Redstate

...But it is eight times as expensive as a traditional bulb, gives off a harsher light and has a peculiar appearance....

The proposals discussed at what Wal-Mart dubbed the “light bulb summit” ranged from the practical (advertise the bulbs on the back of a Coke 12-pack) to the quixotic (create a tax on incandescent bulbs to make them more expensive)....

All we need to do is add a spcial tax of 700% to incandescent bulbs to make their price equal that of fluorescent ones.

Then we need to have a small income tax increase on the rich so that we can rebate the poor the price difference when they buy fluorescent bulbs.

And another small tax increase on the rich should cover the environmental impacts.

Sounds perfect right?

Seriously though, I've been using them at home for some time out of convenience, though I don't think they have the consistent brightness of the incandescents they are supposedly comparable to.

The environmental question also reminds me of one I'm still waiting to see. One day when I'm going to see a paper towel dispenser in a public bathroom that says, "Unlike hot air dryers that use polluting electricity and contribute to global warming, these dispensers use a biodegradable product from a renewable resource, so they are a much better choice for the environment."
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Bipartisanship = give + take. Republicans give. Democrats take.

Wal-Mart is starting to sound like one of those companies that tells us what we need or want as opposed to letting us telling Wal-Mart what we need or want. I'll pass on the fluorescent for the most part. While we use some, our reading lights, etc. are incandescent and will remain that way.

Of course, I spend most of my time at Target anyway.

My house is all flourescent, mostly because my wife is one of those people who has to have every light in the house on all day long. Flourescents help keep me sane and out of the poor house. Besides, I work in the environemntal field so I can get my "good intentions" badge from other places.

I really don't think the Hg issue is that big a deal. Flourescents are supposed to last up to five years, so the amount of Hg disposed of in that time falls to near zero. We're going on two years at my house and we haven't changed a bulb yet. Of course, now that I posted this, they'll all blow out tomorrow, and I'll have to hire a contractor to take away my kitchen garbage.

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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman

They are seriously underperforming as a business. It just figures that as soon as someone gets turned into a left-wing bete noire, that's when they peak.

I wish I knew if there was a causal relationship here, but I don't. I had a chance to buy into WMT but I passed and bought something else. So far, it was a good move.

will decry this as another way that Walmart is keeping the poor down. I think within 5 years the poor will not have light because the big mean Walmart will not keep regular lightbulbs in stock and forces them to buy the more expensive bulbs, heh.

Peace through superior fire power:)

start showing that Wal-Mart customers are buying old bulbs elsewhere and the squiggly things just keep sitting on the displays in the aisles, Mr. CEO will punch his ticket back from "There" in a hurry.

Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.

And it's cost-effective to standardize your inventory, so keeping two kinds of bulbs around is probably not optimal.

This doesn't really apply to Walmart, which is commonly misunderstood as a retail organization. In reality, they're a supply-chain management organization driven heavily by information processing. They know at least as much about inventory management as anyone on the planet.

The Academy is open.

There are some lights that my wife likes to keep on all night. The standard incandecents burned out too often and switching has saved me from changing the bulbs as often. That the fluorescent bulbs also use less power that their cousins is an added benefit.

But I've had some problems with them.

1. The "bulbs" don't fit in all light fixtures. They tend to have a wide base and be longer than the standard bulbs (at least in the brighter wattages). Also, if you have any small lamps with the clamp on shades, they won't clamp on to the fluorescents.

2. They seem to not work well in cold areas. They glow very dimly when it's cold and take several minutes to warm up to an acceptable brightness.

3. They may "burn out" if used in a small enclosed fixture. That may have just been a problem with the brand I happened to have.

But in applications that don't fit those exceptions, I'm happy with them.

Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.

in order for WalMart to grow, they need to engender the affection of the "affluent left," and to do so they have to ally with them in their myriad social engineering and environmental alarmism ventures. That's a very interesting strategy that should - before long - give rise to the next Sam Walton, the orginal who by now must be spinning in his resting place.

While flourescents make sense in some situations, why not just turn off unnecessary lights?

I like that the good ones just go on and on forever. Sure, the first one I had was far too large for the cover to fit on my ceiling lamp, but it lasted YEARS. It was great.

I'm just glad they keep being made smaller as time goes on.

