A Stitch in Haste

All tastes and preferences are subjective. That's even true in tax policy: Politicians' preferences for targeted taxes or subsidies distort the market toward whatever outcome the politicians happen, for whatever arbitrary reason, to prefer. Sometimes it's the result of rent-seeking (lobbying) from the industries (i.e., the politicians are merely selling favorable treatment to whichever firms are willing to pay for it); sometimes it's simply whatever industries politicians happen to like or dislike.

A perfect example comes from our favorite anti-market politicians, the French.

S'il vous plaît —

The United States could face possible European carbon taxes on its exports if it does not sign global climate accords, French President Jacques Chirac was quoted as saying in an interview published Thursday.
...
France has pushed in the past for a carbon tax on industrial goods from countries that refuse to sign the Kyoto accord, meant mainly to target the United States and China. Some lawyers say it would violate international trade rules.

Et voilà!

France is to offer tax credits to encourage local companies to develop video games, the Ministry of Culture said on Thursday.

Parliament has approved a measure that will offer tax credits to producers of video games "with a cultural dimension" to finance 20 percent of a company's production costs to a maximum of 3 million euros ($3.91 million) a year, the ministry said in a statement.

Somehow I suspect they're not subsidizing Call of Duty 3 (or, for that matter, Dead Rising) on "cultural dimension" grounds.

As for the carbon tax: Say what you will about global warming, there is no logic in having Europe serve as the collector of penalties for refusing to sign a treaty (which, recall, happens to be a nation's sovereign prerogative). The real agenda, besides scoring political points with France's anti-American masses, is naked extortion: an attempt to squeeze some unearned money from other nations — apparently for the purpose of making sure French kids have enough video games to play.

The French already engage in anti-capitalist protectionism of their wine industry, among others. To do it on the backs of other nations' industries is nothing more than state-sanctioned piracy. And they then call themselves "model global citizens" and "wise custodians of their economy" for doing so. Go figure.

LATE ADDITION: In case the kids get bored of the video games --

French authorities will give out 175,000 USB memory sticks loaded with open-source software to Parisian high-school students at the start of the next school year.

The sticks will give the students, aged 15 and 16, the freedom to access their e-mail, browser bookmarks and other documents on computers at school, home, a friend's house or in an Internet café -- but at a much lower cost than providing notebook computers for all, a spokesman for the Greater Paris Regional Council said Friday.

As if it had to be one or the other -- notebooks or sticks. And of course there couldn't possibly be an anti-Microsoft ulterior motive here. None at all