Pot and Kettle, Aquaint Thyselves

One of the first responses I came across to Calderón's food subsidy scheme comes from Rogelio Ramírez de la O, in today's El Universal. Ramírez de la O's take on things is usually anti-government, and this was no different. After commenting on the new program announced Sunday, he expands his disapproval to the last 8 years of PAN economic stewardship:

In the year 2000 the chapter on aid and subsidies in the Budget of the Federation was 96 billion pesos. In 2007, it had already tripled to 288 billion. And in 2008 it lists more than 330 billion. This growth is alarming, even when the intention is support groups with few resources.

Later:

What makes this expansion of subsidies possible, just as with the massive growth in the government's current expenditure, is simply the increasingly high oil prices. What makes it easy to criticize the expansion is the lack of an articulated program of economic growth and in place of it the use of a non-renewable resource to artificially sustain a certain level of various population groups' consumption.

As always, Ramírez de la O delivers his opinion in a measured tone, amply supported by logic and statistics. Nonetheless, it's a bit odd to see Ramírez de la O write a critical column under the headline "New Populism," given that he served as the principle economic adviser to Mexico's most famous populist, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, when he ran for president in 2006.