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« Price v. Cost revisited | Main | Supply elasticity of natural gas »

September 11, 2007

Comments

Ha. Where did you find this...The Onion?

Funny how the party of freedom is quick to be the party of statism.

Those are the conservatives? No wonder the Whiteheads left England.

Some how I think the days of Thatcher slamming a book by Hayek down on the at big table in the house of commons and proclaiming "This is what we believe!" are over.

It's pretty interesting. We all know that pricing energy with externalities is the 'best' policy, so why do bans gain such traction?

There must be some reason that humans like a messy approach.

(of course, with the ban there is a cake-and-eat-it aspect. you get to enjoy your LCD big-screen TV, and low electric rates too.)

Quite agree with Tim´s reaction. The proposal is as silly as trying to regulate gas consumption via CAFE, rather than through fuel taxes as in Europe. I would be surprised if it finds its way into the Conservative manifesto.

By the way, I notice that Tim seems to be reading the Sun and the Daily Mail - perhaps the two worst UK newspapers.

But these are responses of politicians not economists. Strangely enough they are not constrained by economists but by voters. So a policy to increase the price of energy or a ban on plasma screens ...... mmmmmm not really a tough choice for the politician.

so why do bans gain such traction?

Segregates the voting population, which gives political cover....think smoking bans, or taxing the rich, or even better cafe standards vs gas tax.

Remember that we only pass CAFE standards more lax than our current CAFE sales (free market result). So that one doesn't really count.

Remember that we only pass CAFE standards more lax than our current CAFE sales (free market result).

What? No! Yes?

Market free...CAFE!!!!

*Head explodes.

Kidding aside it is not hard for me to imagine a world where CAFE standards essentially did the same amount of fuel efficiency improvements that a free market would have and yet still screwed up the market somehow.

Hell I can imagine a world where the free market improves fuel efficiency better then the the CAFE standards and lower the price of cars all at the same time, but i am a pessimist when it comes to government intervention.

Anyway I was using CAFE standards vs gas tax in an example of why some policies are politically more favorable then others...CAFE standards voters like because they are perceived to screw the dirty money grubbing automakers...voters don't like gas taxes because they see it screwing them.

Bans of products that only a small minority of voters use work the same way.

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