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France to tax flights from its airports, airline shares fall

reuters.com

421–430 of 578 posts

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

#421
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two things to this. Yes, we shouldn't be buying shampoo in the disposable plastic containers - but corporations shouldn't be able to manufacture them in the first place.

So .. what should we be buying shampoo in? Not glass in the shower? Non-recyclable tetra pack?

Is it not possible to manufacture shampoo in solid form? Like a bar of soap?

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

#422

Here are the ways I see airline industry produces pollution: * The airports are built (clearing so much green land, using so much concrete) * How flights taxi when on airport * How much time they spend in air due to congestion or weather * How far airports are located from city population centers and transportation between them. * Amount of time people spend at airports waiting - hence need large facilities to host t…

> I hope there will be holographic rooms that one can use to holographically teleport to another location and do meetings as if they are there in person.

HP took strides on this in 2007 with the "Halo Room".

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press_kits/2008/halo/ds_ha...

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

#423
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole passenger air travel industry (airlines, aircraft manufacturers, airports, etc) is subsidized because they’re not profitable on their own. But a robust and affordable air travel network is a capability the business world needs to operate our economy. Boeing and Airbus are two of the most heavily subsidized companies in the world, and the airlines themselves aren’t far behind. They’re both high-risk, low-mar…

affordable air travel network is a capability the business world needs to operate our economy Is it? Why? Frequent air travel is super recent.

Internet is even more recent, does it make even less necessary to operate out economy?

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

#424
post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole passenger air travel industry (airlines, aircraft manufacturers, airports, etc) is subsidized because they’re not profitable on their own. But a robust and affordable air travel network is a capability the business world needs to operate our economy. Boeing and Airbus are two of the most heavily subsidized companies in the world, and the airlines themselves aren’t far behind. They’re both high-risk, low-mar…

affordable air travel network is a capability the business world needs to operate our economy Is it? Why? Frequent air travel is super recent.

well they need it to operate the economy in the way that it has been operated as of late. which is to say: maybe if we take that away from them, we could solve two problems at once? Pollution from air travel, and all the societal problems that a globalized economy without meaningfully global regulation brings?

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

#425
post #412

Why are they taxing flights rather than fuel? There's nothing wrong with "flying"! What's wrong is how they get their airspeed, namely by burning fossil fuel. Also those prices are insulting. There is no jet fuel tax in the EU. This gimmick tax is less than what people driving cars pay in taxes on their fuel for a tank of gas. Governments want to increase tax on car fuels (hence the yellow jacket movement) but still…

> Why are they taxing flights rather than fuel? Cuz Chicago convention

For those curious, the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation was a UN convention in 1944 that established the rules of international air travel. One of those rules deals with taxing fuel - see below.

Article 24: Aircraft flying to, from or across, the territory of a state shall be admitted temporarily free of duty. Fuel, oil, spare parts, regular equipment and aircraft stores retained on board are also exempted from customs duty, inspection fees or similar charges.

Wiki link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Convention_on_Internat...

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

#426
> A round-trip plane ride from New York to London costs another three square meters or so of Arctic sea ice. [0]

It sounds like it wasn't a high enough tax. And perhaps we need to do more at the individual level to discourage international travel.

[0] https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-co2-sea...

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

#427
I'm getting to the point where I think 'tax incidence analysis' should be a required course, perhaps required every few years throughout ones life just to ensure it's not forgotten[0]. It would improve the political discourse substantially.

[0] Actual implementation of this would be very difficult on many axes and perhaps impossible without introducing more problem than it solves, but I think it's worth it to try to figure out.

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

#428
post #104
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The purpose of the tax is to recover the external cost of flying. Ideally there are alternatives to flying, but it's not a requirement: as long as flying has an environmental price, recovering it through tax is a decent logic. We can discuss the offered price, or how the tax could be structured, but I don't think the approach is unreasonable on its face.

But close to nothing is being recovered. We would recover more or less the same if we introduced a tax on bad weather to be paid by those suffering from it. The money collected with this tax may or may not reduce air travel and will be spent on government employees, welfare distributions, healthcare, roads, military etc as all other taxes and only a fraction will be spent on improving the environment.

It’s a bit tricky but as I far as I know France gov can’t by design reserve the profit from any tax to a specific use. It’s all pooled for the global budget, and the pooled money is dispatched according to the agreed plan each year.

But any new project requiring significant financement needs to propose actions to balance its cost to get approved, thus in this instance the project to invest in roads and rails is backed by this tax.

The projected tax amount just needs to be roughly the same as the new project’s cost.

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

#429

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…

>> There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline This initiative makes trains more competitive. Trains are greener and often quicker especially for intra-european continental routes.

Then why not take revenue from this tax and put it into train subsidies? I don't see that happening.

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

#430

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…

>> There's no alternative to burning fuel by energy density on an airline This initiative makes trains more competitive. Trains are greener and often quicker especially for intra-european continental routes.

Greener ok, but quicker?

Even if you account for the security issues, I never had a plane in Europe being quicker than the plane (with all the overhead). In most cases is double or triple the time (for shorter distances) or close to impossible for longer ones.

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