The BBC website is carrying a handy guide on how to tell painted wolves apart:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/articles\/3F4YD5bVS9zgB9m570LLY1K\/painted-wolf-id-guide?intc_type=promo&intc_location=news&intc_campaign=dynastieswolfguide_article&intc_linkname=bbcone_em_low_c2<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cFaced with a pack of 30 painted wolves coming towards you, you want to know you are pointing the camera at the right animal\u201d. No, that is not what I want to know. What I want to know are my chances of outrunning the wolves, or alternatively of outrunning the cameraman.<\/p>\n There is an excellent economic lesson in the protests about increases in fuel taxes in France, now apparently postponed by the government:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-46437904<\/a><\/p>\n If you want people to use less of something, put the price up. This is, as far as I can tell, a universal truth. It came up in an opinion piece by Oliver Kamm in the Times yesterday, on the topic of minimum alcohol pricing:<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.thetimes.co.uk\/article\/minimum-pricing-will-help-society-to-deal-with-problem-drinking-djg57dm05<\/a> (\u00a3)<\/p>\n If you want people to drink less, put the cost up. The thing that really impressed me about Mr Kamm was that he raised the question that always comes up:<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a persistent criticism levelled by politicians on both right and left that minimum pricing and levies on demerit goods are regressive: they hit lower-income consumers of alcohol, sugary drinks and tobacco hardest\u201d<\/p>\n And went on to answer it correctly:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a strong case. If you\u2019re concerned about social and economic inequality, a better remedy is redistribution through the tax and benefits system\u201d.<\/p>\n Exactly. And that is the answer to fuel pricing in France, as it will be the next time a government here tries to increase fuel duty. Incidentally, this is something that every economist worthy of the name knows. Politicians not so much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The BBC website is carrying a handy guide on how to tell painted wolves apart: http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/articles\/3F4YD5bVS9zgB9m570LLY1K\/painted-wolf-id-guide?intc_type=promo&intc_location=news&intc_campaign=dynastieswolfguide_article&intc_linkname=bbcone_em_low_c2 \u201cFaced with a pack of 30 painted wolves coming towards you, you want to know you are pointing the camera at the right animal\u201d. No, that is not what I want to know. What I want to know are … Continue reading Fuel protests, alcohol pricing and wolves.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennricher.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}