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| Gavin Newsom |
His just-released budget, titled “California for All,” calls drinking water a “fundamental right,” and adds: “The budget includes short-term measures to bring immediate relief to communities without safe drinking water and also proposes an ongoing sustainable funding source to address this problem into the future.”
This is unadulterated central planning for the type of "problem" that the free market solves on a daily basis. (Note: I outlined how private sector water would work in: Dear Fellow Health Club Member, Please Leave Me the Hell Alone: An economic analysis of the water "shortage)
Specifically, he wants new taxes on water, fertilizer and dairy to provide this “fundamental right.”
From the budget:
Safe and Affordable Drinking Water Fund—Establish a new special fund, with a dedicated funding source from new water, fertilizer, and dairy fees, to enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities, particularly disadvantaged communities, in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water.-RW
Make it more affordable by making it more expensive. Right!
ReplyDelete── Establish a new special fund, [...] to enable the State Water Resources Control Board to assist communities [...] in paying for the short-term and long-term costs of obtaining access to safe and affordable drinking water. ──
ReplyDeleteIf you or the community has to pay for *something*, then that *something* cannot be a "fundamental right".
Of course said "fund" is not going to mitigate costs in a rational and discernable way, but merely serve to hide the cost from users, which in turn will mean forced rationing and other schemes meant to reduce "waste". Government digs ten holes to fill one.