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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jim S who wrote (23059)	7/10/2006 1:32:59 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 541374

Since water rights are often allocated politically people do political battle to get it. The more rational alternative would be higher prices in areas of water scarcity but sometimes those prices would have to be much higher. Your post mentioned paying double or even triple water rates, in some case the increase would have to be more than that, particularly for users who are currently subsidized. OTOH its hard to push through a price increase if a group of farmers or some factory will be put out of business by it. Politicians compete to protect the income and jobs that these farms and factories represent by exempting them from the increase, or giving them some subsidy to pay the increase, thus negating the benefit of a real market allocating the use of water. Tim