This is the link to my article http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21590563-counterproductive-taxes-foreign-motorists-are-proliferating-make-foreigners
The European countries considered charging foreign drives for using their road tolls. It is obvious that ro ad is considered as public good which everyone can access and it's hard to charge all the drivers except for those who are residents and pay income tax, but in this situation, it is most likely to be that there was no charges for european countries travelling within the european countries' region. Each day, there are many foreign drivers and lorries travel across the region and this action made the domestic drivers who actually pay through income tax suffer from the heavy traffic. Hence, the government started to think that it was not fair for its resident and thus took this opportunity to make a new change for foreign drives using roads. For example, Britain will start charging foreign lorries up to 16 dollars per day and Belgium and Latvia are also considering the same levy. Hence, the solution of EU governments is to charge other EU countries' drivers for using roads. And, the fact is that if the Britain charges 16 dollars per day for foreign drivers, this will affect in a huge amount of money collected in a considered year period. And eventually, it shows that Britain will charge foreign countries drivers than its own residents to discourage them from using road. Another interesting point is that, EU countries decides to charge foreign countries drivers daily instead of yearly as what they do for their resident. By doing this, they would gain more because daily is considered short run period, so foreign drivers will still use the road anyway. And the rate they charge foreign countries is much higher than its own residents even when break that residents pay yearly into daily. However, there is some crisis that this would not be happened even in 2015
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Here's the link to article http://www.bangkokairportonline.com/node/137 The article talks about the noise pollution from the Thailand's largest airport,Suvannabhumi that has been effected the neighbourhood ever since it was opened. Background information: the airport is located in the so called rural area, Samutprakarm compared to the big city like bangkok where not much space is available. The government decided to build this new airport in this area because at that time 10 years ago when the construction was just started, there were few residents around that area, so the government thought that it was going to be ok.but during the construction period, the population had increased dramatically, many house building companies started to expand their market there because not much space is left in bangkok so people started to move out from bangkok and find some other places, and Samutprakarn is one among the choices, only an hour away traveling from Bkk. Hence, all the residents surrounding the area are now suffering from the noise pollution. The airport is international which has more than 1000 flights per day. Imagines how annoying it is to hear the planes taking offs and landings 24/7. And this is considered as negative externality. In order to reduce the noise pollution and satisfy the resident, the government decided to create a new regulation that for every airlines that want to use the airport must show the certificate which shows their aircrafts do not create the noise beyond the national limit which is 103 decibels. And the planes which are registerd in the country will be check more strictly. This is a big problem for airport and the government because it is hardly achieve the reduction completely , even though they have placed the more strict regulation residents still suffering from the noise pollution. and The government have spend more 300 billion Thai bath to subsidize the residents. My opinion: I personally do not think that only placing regulation will solve the entire problem, people have been suffering till now. The government should be more concerned about this. The government might need to consider other ways to ease this problem for example, imposing higher taxes for the airlines along with the strict regulation and more importantly Thai government should be more strict with all regulation and laws otherwise they are not going to work out this problem ever. Here's the link to the article: http://www.irrawaddy.org/asia/boil-thailands-government-rice-subsidy.html
The article basically talks about the subsidy that the government has offered to the Thai's farmers who grow rice. Thailand is one of the Asia's leading rice exports, in 2011,The country shipped nearly 11 million tons as the world's top exporter, bringing in $6.4 billion to the nation coffers. However, in 2012, Thailand has been replaced by India and Vietnam because Thailand did not have the ability to provide the appropriate amount to the world's rice market. According to the fluctuating price of rice in Thai's rice trade, the farmer weren't convinced to grow a lot of rice, they were afraid that they wouldn't make much profit. Refers back to the law of supply here, as price goes down, producers are less willing to supply the market because less profit can be made at this point. Hence, shortage occurred in the rice market. The government then came up with the plan to subsidy Thai farmers by ensuring the farmers that they will buy every grain of rice that will be produced with the price higher than the normal market price. As mentioned in the article, after the announcement came out, the farmers began to supply more and more because they know exactly how much they would earn and how much all the profits they would get. Everything was guaranteed. However, at the end, another problem approached after this plan came out and farmers began to supply more and more. There was an excess of rice in the rice trade again, "rice mountain" as what they called it. |