 Hold the applause: it's low because the recession clobbered income and the stimulus piled new tax breaks on top of the old.
The tax foundation fudges this fact by using average instead of median numbers (the point at which half the results are higher and half lower.) If you look at the chart you used for the $67,280 figure, you'll see that the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 23 percent of all income tax collections. Toss them into an average number for the top 50 percent and their effective tax rate puts a huge skew on the rates paid by the next 49 percent. Use the Form 1040 tables and you will see that a couple with $67,280 in AGI, no kids and no deductions of any sort, would have paid $6,450 in taxes in 2010, or a 9.6 percent effective rate. Toss in a couple kids, child care credits, a 401k and a big mortgage, and it is quite possible to cut that burden in half. You'll see the tax foundation wrestling with this unpleasant development if you read between the lines in the report you cite (i.e. its exclusion from its analysis of the 52 million returns in 2008 with zero or negative tax liability.)
All the noise on this forum about how geo isn't really all that expensive, one suspects, owes to the fact that the tax credit has less appeal than the industry expected.
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TechGromit
Advanced Member
Posts:634
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| 24 Jan 2011 01:47 PM |
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Posted By JeffInCO on 11 Jan 2011 09:03 PM
On an absolute temperature scale (Rankine goes along with Fahrenheit), 0 F is 460 Rankine. So half of 0 F is 460 /2 = 230 Rankine = -230 F.
I doubt there are too many air source heat pumps that work at the temp 
Jeff
I have an ASPH, and it does work when the temperature is below freezing, but it runs non-stop and takes forever to make the house any warmer. I've given up running it when it's below freezing. I use a space heater now in the master bedroom and with it my Kwh usage is lower this month then last year, and it's been even colder on average. |
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TechGromit
Advanced Member
Posts:634
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| 24 Jan 2011 02:00 PM |
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Posted By Tommyboy on 23 Jan 2011 07:07 PM
I said I have a Geo system myself and I love it. I bought it even though I doubt it will last the 10.4 years needed to pay it off.
Not putting a lot of faith into your system are you. I just replaced my system in 2009 and the Geo it replaced lasted 18 years. (with some repairs to the blower motor). I should to see at least 15 years of good service out of my new system, maybe even 20. |
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TechGromit
Advanced Member
Posts:634
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| 24 Jan 2011 02:03 PM |
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Posted By Tommyboy on 15 Jan 2011 07:07 PM
“Ground Source Heat Pumps always pay for themselves.”
All depends on what kind of job your Geo system gets. Geo Systems that work at McDonald's tend to take longer to pay for themselves than the Geo systems that work as bank executives. This is a tough economy and I know a lot of Geo systems unemployed right now. |
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Cgallaway
New Member
Posts:47
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| 24 Jan 2011 10:34 PM |
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@Toddm: I actually used the sources I did because I believed the tax shown was on the high side. My point was that cutting out any waste in government spending (and then passing the savings on to taxpayers) wouldn't yield as big of a savings as TommyBoy suggests. Even with inflated tax figures (of what the citizens actually pay) as reported by the tax foundation, any savings in income taxes is still much smaller than the existing tax credit. In other words, people spend a lot less on taxes than what the tax foundation suggests, the tax credit, which I've seen on here can be taken in multiple years, would save a customer much more money than a reduction of taxes. A third way of putting this is that TommyBoy would be less likely to afford a geothermal system if the geothermal tax credit were not in place, and wasteful government spending were reduced (with the savings being passed on to the taxpayers in form of reduced tax rates).
I do agree with you for the reasoning behind why the rates in the tax foundation is high...point being, if what tommyboy suggests doesn't make sense with obviously inflated tax rates, it won't make sense with any closer to reality tax rate estimates. |
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toddm
Veteran Member
Posts:1152
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| 25 Jan 2011 07:47 AM |
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I hear you Cgallaway. In fact, there is no way to bring spending in line with today's level of taxation, which is unsustainable. When congress can no longer ignore this fact, it must swing the ax on the middle class as well as the rich. Because raising marginal rates is too difficult politically, the tax hikes likely will be buried in "reform" that strips away the special breaks that Congress has handed out through the years. Reagan did this successfully in 1986. My crystal ball is a good as anyone's, which is to say useless, but I wouldn't count on energy tax credits surviving.
That said, if you count tax breaks as government spending by the back door, as many economists do, then TommyBoy is going to get his wish, too.
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joe.ami
Veteran Member
Posts:4377
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| 25 Jan 2011 08:06 AM |
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Ahhh.....
relaxing in the tax accountants chat room |
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Joe Hardin
www.amicontracting.com
We Dig Comfort!
www.doityourselfgeothermal.com
Dig Your Own Comfort! |
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Tommyboy
New Member
Posts:6
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| 04 Feb 2011 12:33 PM |
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Here is something that is not a myth.
“Politics is a zero-sum game. One person’s gain is of necessity another person’s loss. Political allocations of resources are conflict enhancing, while market allocations are conflict reducing.”
I guess you are so obsessed with your “pro” government thoughts that you do not see the contradictions in “your” statements.
I am very appreciative of what I have, and I don’t want to lose it. I am only speaking up about this because I believe all that is needed for evil to flourish is for good people to say or do nothing. If we keep letting government get bigger, paying people to have more babies, and giving entitlements to illegal immigrants and those who don’t want to work just to secure their “votes”, we will need a bailout like several of the European countries have. And whom do you think will bail out the US? Nobody, we are doomed if we don’t get control of our government spending.
And nothing last 15 to 20 years anymore, they plan it that way.
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docjenser
Veteran Member
Posts:1400
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| 04 Feb 2011 03:16 PM |
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I doubt that any of the G8 need a bailout, they actually doing things quite successful, and those were the once I was referring to. While I am with you that sometimes too many incentives for people not to work anymore is counterproductive, and avoiding that this becomes a forum for liberal democrats versus hardcore republicans, we might want to stay focus on how this relates to geothermal and renewable energy, and then it is less a questions of federal and state policy.
So the questions is wether the government of a country (USA) which uses a form of energy for space conditioning which is limited in quantity soon or later, some of what has to be imported from countries which like to take our $$$ but otherwise are not really sympathetic to the US (our $$$ strengthen them), and is less environmentally friendly (us humans do need O2, not CO2, to breath). should support the further development and dissemination of a technology which allows us (the country) to not burn as much carbons, reduce our use of fossil fuels and significantly reduce our overall energy consumption. The reason we did not do this in the past was not because fossil fuel were a better way to go, but simply significantly cheaper, and alternatives were not technologically advanced enough to be competitive.
So should the government support and help implement various technologies, including geo, and invest in it to counter the effects of fossil fuel burning as mentioned above? One of the things which G8 countries have in common (in contrast to 3rd world countries) that they had governments which used tax dollars to invest into advancing technologies to further benefit the country for decades to come. And that research an development has helped make them the industrial and technological powerhouses they are today.
So you are afraid to loose what you have, but you have to understand that without that government structure you would be born in a 3rd world country and would unlikely have much to appreciate. And even if you would have prospered, you would have to spend you money now on armored cars, fenced in properties and your own security force.
So you have to seed in order to harvest. Every company has to innovate and invest to stay competitive, even the one called USA.
For me, one of the greatest scientific accomplishment of mankind was the splitting of the atom with the release of an unimaginable amount of energy.
And one of the biggest government projects was the Manhattan Project. At that time, it costs a lot of tax dollar. But where would we be without mastering today the art and science of nuclear technology? It changed the world forever, much to the benefit of everyone living here, in Europe, or any where in the world.
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