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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (230024)	4/19/2005 6:47:16 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1573427

The needs and wants of people are many and varied. Not one singular thing like "lower fuel consumption". Tell that to the GATT folks. If they call low taxes, other than special tax exclusions or benefits, a subsidy they would be wrong, but I really doubt they do. I imagine they might call it a subsidy if several EU countries charged Airbus a lower tax rate, but oil and gasoline companies are subject to corporate income taxes like any other company. Having an additional tax on gasoline is the opposite of a subsidy even if it is a low tax. It isn't a special tax break. I wouldn't even call special tax breaks a subsidy but the effect is almost identical and its the effect that GATT is worried about. You can argue semantics, but the fact is we promote the consumption of gas more than any developed country. I have yet to see any evidence that we promote consumption of gasoline at all. Perhaps we fail to penalize it as much as other countries but we don't promote it. I suppose pointing out that what you call subsidizing is actually penalizing is a semantic argument but that doesn't mean it is a weak or unimportant one. If we use a term to mean the opposite of reality we end up with something like 1984's "War is Peace" "Freedom is Slavery" "Ignorance is Strength" Tim