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Doing the math
Credit: Abilene Reporter-News | 10 October 2012 | www.reporternews.com ~~
Now, let me get this straight … apparently all of those graceful wind generating towers west and northeast of Abilene are costing taxpayers a significant piece of change. They’re nice, they’re helpful (if the wind blows), but it appears they can’t pay for themselves.
The article in Sunday’s paper said taxpayers have to pony up $1,600,000,000 ($1.6 billion) as a subsidy to keep all of those workers working. I’m assuming that’s $1.6 billion per year, or all of those jobs would simply evaporate. That information is from our federal governmental dollar-watcher office.
The article further quotes a guy from the wind energy industry saying if the subsidies go away, 37,000 people will be out of a job.
My own math being of the old school No. 2 Ticonderoga-on-a legal-pad methodology, I came up with $43,000 being needed for each job. For each job each year. I checked with a good friend (a close relative, actually) who was a math teacher. She said, yeah, $43,000 is right.
Soooo … we have to give $43,000 every year to each of 37,000 people so the industry can add that to every paycheck so he or she can build a tall, three-bladed widget that won’t work when the wind quits.
That will certainly influence my vote this year.
Jack Boyd, Abilene
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