On Thu, 23 Feb 2006, The Reid
The price of fuel is largely determined by the rate of fuel duty, which means, like council tax, there's effectively a government monopoly. Monopoly means no compebreastion, means no invisible hand pushing down prices, means protests. The reason there are no food price protests is because we don't need them - we vote with our wallets.
IMHO, there's a hell of a lot of mileage in smart taxes which translate qualitative factors into price differentials, which would make them subject to market forces. For example, we could have some sort of food quality rating scheme (not sure how this would work - a bit like organic certification, maybe?), and then slap a tax on food which varied in inverse proportion to quality - for instance, you might pay a 25% premium on bottom-quality food, nothing on good-quality food, and get a 25% government subsidy on excellent food. That would give shoppers an incentive to buy better stuff, as it's cheaper, and shops an incentive to sell better stuff, as they could either sell it cheaper or have a fatter margin on it.
The problem with that is that there would no longer be super-cheap economy food, which would make life more expensive (although healthier) for the very poorest people. That's not an unsolvable problem, though - maybe some of the tax revenue could go into helping them buy decent food. Indeed, letting those in poverty eat crap, as at present, hardly seems like a good thing anyway.
Top 10 British dishes was summat else 552Khichri Indian style seems to be dishes based on a mixture of rice and lentils or other dal with spices, cooked together. There's one version with avocado as topping that is a regular dish in...
tom
-- Gens una summus.
