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France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

reuters.com

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Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#271

Post by OisinMoran »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #235
marnett wrote: post #211

> Want to do something about climate change? Start with yourself I really dislike this line of thinking. I don’t manufacture millions of tons of concrete or millions of single-use plastic shampoo bottles. Our current path is irreversible if drastic shifts in disposable consumerism don’t occur soon.

There's a constant war of words here: are individuals responsible for cleaning up their footprint, or are corporations responsible for their dirty practices, or are governments responsible for putting policies to guide the economy? The answer is: we need all three. We will not tackle climate change without strong change on the personal, corporate, and governmental levels.

If you could only pick two out of those three, which would you choose?

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#272

Post by patd »

selectodude wrote: post #246
gns24 wrote: post #192

The UK already taxes flights in a similar way. Whilst this does feel like progress, it would be much better to tax the fuel instead of the passengers. Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. The problem with taxing passengers instead of fuel include: - it doesn't encourage improving the efficiency of planes - airlines can't fill their planes with really cheap seats, and empty seats…

It's illegal to tax fuel for international flights. Domestic fuel is already taxed but the Chicago Convention in 1944 set the ground rules for the ICAO and international air travel.

Doesn’t it only cover fuel that is already on board when the plane lands ?

And the Chicago Convention seems to have been revised 8 times already (according to Wikipedia) so it’s not set in stone.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#273

Post by vorpalhex »

selectodude wrote: post #250
vorpalhex wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right, those resources are really going to benefit all of catkind. My cat loves iron mines, favorite past time really.

The resources weren't placed anywhere for the benefit of anybody. They just...are.

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

Semantic games seem silly. If the parent prefers "placed" to "existed since formed in the Earth", then let's grant them the lingual shortcut. Likewise for "for Mankind" instead of "having existed for no particular purpose but being readily available for the usage of the dominant species of the land which can heavily benefit from their extraction and processing."

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#274

Post by ericd »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #242
hak8or wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. It is us who continue to buy gas guzzlers and wanting to live grossly inefficient lifestyles via living in suburbia, combined with us voting against mass transit. It is also us who vote in people who do not care about climate change. Ultimately, we are the ones who are willingly giving money to these c…

> But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

I agree, I think a carbon tax that puts a price on the damage people do day to day with their behavior is the only thing that’s going to work on a meaningful scale. The needed changes are too painful to make without pushing hard on peoples’ wallets.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#275

Post by leetcrew »

gourou wrote: post #269
selectodude wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal to tax fuel for international flights. Domestic fuel is already taxed but the Chicago Convention in 1944 set the ground rules for the ICAO and international air travel.

A possible alternative would be to tax carbon emissions

to the extent this is possible, this is probably the best solution, since emissions are not directly proportional to number of passengers or even fuel use.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#276

Post by WhompingWindows »

cameronbrown wrote: post #10

I don't really understand what the purpose of this tax is. There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline, so why go after flights? What do they expect them to do? If you're taxing petrol cars you'd expect electric cars to become more economically viable. Either way I disagree with carbon taxes. They're regressive, and ignore the fact that regular people are being badly hurt by them whereas th…

Carbon taxes are not inherently regressive, that's simply false. What do you DO with the taxes, that's what makes them progressive or regressive. If you rebate the taxes to the people, they become PROgressive, as the rich are much more likely to have higher carbon footprints.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#277

Post by hourislate »

dewey wrote: post #167

Finally. It's really frustrating to see how heavily subsidized airlines, plane fuel and airports are and how big of a tax breaks they get when they come to a city. At the same time people are shamed for buying salad in a plastic bag when the big lever is somewhere completely different. Had the same thought yesterday when I saw: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1148317244893597696

>Finally. It's really frustrating to see how heavily subsidized airlines, plane fuel and airports are and how big of a tax breaks they get when they come to a city.

I suppose the Airlines will just pass along any new taxes to the traveling consumer. I was always under the impression that airports in France were economic drivers of prosperity considering tourism makes up about 77 billion euro of economic impact to the GDP France.

Hope it works out for them...

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#278

Post by dawnerd »

gourou wrote: post #254
rdtsc wrote: post #41

I've flown through a French airport once - Paris Charles de Gaulle and since have gone out of my way to not fly through it again. It was a hot mess. They lost the luggage, it was hard to find gates, parts of it looked outdated, customer service sucked. A year after, the ceiling at its _new_ terminal collapsed killing several people ( https://www.thoughtco.com/charles-de-gaulle-airport-terminal... ). Maybe it was just…

It seems most people share your sentiment http://plus.lefigaro.fr/note/the-most-hated-airport-in-the-w...

When I was last through there one of the food service employees was ripping off change from foreign travelers. When reported to the airport their response was basically, "so, what?"

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#279

Post by smallbigfish »

DeepYogurt wrote: post #242
hak8or wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. It is us who continue to buy gas guzzlers and wanting to live grossly inefficient lifestyles via living in suburbia, combined with us voting against mass transit. It is also us who vote in people who do not care about climate change. Ultimately, we are the ones who are willingly giving money to these c…

> But it is us who are actually performing the "consumerism". It is us who buys tons of garbage and then throw it out. If only we could collectively incentivize more efficient lifestyles.

You can't really live "efficient" being poor.

Re: France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

#280

Post by laken »

benj111 wrote: post #247
laken wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah yep, I had a typo there. Sin taxes are meant to cut down use indeed, unlike the pigovian ones.

I have a problem with that definition, pigovian taxes are obviously going to cut down use. So the choice of label seems to be a political one.

I suppose a better definition would be that sin taxes are meant to cut down on personal use, while pigovian are meant to offset external factors which the use of the product/service causes. Of course, each of these taxes are going to end up cutting down use, as it would lower demand due to a higher cost, but the idea is that a pigovian tax is successful even if the use doesn't go down significantly, as the tax proceeds would be reinvested in offsets from the negative activity. A sin tax could do this, but it doesn't always do this.
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