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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

#351

Post by makerofspoons »

pjc50 wrote: post #311
gambiting wrote: post #256

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?

Here in Denver there is a shop where I can buy a reusable glass bottle that they will refill for me when I bring it back to buy more (soap, shampoo, detergent, etc). Perhaps supermarkets could transition to this model for everything.

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

#352

Post by isostatic »

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…

Don’t tax actual fuel, calculate the notice fuel use based on the type of aircraft and the distance flown (so 787 is cheaper than a 747, and a flight to Cairo is less than a flight to Bangkok)

Ideally you apply this across the whole EU at the same level

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

#354

Post by hourislate »

zulln wrote: post #320
hourislate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> I suppose the Airlines will just pass along any new taxes to the traveling consumer. Well, yeah, but what is the problem with that? The price increase thus decreasing the demand of flights, achieving the goal.

> Well, yeah, but what is the problem with that?

Because Airlines seem to be the intended target and not the tourist. I would imagine they would have instituted an airport fee if the tourist was the target.

>The price increase thus decreasing the demand of flights, achieving the goal.

This could cause a drop in tourist dollars but maybe that's the goal. It seems Europe in general is wary of tourists. Spain has gone so far as to discourage tourism to Barcelona by restricting any new hotels or tourist accommodations. France may be following their lead and taxing Airlines instead, creating less across the whole country instead of a particular city.

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

#355

Post by eternauta3k »

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…

I thought the fuel tank had to be relatively empty in order to land.

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

#356

Post by jsymolon »

donarb wrote: post #268
benj111 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely for the joke to work you'd have to suggest that sea levels were much lower, not higher. Eg: 'When I sold my Manhattan mountain lodge.'

The beachfront Arizona joke is usually not about rising sea levels but rather about earthquakes in California causing that state to break off from the continent.

Also, see the plot from the 1978 Superman movie.

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

#357

Post by Retric »

ixtli wrote: post #329
mac01021 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If governments put a price on carbon, individuals and corporations will do their parts as a result.

Yes, with the caveat that it must be a large enough tax to make it cheaper to use cleaner energy sources. Otherwise it will go the way of regulatory fines: they become the cost of doing business and amount to a fixed line item on a budget rather than a factor that scales.

Change happens at the margins. NASCAR for example is unlikely to care about even rather extreme carbon taxes, but even fairly small tiny taxes matter for electricity generation which is at a major tipping point.

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

#358

Post by holografix »

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.

I agree with need all tree. However someone needs to go first and that is government. They need to level the playing field so no corporation can gain an advantage of abusing externalities and educate the population.

We have business leaders in the US claiming for more tax. At the same time we have 3rd world countries shipping trash back to the 1st world.

Governments could and should be doing more to price externalities and force innovation.

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

#359

Post by benj111 »

laken wrote: post #280
benj111 wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proce…

"but the idea is that a pigovian tax is successful even if the use doesn't go down significantly"

That's why I said its political. If you're pro $TAX you say its pigovian and even if it doesn't 'work' you can claim its not supposed to. Whereas if you're anti $TAX, or want to appear tough on X, you say its a sin tax.

I suppose you could argue a pigovian tax would have an upper bound, whereas a sin tax isnt bounded by anything, but for the types of things either label is used for, the externalities are so far removed and open to interpretation that you could still argue whether $TAX more than offsets/comes nowhere near offsetting X.

Long story short, I don't think you could say definitively whether a tax is sin or pigovian.

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

#360

Post by aisengard »

slg wrote: post #257
scrollaway wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an excellent analogy given that snowflakes don't exactly have any agency over whether they end up in an avalanche, and removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop.

> removing individual snowflakes from a mountain won't an avalanche stop. That is exactly the point of the analogy. One single snowflake doesn't prevent the avalanche and therefore one single snowflake is not to blame. However if enough snowflakes are removed the avalanche is stopped. Similarly no single person is going to fix climate change. The only way we see results is if enough people band together to make chang…

And historically the best way for people to band together to collectively do the same thing is via government action. Far more important to do activism and press the government to solve it than to inconvenience yourself and think "Well, I did my part, now everyone should do the same".
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