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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

#371

Post by riffraff »

esotericn wrote: post #366

Some of the posts here amuse me because they're based on the idea that everything that exists now somehow must exist forever. The train, or electric car, or boat, or other less polluting option from A to B, may well take a lot longer. That might make certain things impractical. Like, say, me wombling down to Heathrow and taking a weekend in Krakow. That may well just be the way it has to be. It may be temporary due t…

There are indeed a lot of things that were "normal" just a few years back: driving without seat belts, smoking in clubs, having sex with strangers without condoms, eating things that are now restricted due to environmental or health concerns.

It is hard to think that cheap flights can be a "dangerous convenience", but they may very well be.

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

#372

Post by esotericn »

riffraff wrote: post #371
esotericn wrote: post #366

Some of the posts here amuse me because they're based on the idea that everything that exists now somehow must exist forever. The train, or electric car, or boat, or other less polluting option from A to B, may well take a lot longer. That might make certain things impractical. Like, say, me wombling down to Heathrow and taking a weekend in Krakow. That may well just be the way it has to be. It may be temporary due t…

There are indeed a lot of things that were "normal" just a few years back: driving without seat belts, smoking in clubs, having sex with strangers without condoms, eating things that are now restricted due to environmental or health concerns. It is hard to think that cheap flights can be a "dangerous convenience", but they may very well be.

Stuff like the Clean Air Act and equivalent elsewhere.

You could just burn whatever in the stove. It's your house, and castle, why not.

Turns out that didn't quite work out, so now you can't. There is no replacement for a proper log fire that's quite the same. Life goes on.

I'd imagine that the wise amongst the older generations would have a better understanding of this, and also those who grew up poor.

Go back 15 years and jetting around Europe on Ryanair flights for the cost of a night out just wasn't a thing. Didn't exist. Completely unimaginable.

Now? I can arb my flat in London against a flight and an Airbnb in a country 2000 miles away and have a weekend holiday for free. Something has to give.

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

#373

Post by dewey »

wayoutthere wrote: post #367
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

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…

I don't have a source for that but I'd say if the airlines etc wouldn't be so subsidized there would be higher focus on developing better engines, electric planes or other technologies than in the current state where losses will just be covered by the tax payer. They wouldn't just stop operating and the "business world" would most likely not collapse.

I've talked to a bunch of people that get flown around by their company for 2h meetings at airports within Germany every day. If these wouldn't happen and would be done via video conferencing or other means that would be an improvement. Business will find a way to make it work.

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

#374

Post by marcosdumay »

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.

When you have a coordination problem, there are just two possible answers: either it's the government or some other government-like body.

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

#375

Post by novaRom »

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…

>> 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.

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

#376

Post by simias »

gdhbcc wrote: post #168
pmontra wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On distances like Lisbom to Paris trains can't compete on time, not only on price. There is no way a train can be made faster with the current technology (hyperloop: let's wait and see.) I think nobody goes from Lisbon to Paris and back by train to spend a weekend there. Of course if flying costs more people will fly less.

Portugal is generally not connected by train anywhere else. Last I checked we didn't even have more than one or 2 routes to Spain by train, due to different gauges, and spain has different gauges from france. If you want to go from Paris to Lisbon by train expect a whole day of travel if not more, with multiple changes

Hopefully if planes become more expensive we'll see some investments in the train infrastructure. Going from Lisbon to Paris even without changes will probably still take a long time even with a bullet train but if I can schedule a trip by night and sleep reasonably comfortably I think I'd consider it over the plane.

Catching a train in the late afternoon in the center of Lisbon, working for a few hours, sleeping and waking up in the center of Paris sounds fairly pleasant to me. Of course at the moment that's effectively science fiction.

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

#377

Post by gdubs »

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…

There’s nothing inherent to carbon taxes that need to be regressive. E.g., you can provide a dividend or set of benefits from the funds that disproportionately favors the poor.

But not taxing carbon is also “regressive”, in that climate change will disproportionately hurt the world’s poorest.

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

#378

Post by nybble41 »

eat_veggies wrote: post #239
slg wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible" ~ Stanisław Jerzy Lec Sure, you won't be able to make a measurable impact by yourself. However your mindset quickly leads to a tragedy of the commons type response that leaves us all in trouble. We should all take a more proactive approach to this in both our private life and in our professional work.

tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation, not by hoping that individuals or corporations will discipline themselves

> tragedy of the commons is solved by regulation

Tragedy of the commons is caused by regulation. That's how you get commons in the first place—resources that everyone is allowed to use but no one has any investment in. It's solved by allowing the commons to be homesteaded and converted to private ownership.

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

#379

Post by LynxInLA »

ericd wrote: post #287
rlpb wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtually all other fuel is taxed, so it's strange that jet fuel is exempt. "Without any international agreement on taxing fuel, it is highly likely that moves to impose duty on international flights, either at a domestic or European level, would encourage ‘tankering’: carriers filling their aircraft as full as possible whenever they landed outside the EU to avoid paying tax. Clearly this would be entirely counterp…

It seems like regulators could just tax planes based on how much fuel they leave with, regardless of the source?

That would incentivize planes to fly with as little fuel as possible. That could lead to some flights running out of fuel when unforeseen issues arise.

No matter how you tax the fuel, there are going to be some perverse incentives.

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

#380

Post by cs02rm0 »

keiferski wrote: post #48

I am actually surprised that short-distance flights aren't taxed more in Western Europe. The train infrastructure in France is world class and can get you from Paris (North-Central part of the country) to Marseille (Southeast), a distance of about 500 miles, in 3 hours. For Americans, this would be roughly equivalent to go from Boston to Washington D.C. (a trip that takes 7-10+ hours)

For comparison, Paris-Marseilles is about a 1hr20 flight. Maybe comparable given airport hassle these days, but that is on what is perhaps the best route in Europe for showing what trains can do.

I doubt cost comes in to most train-flight comparisons and I'm not sure what the point of the tax would be if not to change behaviour.

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