Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Those kind, gentle French
Jacques Chirac, President of France, is attempting to put a one dollar levy on all airfares. The revenue collected from all flights will go directly to African foreign aid, and is Chirac’s method for taking initiative on the issue that was the focus of the last G-8 summit (G-8 being the 8 wealthiest “western” countries) which was African debt and poverty. As France is part of the European Union, any levy it chooses to put on flights will probably have to be negotiated within that framework, and reaction appears to be mixed. The United States, whose cooperation in the program has been sought by Chirac, has of course rejected the proposal, keeping with their general pro-free trade (at least when free trade helps big business,) stance. The airline industry is also against any rise in costs of tickets, as they are already in a fuel and competition crunch that is leading to strikes and cutting meals out of transcontinental flights.
As a Congressional candidate, I love this kind of initiative. In my mind, it has to do with about what the role of government should be. And one of those roles is enabling income transfer and correcting flaws in the system of capitalism. If capitalism enables human society to produce the greatest amount of total income, which is what basic micro and macro economics tries to teach us, it also concentrates that income in the hands of the few. You can see this in the United States of course, but also compare the United States and the developed world’s income and purchasing power to that of Africa, or the general populations of the Middle East, parts of South East Asia, and Latin America. That’s disparity. Whether Chirac and the French feel an obligation to correct this disparity through post-colonial guilt or the goodness of their little French hearts, I think he is making the right choice morally.
Raising money through airfares is in my opinion brilliant, because it secretly focuses the income transfer towards the very rich and the corporate. Poorer people generally don’t travel as much as rich people, so they will be giving less money to the cause. Moreover, any traveler, me or you, is not going to notice the one dollar levy when they are flying for personal reasons, pricing tickets to Chicago or Miami on Expedia for example. The maximum net loss for a personal consumer throughout the year may be twenty dollars, tops.
Who will suffer are the corporations that send employees off to consult every week; at some point, those dollars of airfare will aggregate into real costs. But does anyone really mind if Deloitte or whomever has to give a little bit of their profit margin to foreign aid to Africa? I certainly don’t.
To get initiatives like these passed in France or the United States, progressives need to sell them as populist issues. Emphasize the low cost to the individual, and the importance of the general cause. Everyone is giving a small part that will make a great difference. Enough support can overcome the pro-business lobbies, which have more concentrated power and influence onto Congressmen. I support Chirac in his creativity, and wish that someone in the U.S. could jump on the bandwagon.
As a Congressional candidate, I love this kind of initiative. In my mind, it has to do with about what the role of government should be. And one of those roles is enabling income transfer and correcting flaws in the system of capitalism. If capitalism enables human society to produce the greatest amount of total income, which is what basic micro and macro economics tries to teach us, it also concentrates that income in the hands of the few. You can see this in the United States of course, but also compare the United States and the developed world’s income and purchasing power to that of Africa, or the general populations of the Middle East, parts of South East Asia, and Latin America. That’s disparity. Whether Chirac and the French feel an obligation to correct this disparity through post-colonial guilt or the goodness of their little French hearts, I think he is making the right choice morally.
Raising money through airfares is in my opinion brilliant, because it secretly focuses the income transfer towards the very rich and the corporate. Poorer people generally don’t travel as much as rich people, so they will be giving less money to the cause. Moreover, any traveler, me or you, is not going to notice the one dollar levy when they are flying for personal reasons, pricing tickets to Chicago or Miami on Expedia for example. The maximum net loss for a personal consumer throughout the year may be twenty dollars, tops.
Who will suffer are the corporations that send employees off to consult every week; at some point, those dollars of airfare will aggregate into real costs. But does anyone really mind if Deloitte or whomever has to give a little bit of their profit margin to foreign aid to Africa? I certainly don’t.
To get initiatives like these passed in France or the United States, progressives need to sell them as populist issues. Emphasize the low cost to the individual, and the importance of the general cause. Everyone is giving a small part that will make a great difference. Enough support can overcome the pro-business lobbies, which have more concentrated power and influence onto Congressmen. I support Chirac in his creativity, and wish that someone in the U.S. could jump on the bandwagon.
# posted by Marmaniac @ 5:04 PM 
