Lindblom - The Market System - Afghan Journalists' Committee

262 Thinking About Choicessumer spending. They can be used to transfer responsibilityfor choice from person to state, as when a tax is imposed toreduce tobacco consumption, or to transfer it from state toperson, as through the use of vouchers that permit parentsto choose a school for their child.They can be brought to bear anywhere in the chain ofproduction, as in subsidies to or taxes on a specific input—say, subsidized employment of partially disabled workers—rather than on an end-of-the-line consumer service or good.The state may choose, say, to reduce auto production bytaxing each auto, or reduce production of large autos by taxingaccording to their weight or length, or reduce the steelused by the auto industry by taxing the metal rather thanthe car. Or it can use subsidies to schools or students toraise the level of education generally, or to increase thenumbers of students in mathematics and science, or toopen up opportunities for disadvantaged students.In the world’s market systems, taxes to raise or lowerthe production of a good or service are not so common assubsidies yet nevertheless frequent: for example, in theform of tariffs or other import charges to curb imports aspart of an economic development strategy. Subsidies aremore widespread less for good reasons than for lamentable.They are distributed largely at the initiative of recipients,usually enterprises, who mobilize political influence andthen join to it an at least superficially plausible reason for agrant.No line separates a defensible subsidy from a politicalhandout. Using tariffs and other import restrictions, Japansubsidized a number of industries as part of what might becalled planning for a new role in world markets. But it thenwent on in the 1970s to subsidize industries largely irrelevantto such an aspiration: cement, glass, steel, and petro-