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- Jake Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.
you are the media you consume.
If they mean phasing out subsidies for highway and airport construction, reinstating taxes on airline fuel, actually making oil companies liable for the full damages when their criminal negligence causes catastrophes and so on and so forth and etcetera, then I'd be cheering them on... But I somehow don't think that's what they mean. It rarely is when it's in a G20 memo.
if you live in some third-world backwater
Do you have an actual concrete example of such a backwater where the government is subsidising fossil fuels in order to "help the poor"?
Zimbabwe asked to stop money printing by IMF as Sri Lanka trail 1600:20 - LANKA BUSINESS ONLINE
In 2004 Sri Lanka jettisoned an IMF backed growth plan that brought 12-month inflation below 2 percent and exchange rate appreciation for the first time in decades, to return to money printing, fuel subsidies, power subsidies, heavy public sector recruitment and state intervention in agricultural markets including fertilizer subsidies.
I think there are many more examples of poor countries subsidising fuel as wella as other basic goods. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
Of course, they aren't subsidising fuel for the poor any more...
Incidentally, the IMF article also gives a perfect justification for their work on nuclear energy, without actually saying so.
IMF Survey online: If Iran sold more oil and gas on international markets, would that generate a lot more revenue than if they sold it domestically? Zytek: Yes. At such low prices, domestic demand for energy in Iran has grown very rapidly, and it is increasingly difficult to have energy resources available for export. With the price reform, you will dampen domestic demand, which means more efficient energy use domestically, more energy available for profitable exports, and higher revenues for the country.
Zytek: Yes. At such low prices, domestic demand for energy in Iran has grown very rapidly, and it is increasingly difficult to have energy resources available for export. With the price reform, you will dampen domestic demand, which means more efficient energy use domestically, more energy available for profitable exports, and higher revenues for the country.
a school of thought that believes in motivating the poor to either revolution or docile slavery by making their lives as miserable as humanly possible
that doesn't mean that taking them away is good policy
Neither is leaving them in place. Good policy would be to replace them with something better (less poverty? other energy sources?).
And what share of global fossil fuel subsidies are we talking about here?
But I guess the need to play games on the copper market will make that go even slower. Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se
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