As explained earlier [AtE Apr 87], the Supercooled Supercol-lider (SSC) is a Big Science run amok. The accelerator, which will smash particles at 20 trillion eV against each other in a 56 mile-circumference circular underground tunnel, is now being built in Texas at a cost of $8.5 billion, and is likely to bring tons of new data, but no real insight into the foundations of physics, which are shaky in more important and more cheaply tested points. It was approved by the congressional lawyers; what few scientists there are in Congress (such as Don Ritter, R-Pa.) voted against it.
But the US has hit hard times, so how to raise the money? By mugging Japan, of course. The Japanese, who are very good in ap-plied science, but whose basic science largely languishes and is pursued by dedicated scientists working in appalling, near Soviet-like conditions, were "asked" by Bush to chip in more than $1 bil-lion to a project that they had neither approved, nor even been consulted about. The Education President has apparently not suc-ceded in mugging them, but even the idea of asking them is preposterous and typical of advertising his policy of out-Gephardt-ing Gephardt or any other of his (Bush's) fellow-Democrats.
The Japanese were sandbagged into buying an additional 20,000 US cars, which cost a lot more and break down more often. Bush did this with the on-the-spot help of representatives of auto-workers beggared by Japan, such as Lee Iacocca (last year's salary $4.5 million plus) who told them what the free market was all about, or else. This has all been discussed, but what is amazing are the invariably omitted points:
1) the Japanese drive on the left, and Detroit makes no right-hand drives. Will they re-tool for the various fractions of 20,000 cars, charging the Japanese the uncollected $1 billion for them? Or will they just let the Japanese use the cars as oversized anchors for ships in Yokohama harbor?
2) Bush and the other boys with the $ trillion deficit are going gaga over the trade deficit with Japan, caused by Americans volun-tarily buying goods and paying for them. But included in the "deficit" are the investments of the Japanese in automobile fac-tories in the US where they produce better and cheaper cars than Iacocca, and provide, I am told, 17,000 jobs for Americans.
After giving such lessons about the Free Market I, too, would have slipped under the table and thrown up.
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Vol. 19, No. 6
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Volume 19 Issue/No.: Vol. 19, No. 6 Date: February 01, 1992 10:13 AM Title: A lack of outrage
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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