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Hybrid cars in ski area

BenedictGomez

Well-known member
Joined
Jan 26, 2011
Messages
12,174
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Wasatch Back
You can bluster all you want, but it does not change the fact they your initial response to my quip displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of very basic financial and economic concepts. Either you really lack a basic understanding of finance and economics or your head is so far up your party line that any intellectual honesty you might had was lost somewhere in its colon.

I'd like to take back my prior assumption that you understood the important fundamental difference between a "tax break" and a "subsidy", and were just trying to be cute/clever in your first post.

You actually don't understand the difference.*

*EDIT: Alternatively, you're just trolling me by playing dumb.
 

Domeskier

Well-known member
Joined
Oct 15, 2012
Messages
2,274
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63
Location
New York
I'd like to take back my prior assumption that you understood the important fundamental difference between a "tax break" and a "subsidy", and were just trying to be cute/clever in your first post.

You actually don't understand the difference.*

*EDIT: Alternatively, you're just trolling me by playing dumb.

I understand perfectly well how the distinction you are referring to might appeal to people who lack a basic understanding of the fundamental concepts of finance and economics, especially among those who share your political outlook. However, the fact remains that, from a financial perspective, there simply is no difference. Since your inability to defend the distinction yourself is quickly becoming tedious, allow me to spoon feed you the only plausible (albeit ultimately flawed) argument for it: although tax breaks and tax subsidies have an identical impact on both taxpayers and the Treasury, tax subsidies are bad because they have the effect of sustaining economic behavior that would otherwise be economically unviable, whereas tax breaks are good because they allow private economic actors determine how resources should be allocated. The fundamental flaw in this argument is this: if we accept the definition of "tax break" that it assumes, we immediately realize that there cannot be any such tax breaks (short of eliminating taxes altogether). It is a fundamental fact of economics that any meaningful change to the tax code will have the effect of subsidizing some economic behavior over another. The very fact of taxation necessarily alters market behavior. Once we accept government involvement in private markets, we cannot plausible defend a distinction between tax reductions that artificially subsidize some sector of the economy from those that do not.
 
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