Taiwan’s KMT: solid supporters of the free market:
Yiin Chii-ming, named as [Taiwan’s] new economic affairs minister, said that he will hike gasoline prices in one stroke after assuming his post May 20 because he believes that [the] free market mechanism is the best policy.
Err, scratch that:
The government of President-elect Ma Ying-jeou will immediately tackle the issue of ever rising oil prices with an energy tax . . .
Whew, problem solved! Energy prices too high? Let’s FIX that by taxing energy consumption . . . so prices will be even higher!
A day after that announcement, the Taipei Times reported Taiwan’s servile press was lauding Ma for "challenging people’s habits." Mmm. Ma’s media shills can put all the lipstick they want on this pig, but July and 36 deg Celsius weather is just around the corner. And no amount of spin is going to fool Taiwanese into ENJOYING all those artificially-high air-con bills they’ll soon be receiving.
[Say, whatever happened to Ma’s promise to subsidize fuel costs for Taiwanese fishermen? Fuel SUBSIDIES for fishermen, fuel TAXES for everybody else — no inconsistency there!]
The China Post mentioned this as well:
[Incoming president Ma Ying-jeou] also announced a formula of limiting the daily per capita water consumption to 250 liters from the present 290 liters is under review.
So let’s encourage people to take mass transit, but DISCOURAGE them from taking showers.
That kinda … stinks.
Foreigner — the current system subsidizes gas prices for fishermen already — meaning that Ma, as usual, is promising people things they already have.
I’m all for an energy tax, but I don’t think it will be more than cosmetic under a Ma reign. And lots of things will have to change — like building structures larger and taller to take advantage of size efficiencies, permitting a greater range of building materials than crurently available, subsidizing solar cell purchases, and other stuff. And you know we won’t see any of that shit.
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I’m a low taxes guy myself, so we’ll have to differ on that one. But your recommendations on the regulatory side make a lot of sense to me.
Wasn’t in the country when Ma made his fisherman fuel subsidy proposal, so I wasn’t here to read about the background. Thanks for that info. At the end of the day, it really makes no (economic) sense why Taiwanese fishermen should be granted any special privilege over rice farmers or machine parts makers or computer chip producers.