MISH’S Global Economic Trend Analysis
Proving that idiocy truly has no bounds, Spain issued a “royal decree” taxing sunlight gatherers. The state threatens fines as much as 30 million euros for those who illegally gather sunlight without paying a tax.
The tax is just enough to make sure that homeowners cannot gather and store solar energy cheaper than state-sponsored providers.
Via Mish-modified Google Translate from Energias Renovables, please consider Photovoltaic Sector, Stunned
The Secretary of State for Energy, Alberto Nadal, signed a draft royal decree in which consumption taxes are levied on those who want to start solar power systems on their rooftops. The tax, labeled a “backup toll” is high enough to ensure that it will be cheaper to keep buying energy from current providers.
Spain Privatizes the Sun
Via Google translate from El Pais, please consider Spain Privatizes The Sun
If you get caught collecting photons of sunlight for your own use, you can be fined as much as 30 million euros.
If you were thinking the best energy option was to buy some solar panels that were down 80% in price, you can forget about it.
“Of all the possible scenarios, this is the worst,” said José Donoso, president of the Spanish Photovoltaic Union (UNEF), which represents 85% of the sector’s activity.
Before the decree it took 12 years to recover the investment in a residential installation of 2.4 kilowatts of power. Following the decree, it will take an additional 23 years according to estimates by UNEF.
Petition of the Candle Makers Revisited
And so the “Petition of the Candle Makers” comes to pass.
I have written about the “petition” on many occasions, but here is the latest reference: Extremely Difficult to Keep Up With Economic Stupidity
Reflections on “Unfair Competition”
Corporations always consider it “unfair” when any other company can do things faster, smarter, or cheaper than they can. The buggy whip industry once protested cars.
Today, land-line telecom companies have to compete with wireless and they don’t like it. Now, we see protests about VOIP (voice over internet protocol).
Technology marches on. But France does not like it. The French solution is to tax Skype because it has an “unfair advantage“.
This is an age-old unwinnable argument.
Petition of the Candle Makers
The ultimate irony is France’s preposterous “unfair advantage” argument was lampooned by French economist Frederic Bastiat back in 1845 when he penned ‘Petition of the Candle Makers‘.
In his article, candle makers were incensed that the light of the sun could be had for free. The sun’s unfair trade advantage was to the “detriment of fair industries” who could not compete against the sun’s price.
Something had to be done to “shut off as much as possible, all access to natural light, and thereby create a need for artificial light” so that “industry in France will encouraged”.
The moral to this story is “Don’t propose something purposefully stupid hoping to make a point. Some idiot might actually think it’s a good idea and do it”.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/07/spain-levies-consumption-tax-on-sunlight.html#YvdA9Iu7oJTfj5dY.99
Taxing the sunlight now, huh? It’s long past time for the king’s head to roll down the street. He should have had his head cut off long ago if he even thought of such a thing.
How much maniacal tyranny will the people of Spain endure before they realize it’s time to hang them all? Is it any different in America?
Agreed.
All the European royalty is on borrowed time.
The people will soon have had enough.
-flek
Kind of like how the U.S. government fines its citizens for collecting rain water for their own personal use.
Doing anything that reduces what you spend, and therefore what you have to earn, pay taxes on, and then funnel through corporations, is anathema to both governments and the corporations that run the governments. We will have no human cows jumping the fence to freedom on this ranch called earth!
The system is set up to extract “milk” from every human in the form pure digital wealth, called “money”. This “milk” has none of the disadvantages of the white stuff which can spoil and has real storage and transport costs. Citizens are seen as cows, governments are the cowboys. Political boundaries are fencing and cross-fencing for the ranches, and bankers own the ranches. If you don’t like being a cow on their ranch and resist a bit too much, you become the other thing cows are turned into: dead meat.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”
– Frederick Douglass
Nice quote for this article, Bonnie. Frederick Douglas would have said this long before modern psychology and propaganda techniques, in combination with an educational system finely tuned to turn out ignorant, docile idiots, had raised the threshold at which push-back occurs. That’s why those of us who somehow escaped the dumbing down and see through the propaganda are left with our jaws dropped over what the people around us are putting up with.
Air breathing tax coming next.
The “air breathing tax” is ALREADY here: It’s called “carbon tax”… …
All of this is based on lies, as most people here will already know. For those of you who have not seen the documentary “The Great Global Warming Swindle” http://youtu.be/YtevF4B4RtQ it is the best history of this scam.
Next it will be air taxed. How far does this BS go and how long before we say NO to these twits
We’ve been saying NO to these twits and they don’t listen.
This leaves one other option.
-flek
Well Steve, wake up dude, a clean air tax is already in the makings. Just Google “Britain Clean Air Tax”.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/coalition-plans-tax-on-fresh-air-177406
Er, you might want to check the date of that article… 🙂
Go to youtube and search for Dean Clifford or Rob Menard. You’re as free as you choose to be. Make sure to be ready to take notes.
Menard’s good. I have 4 of his dvds. I bet they wish they’d never taken his daughter away from him, he’s caused them all kinds of problems since.
John Harris in England is another good one.
I just wonder what has to go through someones mind to even contemplate something like that….its Craziness….
Has everybody had enough of this bullshit yet ? In Ireland they have started taxing your shi* with a new tax on septic tanks ! In reality we are consenting to all this by deception , so do not apply submit or register if you know what’s good for you . Rock on Dean Clifford !