Run like Reagan!

in a place that gets only 5-6 hours of "daylight" per day from Nov. thru Feb. And because the Sun is so low on the horizon and the terrain so mountainous, you can't see the Sun much of the time even though astronomically, it is above the horizon. I've experimented with most every kind of lighting available at one time or another.

The only places I use conventional incandescents anymore are the vanity mirror in my wife's bathroom and the swing arm lamps we have over our bed. The GE Reveal is a pretty life-like spectrum and the wife loves them for putting on her paint and powder - 300 watts worth that she is constitutionally incapable of turning off. The swing arms have three-ways for low light and reading and there is no alternative to incandescent if you want three ways.

The garage, bedrooms, hall, and kitchen all have flourescents. If you spend the money for good quality fixtures that use the T-8 tube, two double 40 watt fixtures will give you "daylight" in a garage; one will do it for a kitchen counter area. I've never quite gotten used to the delay when you switch them on, especially in the hall or bedrooms, but they give good light and if you buy the better ones, the color is acceptable.

All the other lights, both area and task, are halogens. I like the color and they are somewhat more energy efficient, but they are spendy. The World gets darker as you get older and both of us suffer a bit from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), best described as the irresistable urge to sleep and drink too much when it's dark all the d****d time, so we have a couple of the tres spendy full spectrum flourescents, one over my desk, on as we speak, and another as a reading light by the living room sofa. Those things are great for giving a really bright spot in a dark room.

A boat without a generator will teach you a lot about energy budgets. We spend a lot of time either in remote harbors with no shore power or at anchor, so any electricity we use is irreplacable without firing up the main engines; since fuel docks are few and far between and marine engines are very thirsty, you don't want to do that just to charge batteries. The lights that must be on, nav, anchor, and a couple of stair lights, are all LED; they're still expensive and no good for task lighting, but they last forever and use almost no electricity. All the other lighting is halogen; 12v flourescents are either very expensive or useless.

We don't have a WalMart here, so I don't have a dog in that fight, but from what I've learned about dealing with envirowhackos and other Lefties, trying to placate them just makes you seem weak and makes them want more.

In Vino Veritas

It's remarkable to me that anyone would go after Walmart for pushing flourescents.

It's a good thing for Walmart. They sell zillions of flourescent bulbs, at a price many times higher than incandescents, and book the revenue now. It's a good thing when companies make money.

It's a good thing for consumers. For a relatively small up front outlay per home (if you can't afford a $6 lightbulb for every fixture in your house, you are living in too big a house for your income level) they save a lot of money down the line. It's one of the best after tax investments available.

It's good for the country. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil, which is a very good thing, because every dollar we ship overseas to an OPEC country weakens us economically and helps fund people who hate our way our life.

That Glenn would criticize it just because some SUV liberals might also like it strikes me as knee jerkism in the extreme.

And with careful control of the thermostat, and aggresively keeping things turned off when not needed, our average light bill on a 5b/3bath/2400+sf house in Houston, Texas, is < $100 permonth, including summer.

I don't like fluorescent lighting and avoid it whenever possible, which apparently is going to be harder to do - thanks, WalMart. At home and at work I use full-spectrum fluorescent lighting if I need bright lighting, because it provides all the colors of the spectrum, and thus is closest to pure sunlight. (http://www.fullspectrumsolutions.com/cmenuitem_12.htm). Regular fluorescent lighting is unhealthy and causes a lot of problems. It robs the eyes of visual purple, causes depression, and contributes to premature aging. Like fluoride in the water supply, fluorescent lighting is everywhere, and who asked for it in the first place.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. Mark Twain

Every so often they get a boat load in and you can get 100 watt equivalents for a little over a dollar a bulb.

As for the whole trade thing. If the Chinese want to do whatever it takes make a florescent bulb cheap enough that home depot sells it for a buck more power to them. I would hazard that we are most definitely the big winners on that transaction.

Veritas magna est et praevalet.

I equipped about 2/3rds of the house with them a couple months back and have been happy so far. For whatever reason, I had a lot of bulbs burning out quickly in some areas around the house (usually the areas that are hard to change). So far so good on these. My electric bill was down a little as well.

I don't really get into the political side of this issue, but it seems like in the long run it's cheaper to buy these. Wal-Mart makes some money, consumers save some money in the long run, I don't see how everyone doesn't win here.