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That is the political justification but several studies have found that the benefits flow mostly to the wealthy. If you are poor in a 3rd world country, you can

That is the political justification but several studies have found that the benefits flow mostly to the wealthy. If you are poor in a 3rd world country, you cannot afford a car. This study from 2012 shows the top 20% get 43% of the benefit, the bottom 20% only 7%: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/05/09/real-costs-fossil-fuel-subsidies https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/05/09/real-co... Moreover these subsidy schemes are hugely expensive, and the money is better used elsewhere - eg. education, family planning, clean infrastructure.

sudosysgen 6y ago
It's not true that if you are poor in a third world country, you cannot afford a vehucle. A lot of poor people in third world countries instead use and indeed share incredibly old cars from the 60s-70s, or motorcycles. It is often literally a matter of life and death - if you get stung by a scorpion in the Atlas mountains, unless your family or village have a car and fuel for it, you're just not getting medical care, which is why you'll see many such very old cars there. This is a real issue - the micro-village in the mountains where part of my family lives had one of my aunts die as a baby because a scorpion bit her and she couldn't be brought to a hospital due to a lack of transportation. They bought a Citroën 2CV after, and it's still used up to this day. Now, of course, like all non-progressive subsidies, they benefit the wealthy disproportionately, because they make disproportionate amounts of money. But for the bottom 20%, those 7% of the subsidies are a lot, because they often make less than 7% of the income. So a workable solution would be to make these subsidies progressive, tied to income and consumption, but unless you've lived there it's difficult to understand just how bad removing them altogether would be. It could literally lead to revolts. Also, that study is hugely problematic because it takes the entirety of the world together, instead of operating at national scales. I already agreed that for richer countries this should be phased out, and subsidies are likely to be much higher in richer, often non-producing countries, than in poor countries. Also, before they got solar panels and batteries around 8 years ago, they were still reliant on kerosene for lighting.
- CyanBird 6y ago
  > It could literally lead to revolts. Forget the third world altogether, it has already led to revolts in France, the entire movement of the yellow vests is based on rural low middle class people revolting against the state for an increase in fuel taxes along several older other sticking points But, if you want to sell this idea to the people, give it the nationalist spin, say that the country is suffering as a consequence of dollars escaping from the country per the subsidies, and subsidies have to be changed/reformatted to help the nation itself, etc, etc Anyhow you are completely right when it comes to the vehicles bit, saying it as someone from a third world country
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    > Forget the third world altogether, it has already led to revolts in France, the entire movement of the yellow vests is based on rural low middle class people revolting against the state for an increase in fuel taxes along several older other sticking points It's also that they aren't offered any alternative to using fuel (good luck finding public transit in these rural regions; the population density simply makes it impossible). And where's the money from the fuel tax going? Financing alternatives for these people or is it funneled into some civil servant's retirement funds?

sudosysgen 6y ago

It's not true that if you are poor in a third world country, you cannot afford a vehucle. A lot of poor people in third world countries instead use and indeed share incredibly old cars from the 60s-70s, or motorcycles. It is often literally a matter of life and death - if you get stung by a scorpion in the Atlas mountains, unless your family or village have a car and fuel for it, you're just not getting medical care, which is why you'll see many such very old cars there. This is a real issue - the micro-village in the mountains where part of my family lives had one of my aunts die as a baby because a scorpion bit her and she couldn't be brought to a hospital due to a lack of transportation. They bought a Citroën 2CV after, and it's still used up to this day. Now, of course, like all non-progressive subsidies, they benefit the wealthy disproportionately, because they make disproportionate amounts of money. But for the bottom 20%, those 7% of the subsidies are a lot, because they often make less than 7% of the income. So a workable solution would be to make these subsidies progressive, tied to income and consumption, but unless you've lived there it's difficult to understand just how bad removing them altogether would be. It could literally lead to revolts. Also, that study is hugely problematic because it takes the entirety of the world together, instead of operating at national scales. I already agreed that for richer countries this should be phased out, and subsidies are likely to be much higher in richer, often non-producing countries, than in poor countries. Also, before they got solar panels and batteries around 8 years ago, they were still reliant on kerosene for lighting.

CyanBird 6y ago
> It could literally lead to revolts. Forget the third world altogether, it has already led to revolts in France, the entire movement of the yellow vests is based on rural low middle class people revolting against the state for an increase in fuel taxes along several older other sticking points But, if you want to sell this idea to the people, give it the nationalist spin, say that the country is suffering as a consequence of dollars escaping from the country per the subsidies, and subsidies have to be changed/reformatted to help the nation itself, etc, etc Anyhow you are completely right when it comes to the vehicles bit, saying it as someone from a third world country
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Forget the third world altogether, it has already led to revolts in France, the entire movement of the yellow vests is based on rural low middle class people revolting against the state for an increase in fuel taxes along several older other sticking points It's also that they aren't offered any alternative to using fuel (good luck finding public transit in these rural regions; the population density simply makes it impossible). And where's the money from the fuel tax going? Financing alternatives for these people or is it funneled into some civil servant's retirement funds?