You can apply what you said to the nuclear industry which will never be profitable in the long run owing its success to government mandates subsidized by taxpayers.
Cut out all the incentives and solar output just cost more so is not attractive, yet.
In Germany, the plan is to end nuclear power and makeup grid needs in part with solar. They already surpassed a short term goal of 3% solar power into the grid and now are cutting back or eliminating incentives. Not what I would call a complete failure.
Other than installation and hookup, solar is a passive system for an estimated 20 years or so not counting any rare earth used in manufacturing. Could potentially put people out of work or hurt public utility profits.
Here in San Diego, solar installations are going so well with meters running backwards during the day that SDG&E (Sempre Energy) wanted to charge solar paneled homes a fee for grid maintenance, claiming solar enjoys using the grid without paying for its maintenance. Read that as taking a bite out of their profits even though the infrastructure was financed with public monies and government wants you to use alternative energies.
Solar panels feed the local neighborhood no further than the nearest substation. The PUC (Public Utilities Commission) denied the rate increase.
1. The Germans “import” the net difference in power they don't produce from France, the later of which produces roughly 70% of their power from nuclear. Your argument appeals to ignorance, i.e. if you don't know better it sounds good. Sort of like when the typical liberal argues that socialism does work after all in some obscure place that no one really knows much about. Germany also pays per unit of power more than we do and the fact is MOST of their domestic produced power comes from burning brown coal (the bad stuff) or gas they import from Russia which they have managed to make themselves dependent on.
2. Nuclear is electrically capable of producing more than you put into it, solar isn't. The cost factor you address has to do with initial start up costs and the insurance, i.e. costs associated if something goes wrong. The government acts as a de facto under writer for the risk associated with nuclear power because no one can do that other than a government, the stakes and costs are to high. That does not mean that the government subsidies or that it's not cost effective to have nuclear power, it's just that mathematically no one out there has the type of money required to handle a Fukushima if it does happen. Risk is magnitude x probability, and the magnitude is so extraordinarily high that no insurance company in the world can handle something like this.
These green energy alternatives, to include wind power, are abject failures. They are good sounding, feel good nonsense that politicians want to get photographed in front of, but they are neither cost effective nor even in some cases capable of producing more power than you have to put into them to make them work, i.e. the photocell. You then in typical form go into the realm of hypothetical with the idea that these alternative power sources simply aren't cost effective “yet.” More nonsense. I need power today, not theoretically in 10 years. I want to keep my family cool in Texas, and warm in the winter. I prefer driving to work, not walking. I don't care about hypothetical feel good crap that derives it's entire weight from emotions.