DIYbanter - View Single Post - Constitutionality of light bulb ban questioned - Environmental Protection Agency must be called for a broken bulb

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In alt.engineering.electrical HeyBub wrote:
| wrote:
| In alt.engineering.electrical HeyBub wrote:
| wrote:
|
| I do like the idea of taxing the incandescent bulbs. But I also
| like the idea of taxing cheap imports.
|
|
| Then there are those who are opposed to using tax laws to promote
| public policy. Taxes distort the marketplace.
|
| And I am not one of those. The marketplace needs to be distorted in
| a few places. The market for subprime mortgage origination comes to
| mind as my first place, if you need an example.
|
| The dirty little secret behind sub-prime morgtages is that they were CAUSED
| by government regulation. The government required a significant percentage
| of banking and morgtage business to take place in "deprived" or
| "under-served" areas. Absence of a branch bank, for example, on a street
| where the only other retail services were hookers and dope-dealers was
| evidence sufficient of discrimination!

There's a whole lot more than that involved. Some mortgage companies were
not affected by this beyond the extent to which the whole economy was.
Lots of falsified origination took place. Then these instruments were
sold improperly to organizations that didn't properly check them out.

| True, and we can take advantage of their foolishness. If Bangladesh wants to
| subsidize the manufacture of sneakers by 6-year olds such that we end up
| with really swell tennis shoes for two bucks, then I'm all for it.

That's the un-level playing field that can decimate the industries of other
countries.

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| Phil Howard KA9WGN (email for humans: first name in lower case at ipal.net) |