re: #236 windsagio

Let me try putting it this way:

It seems to me that this whole discussion is based on a distinction between whether taxes are what you owe the government for various things vs. them being what the government takes from you for various things.

If you owe it, its really clearly a subsidy. If its just the government taking what’s rightfully yours, its not.

whereas i am trying to highlight what i think is a more important distinction: is the subsidy actually costing us anything?

ebruce is making the mistake of presuming that all subsidies cost something. that’s not necessarily true. all direct subsidies cost something.

when we add up the subsidies for a particular industry, we don’t usually do a good job of separating the subsidies offered at the taxpayers’ expense from the subsidies offered to entice additional activity, and thereby revenue.

did that come out in english?