Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Home insurance in California and Florida is up big thanks to climate change. Polluters get a massive subsidy through their pollution’s negative externality, and they spend the big bucks on lobbyists and propaganda to prevent environmental protection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHTDDJtuWv4
“There are federal tax benefits for racehorses (although there’s a chance they might soon expire) and some states exempt racehorses from their sales taxes. Other states own the racetracks.”
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“”The obvious solution here is also the simplest: Just stop,” Shachtman wrote. “Let the sport stand on its own and dwindle to whatever size its fan base supports. Instead, state legislatures keep funneling money to it.””
https://reason.com/2025/04/29/stop-subsidizing-the-sport-of-kings/
“Coal’s decline was not caused by a federal plot to transition away from coal, like Trump thinks, but rather by markets and innovation. Advancements in renewable energy technologies—which were, and continue to be, supported by subsidies—made the energy source more attractive to investors. Breakthroughs in horizontal drilling in the early 2000s brought a flood of cheap and abundant natural gas to the market. These technologies priced coal out, which lowered energy bills for consumers and significantly reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
The energy source is also not as cost-effective as the executive order claims. Coal plants are expensive to build and operate, and transportation costs can exceed the price of coal at the mine. These economic factors have informed investors and utilities not to build coal-fired power plants—the most recent large plant was built in 2013—which has made the current fleet of these power plants less efficient than other energy sources.
To be sure, some regulatory barriers, including federal air quality standards and state-level bans, have made coal less competitive. However, “it is the market that explains coal’s decline better than regulations,” Philip Rossetti, an energy policy analyst at the R Street Institute, tells Reason.”
https://reason.com/2025/04/10/markets-dont-want-more-coal-trump-is-propping-up-the-industry-anyway/
“House Agriculture Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) said Saturday that he will oppose any spending measure that leaves out the billions in extra aid farm state Republicans were seeking for farmers still reeling from Donald Trump’s 2018 trade war, inflation, a delayed five-year farm bill reauthorization and a raft of other economic pressures. Republicans in agriculture-heavy states and some Democrats have warned about a crippling economic crisis hitting rural America, which overwhelmingly supported Trump in the last election.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/15/johnson-farm-aid-deadline-00194390
“”China spent roughly $173 billion in subsidies to support the new energy-vehicle sector, which encompasses electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, between 2009 and 2022,” write Kubota and Leong. By 2019, there were 500 E.V. manufacturers in China. But that same year, the government started paring back those incentives, and by 2023, the number of automakers had shrunk by 80 percent.
Now, though, the country is ready to throw good money after bad: “Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called on local leaders to promote ‘new productive forces’—a buzzword in Chinese policy circles for the need to promote high-value manufacturing industries.” Local leaders responded by pumping money into struggling companies—in one case, giving the equivalent of $27.5 million to a company that had sold fewer than 2,000 cars in the first quarter of 2024.
“China currently has the capacity to produce some 40 million vehicles a year, though it sells only around 22 million cars domestically,” the Journal authors warn. As a result, the country’s largesse “is adding cars to a global market that risks becoming more oversupplied.”
Of course, E.V.s are not inherently a bad idea—especially in China, whose cities have a history of such severe pollution that it lowers the nation’s life expectancy.”
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“But as with anything, the advent of clean-energy technology should be driven by market forces. The Chinese government spent more than a decade subsidizing the production of electric vehicles, no matter whether consumers wanted to buy them. When the spigot of free money finally shut off, and manufacturers had to stand on their own, the country saw the rise of “E.V. graveyards,” in which entire fields were covered in unsold or abandoned vehicles.
America would do well to heed China’s example as a cautionary tale about industrial policy. China averaged 9.8 percent annual economic growth for 35 years starting in 1978; in 2013, officials pledged to keep growth at 7.5 percent—a two-decade low for the country, even if it would have been an enviable figure for any other nation.
But much of that expansion was driven by government spending, not market forces: For much of the 21st century, China embarked upon a construction binge, building residential and commercial developments as fast as possible with no regard for whether there were any tenants to fill them.
The result was China’s “ghost cities,” full of high-rise apartments and shopping centers in which nobody lived. Worried about rising debt, the Chinese government finally started drawing back its building spree in 2020. Since then, the country’s real estate market has cratered, and its debt load has only deepened.”
https://reason.com/2024/04/29/china-is-doubling-down-on-electric-vehicle-subsidies/
Biden’s final EV tax credit rules please automakers, anger China hawks
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/03/biden-ev-tax-credit-rules-automakers-china-00155917
“Higher rents and home prices are a natural consequence of local and state zoning laws, labyrinthine approval processes, federal restrictions on mortgage financing, and environmental reporting laws, to name a few.
All these laws limit the supply of new housing, which drives up the price for any given level of demand. That’s a diagnosis the Biden administration itself has endorsed in various housing briefs and “action plans.”
Despite that insight, the president’s proposals to subsidize home buying will, all else equal, increase demand while leaving supply constraints in place. That will only raise prices further.”
https://reason.com/2024/03/07/bidens-plan-to-subsidize-homebuyers-wont-work/
“Governments often make deals with private companies, offering generous subsidies to encourage development in their respective states. The year 2023 was unfortunately no exception.
According to a new report from Good Jobs First, a watchdog group that tracks economic development deals, 16 states promised more than $10 billion to private companies last year. The group counted 23 “megadeals,” which it defines as any agreement involving at least $50 million in subsidies to a private company.”
https://reason.com/2024/01/05/state-governments-promised-private-companies-more-than-10-billion-in-subsidies-last-year/
“By insuring risky property, Paul points out, “You’re actually doing the opposite of what you would think government would want to do; you’re promoting bad behavior.””
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“Years ago, federal flood insurance encouraged my bad behavior.
I wanted to build a house on a beach. When I asked my father to help with the mortgage, he said, “No! Are you crazy? It’s on the edge of an ocean!”
Dad was right. It was a dumb place to build. But I built anyway, because federal flood insurance, idiotically, guaranteed that I wouldn’t lose money.
I enjoyed my house for ten years, but then, as predicted, it washed away.
It was an upsetting loss, but thanks to Uncle Sam, I didn’t lose a penny.
I’m grateful. But it’s wrong that you were forced to pay for my beach house.”
https://reason.com/2024/01/10/the-feds-shouldnt-subsidize-fancy-risky-beach-houses/
“A new audit of Georgia’s Film Tax Credit program found that the state “loses money” on the program. A lot of money, actually: about $160,000 for every job the program creates. Georgia is now spending about $1.3 billion annually on the program, but it generates a return on investment of just 19 cents per dollar, the auditors conclude.”
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“There’s no doubt that Georgia’s program has influenced where movie and TV production takes place. The new audit concludes that the program has induced “substantial economic activity in Georgia,” but that’s simply evidence of the fact that lighting a lot of money on fire will eventually produce some heat. The underlying numbers suggest that Georgia’s subsidies are doing a poor job of generating economic growth or creating jobs.”
https://reason.com/2023/12/18/georgia-taxpayers-lose-160000-for-every-job-created-by-film-tax-credits/