And because nobody makes money just for the mere sake of making money, a consumption first policy is simply trading consumption in the future with compounded effect for consumption today with compounded debt.
Population and ConsumptionToo little consumption is the biggest challenge climate-change policy will face in the future, eclipsing the signifiance of over-consumption.
Retail stocks jumped in Hong Kong as investors anticipated monetary-policy stimulus to support consumption.
And the best way to rein in the consumption boom is to tighten fiscal policy.
To try to get a sense of what such a levy would do to the tax burden across incomes, the Tax Policy Center analyzed a generic consumption tax designed to replace most federal taxes.
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Reducing consumption seems intuitively to be an indispensable component of any policy response to climate change.
Monetary policy was loosened, shares bounced back, and consumption and investment were unscathed.
Yet with dwindling authority Mr Abe will continue to find it difficult to make tough policy decisions--such as whether to raise consumption tax.
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"Food inflation hurts consumption, government finances, the balance of payments and monetary policy flexibility, " Atsi Sheth, a senior analyst at Moody's, wrote in a note.
Like the public benefits, the programs and policy incentive mechanisms for promoting self-generation and reduced consumption are sufficiently similar to warrant bundling these measures under the same regulatory umbrella.
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Dr Louise Magris, the director of environmental policy, said the plan sets out 30 actions for reducing energy consumption.
"We believe that the government will react to this weaker-than-expected GDP growth rate by introducing more policy measures to boost lending, speed up project starts, encourage consumption, and support property sales, " Jun Ma, Deutsche Bank greater China chief economist said.
Policy makers adopted a response to this that in retrospect undermined the growth of consumption.
And then the question becomes, as it is for other anti-narcotics policies: should ending the consumption and production of illegal drugs be the be-all and end-all of all public policy, or are there important trade-offs that may not be receiving the attention they deserve?
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In my view, injecting this post-consumerist perspective into environmental and energy policy would not address the gravamen of the global warming problem, which is not over-consumption but under-consumption.
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