PolicyGuy

Tuesday, December 20, 2005


Come Fly With Me--and Pay My Ticket.
Since deregulation, taxpayers have subsidized to sparsely-visited airports through the Essential Air Service Program. With changes in the program, market forces came more into play.

With recent changes to the program, the scope of the program has been cut. Michael Lowrey of the John Locke Foundation tells how one city in North Carolina lost its air service and another retained it:

"The difference is not some sort of government subsidy or advertising that Kinston provided or Hickory didn't provide but rather in markets. Kinston, effectively represented a new, not previously served, market for Delta. Hickory travelers already could fly Delta from Charlotte and enough weren’t willing to pay a premium for less frequent service closer to home."

"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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