Opinions
The Best Policy on Subsidies Is to Simply Ditch Them
Only in the government does it make sense to fix one bad idea--the subsidising of fossil-fuel energy--by giving even larger subsidies to less efficient forms of energy such as ethanol and wind power. Only in government can you find the kind of hypocrisy shown by Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the new Democratic Congress, which gave a whopping $14bn subsidy to the “alternative energy” industry in their “first 100 hours” but would have screamed had Republicans given the same to oil companies. And only in government do you see a Republican oilman from Texas declare that he would rather run cars on corn from Iowa, doubling the huge subsidy that ethanol producers suck out of taxpayer wallets.
The right thing to do is to strike all energy subsidies, tax the environmental harms that energy demonstrably creates and let the market sort it out.
The right thing to do is to strike all energy subsidies, tax the environmental harms that energy demonstrably creates and let the market sort it out.
January 29, 2007
by Kenneth P. Green
in American Enterprise Institute
Only in the government does it make sense to fix one bad idea--the subsidising of fossil-fuel energy--by giving even larger subsidies to less efficient forms of energy such as ethanol and wind power. Only in government can you find the kind of hypocrisy shown by Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the US House of Representatives, and the new Democratic Congress, which gave a whopping $14bn subsidy to the “alternative energy” industry in their “first 100 hours” but would have screamed had Republicans given the same to oil companies. And only in government do you see a Republican oilman from Texas declare... [continue via Web link]
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