Ontario rebate for electric cars

I am reacting to a single provincial policy but the implications are national because my concern is with a political culture behind these policies that is ignorant of the effects.

We all know when you put money in one place it has to come from somewhere else-- this is most obvious when you are running a deficit but even without one, you can look at the tax system or what is not done. Politicians come from an elite class that unconsciously assumes everyone is like them and cannot see past the upper middle class on the way down.

So here we have a policy that will direct tax dollars to subsidize $40,000 new cars, at $10,000 a car. Perhaps 20% of Canadians (or Ontarians) can afford them. And of course some who can't afford them will buy them anyway extending the fragility of consumer debt. All taxpayers will pay for this. The same thing is true about the federal stimulus funding for home renovations that assumes ordinary Canadians own their own homes. The latter ignores the fact that in terms of social need it is renters that need more help, that environmentally (which is often the social excuse for taking all our money and concentrating it in the hands of those who do not need it), it is rental stock that is the least environmentally efficient.

Of course we are not planning to scrap the cars the rich get out of -- they will be sold to those who can't afford the government subsidy so no cars come off the road.

Sure, I am a socialist-- but I am also somewhat of a functionalist. I recognize the market has a purpose. I recognize that the market in many ways works-- provided you have the money to make decisions. When it comes to environmental change, the market actual has worked for those with money- with higher fuel bills those with the means, and the interest, have purchased newer environmentally friendly cars (an illustration of this is that less efficient new cars have stayed on the lots and market share for them is dropping). Those without the interest will still buy up to a Hummer to prove they can-- even at $1.20 a litre in gas. Home owners have upgraded their windows and furnaces and appliances. They have done this because the investment pays off in lower cost energy bills. That poor people cannot make the upgrades to save over the long term, and pollute because they cannot afford to do otherwise is lost on the elites that use every excuse to help the well-off with more money to make better choices while others don't have those choice. That some use more fossil fuels for an efficient small rental than others use in a grand home with the latest in technology is lost on policy-makers.

So we spend our resources not on better public transit or making transit affordable-- investment in rail etc. Politicians spend time dreaming up expensive rebate programs for well off people when they have never legislated environmental standards for rental housing --you can rent a house with no insulation provided you provide a heating system which the tenant can, in theory, heat the place even if the tenant has to use a ridiculous amount of fuel to do so. You can rent a place without thermopane windows. The fix here is regulation-- no big public dollars unless they want to subsidize the landlords to make it easier for them.

In the case of the cars we will make an extremely efficient expensive car that most people cannot afford (but make it better by having poor people help their rich neighbours get one) because this is somehow more sensible than subsidizing the creation of a moderately efficient affordable car.

So we go inefficiently into the market, addressing lower priorities as an excuse to make more toys for the rich. This is more sensible than trying to make a more fuel-efficient Ford Focus-type car in Ontario (there are none being made) that can be sold at about $10,000 a price point more people could afford (if we feel the need to pump money into the auto-sector) -- or better yet, public transit that we all can afford.

The delicious irony is that we will have to cut education, healthcare or social services to do this in a couple years as the deficits are not sustainable.Everyone who has been paying attention knows there is a round of budget cuts coming and knows only the big ticket items like health and education have enough in them to cut to make the difference. Looking at McKay's recent announcements w sure know defence spending won't give up a few bucks for less important priorities like health, education and old age supports.

Maybe instead they can finance this with a poverty tax. This would be a new tax that would take away a percentage of the disposable income of everyone who owns no home or earns less than $20,000 a year. This would accomplish the goals of wealth transfer more directly and efficiently than any other initiative I have heard so far.