Picking losers

The original Picking Losers 'blog seems to have gone to sleep, but there are two articles in today's FT that bring this all back to life.

In the first, the nuclear industry is calling for hidden subsidies (cut price access to waste storage facilities) and in t'other the games industry is calling for tax breaks to prevent programmers relocating to Canada (where they get "30 to 40 per cent of their wage bill refunded ... while employees are offered income tax holidays for up to five years").

Call me old-fashioned, but I am happy to pay market value for my electricity, however generated, and I don't buy games anyway. But I am buggered if I, as a taxpayer, should subsidise a French state-owned enterprise or other people's hobbies.