Depreciation has fallen from 10.2% of corporate gross product in 1991 to 9.4% last year, as corporate America took big writeoffs of obsolete plant and equipment in the early Nineties.
Yes, there will be additional pollution abatement costs that will undoubtedly be reflected in some obsolete plant shutdowns, temporary job dislocation, and slightly higher electricity bills.
That is not taken for granted in a city and a state numbed by companies that closed obsolete plants and sent tens of thousands of high-paying auto jobs to the South and overseas.
In these cases, the utility book value of nuclear or technologically obsolete plants and equipment exceeds market value.
You contend that higher fossil fuel prices make nuclear power costs look more "reasonable" without acknowledging that decommissioning nuclear power plants will be more expensive than constructing them in the first place, as obsolete nuclear plants are entombed in perpetuity.
Heavy industry (i.e., shipbuilding, steelworks, and oil refining) has become obsolete; however, plants were modernized to produce automotive parts, chemicals, electronics, tobacco, paper, and foodstuffs.
It is also part of an effort by private interests and municipalities along the Hudson, stretching from Yonkers to Troy, to reclaim waterfronts long blocked by obsolete industrial plants that once relied on water transportation to bring in raw materials and ship out finished goods.
Instead of underwriting that project, which would have turned coal into a hydrocarbon gas, filtered out the carbon and burned the hydrogen, the government said it would contribute $737 million to remake an obsolete oil-burning plant in Meredosia, Ill.
By going online too aggressively, the music industry could anger its existing retailers and make its investment in compact disc plants obsolete.
All these developments could add up to a future in which Deepwater Wind and Bay State Wind end up operating side by side, providing below-market-rate power to both Rhode Island and Massachusetts and offsetting the closure of obsolete onshore power plants such as the 680-megawatt Plymouth, Massr Plymouth, Massin Plymouth, Mass.
From Tower to Billboard Kiosk Times Tower, though priceless as a promotional milestone, was rendered obsolete as a physical plant in less than a decade.
