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Comment by anonacct37 | Hacker News Reader

In my state (Utah). The government is attempting to roll back solar subsidies because "that industry should stand on it's own two feet". Conveniently neglecting to mention the massive tax breaks to fossil fuels.

I wish everyone competed in a free market (for the most part), but the energy market is not that.

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This comment is conveniently forgetting that Utah taxes gas. In fact, one of the ballot items was the increase this tax.

Taxing the use of something is different from subsidizing the production of that thing and are meant to encourage far different behaviors.

No, the tax would end up eventually hurting their profit margins while the subsidies increase those margins.

They encourage different short term effects but they're both contributing to the same effect.

All that said, the subsidies in this case far outweighed the effect the tax would have had.

And your comment conveniently omits that ballot item was a non-binding opinion question on using a gas tax increase to fund education and public roads. And that it was defeated. And that a tax != a subsidy.

A tax != a aubsidy. But tax can be, and oftwn is, a means to make taxed-thing-X less appealing.

For example, you can make electric cars more appealing by increaing the tax on gas.

Where things get ugly is when the incentives are in conflict. Again, oil is subsidized and then taxed. Big Oil wins. Gov wins. Consumers - who pay the subsidy and the tax - lose.

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