Agricultural Economics—Without Apology
I will be in Atlanta for a little over 36 hours in a few weeks for a conference. As such, my schedule will be packed, but I expect to have some time for one nice dinner, and I would welcome suggestions as to where to eat in downtown Atlanta.
I have only been to Atlanta once, for an even shorter trip in the summer of 2009 when my wife and I picked up our visas from the Belgian consulate there. Back then, someone had recommended eating at Paschal’s, which turned out to be a smorgasbord of heartburn-inducing deep-fried fare.
From The Economist’s Gulliver blog:
“Given the myriad fees already imposed by Canada’s government and airlines on passengers, another one should hardly rankle. But the American government’s proposed $5.50 inspection fee for Canadian flyers has prompted plenty of squawking. (…)
But the proposed inspection fee, which was introduced in the 2012 US budget, is not actually a new one, but rather an end to an exemption air and marine travellers from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean have enjoyed since 1997. Some 16m Canadians fly to the US every year, so the fee would raise about $90m from Canada alone—chump change given America’s projected $1.6 trillion budget deficit for 2012.
A recent survey by the Hotel Association of Canada showed that 21% of Canadians drove to an American airport last year to benefit from cheaper airline tickets for US or foreign travel, up from 18% in 2009. It’s unlikely that another $5.50 fee will stem that traffic.”
More often than not, I fly into Burlington, VT when I visit my family in Montreal. Burlington airport is just small enough to process travelers extremely quickly, the average person who works there is considerably more courteous than the average Montreal Trudeau airport employee, and the two-hour drive between Burlington, VT and my parents’ house on the South Shore of the St. Lawrence River goes through some of the most beautiful countryside in North America.
I expect to fly into Burlington even more than I used to. I would guess this diversion of traffic from Canadian to US airports is what US policy makers had in mind when they ended the exemption, which makes this a protectionist measure.