He also donates all of the profits from his Newman's Own brand of salad dressings to charity. We applaud his benevolence. More often than not, however, people prefer to subsidize their favorite projects using other people's money - taxpayers' money. There is yet another kind of subsidy. All they get in return is a tax write-off that is not enough to pay for their solar toys.
Families living in poverty have every interest in saving money on heating fuel and electricity.
Still, we have millions of investors looking for a good return on their money. That is, there is a huge amount of money available to supply the capital costs the poor can't muster. Because they would get precious little return on their investment, that's why. Nobody is going to make big investments in solar toys that produce piddle power. CNN's correspondent Susan Reed must be intellectually inert, highly overpaid, or independently wealthy.