Donald Trump has repeatedly pledged to slash the national deficit and curb debt during his second term, but a sobering assessment of the nation’s financial health by one of the federal government’s premier fiscal watchdogs suggests Trump 2.0’s policies have not only collectively pushed the federal deficit significantly higher, but put the country on an unsustainable path.
In its latest budget and economic outlook, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a nonpartisan federal agency, revised its cumulative deficit projection for the 2026–2035 period upward by $1.4 trillion compared with its forecast from just a year ago.
“Our budget projections continue to indicate that the fiscal trajectory is not sustainable,” CBO Director Phillip Swagel said in a statement, noting the agency’s latest projections. Under laws passed in Trump’s first year back in office, the national debt in 2030 will surpass the historic high of 106% of GDP, which it reached in 1946. Meanwhile, the balance of Social Security’s Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2032, one year earlier than the CBO projected last January.
I was looking at the same. Some naysayer I know was saying it would never pay back before the panels “failed”.
Of course, he was assuming that the panels would fail with 100% certainty at a certain period of time. He was also assuming that electricity costs are going to stay stagnant. If I have a battery backup installed, that obviously rejiggers things, and I’m assuming they not last very long, either at least when it comes to the timelines one talks about in regards to things like houses.
I am definitely not going to assume that, LOL. That hasn’t even been true in the past year alone, nevermind what some of the more negative predictions have for how costs will be impacted by things like data centers.
Yeah early photovoltaic solar panels weren’t great, in the same way early ev batteries weren’t great. They’ve become far longer lasting and more efficient. The listed life isn’t when it craps out, it’s when it is no longer guaranteed to be within a certain stated efficiency. Much like how phone batteries slowly lose charge capacity as cells break, that’s how solar panels are. For a long time you won’t notice but eventually it’ll break down enough it’s noticeable, and eventually before it stops producing it’ll just not be worth the space that could be used for new panels.
Added solar to my house in 2018. Took out loan for over $20k, had it paid off in a year or two thanks to the SRECs generated by the wHs of the array. Doubt anyone in US could see that now under this clean coal regime, but it could be done well before the conveyed panel efficiency bullshit that likes to be thrown around. Technology Solutions on YT had a video recently that absolutely destroyed a bunch of the common detractors that like to be thrown around.
I can link the SolarEdge page for my array a little later today to show what a 7.2 wH (I think) system produces over 6-ish years, if it helps.
I’ll have to look for that video, sounds interesting.
Yep, the ‘payoff time’ on mine is long, but I am betting they last much longer than that, and that energy prices won’t scale normally. I really want sodium ion batteries to work out, but they are sounding less promising.
We have a big natural gas shortage looming here, and most homes are heated with it. Such an obvious thing to be trying to prepare for, sure heat pumps won’t heat all winter here, but… If I can generate heat using my free electricity 2 or 3 of the months needing heat a year, that is a permanent discount, that only gets better as costs go crazy. People around me don’t really seem to be thinking this way.
I live in Colorado and so probably different heating/cooling circumstances, but people also don’t seem to be thinking about future costs of energy either.
Now, it could be that things turn around, Donvict is out of the picture, and we have a huge boom in solar and wind and through legislation or just from the market being saturated, prices drop. But given the way that things are going right now thanks to the utterly insane Republicans, all I see is those guys fighting against the future in every way possible while they stand aside and let Donvict and his criminal family just grift their way to billions of dollars of ill-gotten gains.