I was arguing with my GF over the weekend about why unemployment is so high, and why businesses are failing. She told me it was because of the wage gap. That executives make huge salaries with relatively few real responsabilities, and the people who actually do the work don't make enough to survive.
I rejected her argument out of hand, because that is not the reason at all why businesses are struggling. The fact is EVERY industry (except approved "green" industries) are being regulated out of existence.
It is ridiculous how much those guys pay themselves...somewhat selfish. Though I agree with you JC, I would say there needs to be some reality in our nation's business leaders as many make multiple millions while companies are failing...not that they don't need a lot of work at that point, but that's when the stock options make a good driver by becoming worthless if a company fails and very valueable if a company succeeds by pulling out of a tail spin. Most business leaders used to police themselves and have true feelings they needed to care for employees in the past....now many are ruthless people caring only for their own selfish desires which mirrors the nation's decline in all other facets....so goes the morals of the nation.
Since the morals of the nation are evaporating, selfishness is out of control and I would say needs to be regulated...but done smartly wihout infringing on individual freedoms. But being on top and getting the $$$$'s is very much a relationship/good old boy thing. One way to drive a wedge into the good old boy issue is to not allow voting by mutual funds or manager's who control or hold a stock. Eliminate the voting power of, say Fidelity or Goldman Sach's, and then suddenly what is the reason to put your MBA buddy on a big fat salary as a director? Companies do need directors to reel in sanity by not being in day-to-day operations, but if only a flesh and blood person could vote a stock and not a "trick pony" or "paper sham" 3rd party entity treated as a person the business leaders would be far more receptive to indivdual workers and individual stock holders.
Being able to frac has always been controlled by states. Protection of groundwater has been at the forefront for over a half-century that I know of. Fracing has been on the scene that long and longer guys....now every slug with an agenda is crawling out from underneath their rock to make a buck or scream some agenda.
You want an agenda, I was working as Exploration engineer for a company evaluating the Marcellus shale in Penn., New York, etc. about 4 and a half years ago. One of the issues was getting rid of water....want to know who the shill was screaming environmental tragedy, etc....the Kennedy family. See, installing deep disposal wells to put wastewater in don't really exist up there in the numbers need so companies were looking for deep saltwater sands to put waste water into.....well, well, well,...the Kennedy family owned a snake oil company that treated wastewater at a high price. Understand now?
Solar is a niche' market because the solar cells are not efficient enough to do anything more than payout before they need to be replaced and that cost is far higher than commercial power from your local utility. When they push the efficiency up to 21 or so percent...then they may take off and be comparable in long term cost. Higher percent efficiency means you need far less...so for instance the average today is 15 percent efficiency (less overlifetime) so to get a comparable amount of energy out you need say 10 units of low efficiency cells versus 6 units of high efficiency cells...a reduction of 40 percent in the amount of cells you need to buy and you'd anticipate maybe 40 percent reduction in cost.
The market is killing a bad economic idea, solar cells, in favor of more economic alternatives....i.e., people are not going to pay higher costs to be green. And I hate the use of that word green now, it means a company is going to supply less to you at the same or higher cost....duck low when you see some company touting green whatever. Some hotels tried that for a while to keep from changing sheets if you stayed more than a day or so...or to give you enough towels, etc., etc., etc.