everyone in our country boasts of being green, but no weapon a scandal over the obvious: the subsidy granted by the government to pollution, with the blessing of all.
Pémex nos vende en menos de 8 pesos cada litro de gasolina que compra en casi 11 pesos. Esto quiere decir que el país en su conjunto subsidia a los automovilistas, particularmente a los que tienen camionetotas pesadas y enormes, como las que circulan en abundancia todos los días, y desde luego a los poseedores de coches de super lujo que consumen vastas cantidades de gasolina dizque para poder arrancar de 0 a 100 kilómetros por hora en un santiamén.
Así que subsidiamos con tres pesos por litro el tráfico y el mal gusto de los propietarios de automóviles. Es decir, la contaminación.
Dos son los argumentos principales en contra de suspender el subsidio a la gasolina:
1. If we have so much oil, would not it be cheaper our gasoline? Or what good is being an oil country?
2. If we suspend the gas subsidy, the poor suffer because it increases food prices, which are transported by road.
logical responses (many logical answers are to increase the price of gasoline at least real cost):
1. No, there should be cheaper gasoline in an oil producing country. The gasoline must be sold in the cost: the country produces tons of money, tons of maize, sorghum, etc. And so we think that these things are to be sold below its cost. The fact is that gasoline costs 11 dollars and we sell it at 8. What good is being an oil country? That is a question that we should think carefully, and in light of our experience and that of other countries. In certain regions of Canada, local governments spread a hundred dollar checks to every citizen, just by virtue of citizenship, under an oil surplus. In Norway, the government deposits the excess in individual retirement accounts, so that every Norwegian has a personal fund savings of over $ 85.000, on account of oil revenues. (Of course, either in Canada or Norway are "owners" of their own oil, as we do supposedly we are, that is, in those countries they exploit oil private companies pay taxes. Is there a better model? That's what we really should ask.)
2. By simple arithmetic, we can not continue to subsidize the lifestyle irrational rich people who live in big cities, supposedly to not only affect the poor. What really affects the poor is lack of education and income inequality: further subsidizing the rich simply takes resources to education (although some think not missing or badly used), and increases the gap income. Or perhaps a farmer living in the mountains directly benefits that the owner of a car from 6 to 8 below cylinder receive cash prizes for filling its huge gas tank to go to park to the Viaduct? Arguably, in a poor country is worth subsidizing food or not (rather than directly subsidizing the poor, for them to purchase food, education, clothing, etc.). But defending the indirect subsidy to the cost of transporting food, when it is a direct beneficiary of the subsidy, it is at least cynical. A final figure
chilling conservatively estimated that this year's fuel subsidy to all Mexicans cost around 220 billion dollars (according to figures cited SHCP Reforma on its front page on 24-May-2008). Gasoline consumption has increased enormously in recent years, not because more food is being transported from one place to another for the poor to consume cheap, but because to the extent that the Mexican economic progress, their consumption increases unnecessarily gasoline, buying more cars and getting heavier. (We hear everywhere the refrain that our country has a great culture, but this great culture is not so easily.)
spend all that money (220,000,000,000 pesos a year or more) in that wealthy people can waste it on board their Hummers, their Audis, their huge trucks, let it spend on what the country needs: education, health, economy, smaller government and more efficient.
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