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Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

mleverything.substack.com

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Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#101

Post by walkedaway »

jessaustin wrote: post #53
bko wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In February 2019, the center-right American Action Forum, estimated that the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade [0] Take the low estimate of $51 trillion over a decade so $5 trillion per year. > The top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data last updated Oct. 19, 2020 So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 yea…

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change. Maybe we could buy some healthcare or bike paths or something. The important thing is seizing the wealth of the 1%.

Why do you think you're entitled to 100% of my wealth?

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#102

Post by tmathmeyer »

tylerhou wrote: post #69
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Distributing the revenue is not about compensating for harms. It's about ensuring that you don't have a net impact on people who are using the typical amount of energy. The idea is that the tax captures the externalized costs of economic actions, like emitting carbon. Once the cost of the actions is fully priced in, it is reasoned, consumption will decrease to the optimal level given the harm done by consumption. The…

You're right that you don't need to compensate for harms with such a tax (so my first sentence was imprecise). But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.

Because the attempt causes the laws to fail in referendum perhaps.

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#103

Post by tmathmeyer »

deregulateMed wrote: post #72
truenamenofame wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The young and poor can't afford to increase their cost of living even further. We're already burdened with debt, a shitty job market, unable to afford housing, and are having trouble even finding love and having children. I don't know how much more people expect us to sacrifice. Newsflash, this generation has fucking nothing left to give.

Are you a swedish citizen?

You've mentioned "swedish" twice now in the context of Switzerland. You've got them confused.

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#104

Post by jessaustin »

walkedaway wrote: post #101
jessaustin wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change. Maybe we could buy some healthcare or bike paths or something. The important thing is seizing the wealth of the 1%.

Why do you think you're entitled to 100% of my wealth?

I doubt I'll get it. I don't even get a discount on healthcare.gov. Mostly I'd like to see USA governed by its citizens rather than the rich. If they weren't rich anymore that might happen. Of course the point is that the rich won't allow this. The system will not fix the harms it was designed to create. If something like this went through it would probably take from the (5-1)% and give to the 0.1%.

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#106

Post by [deleted] »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #86
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does direct pay to poor citizens have to do with climate change? I've always been told that the best way to do a pigovian tax is to make it revenue neutral. You collect the sin tax, but then your redistribute it based on the average level of tax collected. So someone who uses exactly the average amount of carbon sees no change in buying power. Someone who uses less than average actually sees an increase in buyin…

> I've always been told that the best way to do a pigovian tax is to make it revenue neutral. You collect the sin tax, but then your redistribute it based on the average level of tax collected. You were lied to. The best sort of pigovian tax scheme, you collect the tax from those that can pay it. And use the money to help those that can't do what you need them to do. AKA. Put an excise tax on new gasoline cars. Becau…

[deleted]

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#107

Post by betwixthewires »

The methodology of arriving st the conclusion in the title is flawed. Polling people "would you want to pay the government extra money to fight climate change" tells you a more nuanced story than "people won't put their money where their mouth is."

Americans in particular, and people in general, don't trust their government to mediate solutions to problems. If you gave a more concrete solution rather than just "we are gonna effectively raise your taxes and do what we say with the money, efficiently and effectively, promise" I'm sure you'd get a lot more support. But people that pay into social security and then watch that fund get plundered and be on the verge of bankruptcy, asking those people if they'd give the government money so they can manage a fund directed solely at solving a problem and then being surprised when the answer is "no," to attribute that to not actually caring and only paying lip service to the problem is quite a leap.

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#109

Post by betwixthewires »

jdavis703 wrote: post #80
truenamenofame wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The young and poor can't afford to increase their cost of living even further. We're already burdened with debt, a shitty job market, unable to afford housing, and are having trouble even finding love and having children. I don't know how much more people expect us to sacrifice. Newsflash, this generation has fucking nothing left to give.

I don’t know where you live, but there is still more to loose. Hundreds died in the Pacific Northwest because of a recent heatwave, many more lost hours at work because businesses were closed down. Adapting to this will require households and businesses purchase air conditioners and utilities will need to update infrastructure to support increased energy demands. All that will lead to increased financial demands on p…

FYI the heat wave in the pacific northwest of north america is due to what's called an omega disruption in the jet stream at that altitude, a phenomenon that is rare and projected to occur less frequently as the global average temperature warms, according to IPCC climate models. Lots of things can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, that particular occurrence isn't one of them.

Re: Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

#110

Post by staticshock »

jmann99999 wrote: post #8

The problem with this post is that it cites a survey of how much Americans are willing to pay to "stop climate change." According to the article 57% are willing to pay $1 a month to "stop climate change" and 23% would pay $40 a month. As an American, in a well paying IT job, I'd pay $100 IF IT WOULD STOP CLIMATE CHANGE. However, I don't believe the $1, or $40, or $100 is going to do anything. It's far more complex th…

I completely agree. My willingness to pay is directly proportional to my conviction in the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

The internet has revealed us to be very picky shoppers. We do a lot of comparison shopping, looking for the "best" deal on the silliest item. That same skepticism applies to policies, even effective ones. I want to fund the best ideas, and the best ideas should be backed by compelling models and, ideally, empirical evidence.

There's something to be said for the VC mindset here: funding many things, each of which has a low probability of succeeding, and using unicorns to subsidize numerous losses. Tax payers don't like losses, but an example of something kind of similar that the government already does today is science funding.

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