First draw your curve, then plot your data. Cato isn't so much a "conservative think tank" as a mouthpiece for certain established financial interests, such as

First draw your curve, then plot your data. Cato isn't so much a "conservative think tank" as a mouthpiece for certain established financial interests, such as the oil industry. So Cato's job is not to produce facts and logic, but rather to produce propaganda that bears a surface resemblance to facts and logic, in order to put a thumb on the political scales. Tesla is what we in our little corner here call "disruptive innovation" - in this case, disrupting the automotive sector's dependence on the oil industry. This is a technically difficult and very expensive proposition, in the face of some extremely powerful vested interests at both the national level (Cato Institute for oil) and the local level (mandatory dealer laws in Texas, etc). Tesla is tackling this in part by relying on tax subsidies to consumers, based on the public good. Now, if tax subsidies benefit Cato's backers, then Cato is all for tax subsidies. But if tax subsidies threaten their backers, then Cato is suddenly all righteous about "free markets". Cato doesn't give a crap about free markets. And their backers are scared... Detroit and other non-US auto manufacturers are sorta-neutral third parties here. They're not in the oil business, they're in the car manufacturing business. If Tesla's disruption is successful, they'd much rather adopt Tesla's model and cut Big Oil loose, than go out of business manufacturing dinosaur-fart burners. So this post is mostly interesting in that grumbling about consumer tax subsidies on high-end luxury goods is the BEST they have.