We hear it all the time. "It's unfair that my tax dollars are being used to subsidize the purchase of your car" or something to that effect. My approach is to smile and say: "Actually you've got that wrong. My tax dollars are subsidizing your car". Of course they look surprised. I go on to explain that oil companies get lots of tax breaks and give aways from governments and to make matters worse some of their messes are cleaned up at public expense. There are a lot of jobs in the oil industry and no democratic government can easily survive the damages by implementing policies that result in job losses. The oily ones play that card for all it's worth. The figure that I've heard is that the Canadian government spends somewhere around 6 billion dollars a year in exploration grants and subsidies to the oil companies. The IMF thinks it may be much higher. The federal gov't even bought a contentious pipeline project just to try to keep Alberta happy just to win enough votes for the next election. (It won't work). So the amount spent on EV subsidies is chump change in comparison. How do you like them apples?
Those subsidies are also underwriting a reduction in air pollution and global warming which benefit everyone. Even people who cling to their ICE vehicles have lungs and will benefit with more EVs on the road.
As someone now excluded from the IRA EV subsidy there's a point buried in the complaint: it's not universally accessible. Subsidies are often described by critics as unfair when few individuals qualify. The California incentive described makes a cleaner case. Subsidy and support are the fiscal tools for a government to encourage industry, taxation to discourage same.
First is to remind them why some subsidies exist: Those of us alive before the formation of the EPA in December 1970 remember the auto and coal smog that made many USA cities nearly unlivable. More recently, China embraced EVs as cars and coal was making their cities unlivable. Then recently, Sandy Munro had something to say: Bob Wilson
