Who wants to get taxed more? Answer: Democrat Bay Area Environmentalists & cheese eating surrender monkeys
It's not "taxed more", it's "taxed in accordance to its harm".
Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
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Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#62I don't think will ever work. There are countries where taxes are way higher than US. For example in Italy [1] we are around 50% (including VAT and local taxes) and other than decreasing the productivity of companies it never had a "mind" impact. In fact Italy is one of the countries with most cars (per citizen) and that invest less/nothing in alternative energies. [1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/ta…
That's just a generic across the board tax you are talking about and linking to isn't it? Rather than a specific incentive/disincentive in one area (carbon emissions).
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#63I don't think will ever work. There are countries where taxes are way higher than US. For example in Italy [1] we are around 50% (including VAT and local taxes) and other than decreasing the productivity of companies it never had a "mind" impact. In fact Italy is one of the countries with most cars (per citizen) and that invest less/nothing in alternative energies. [1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/ta…
50% tax on everything across the board is different from differentially taxing carbon. Taxing everything at once just slows down all economic behavior at once, but putting an additional tax on carbon makes people shift their behavior to avoid that tax in particular.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#64You cannot just introduce tax and hope for best when the whole tax system and tax recovery is a joke that hurts mainly SMBs. Its not like big corporations will pay them anyway.
If you want to introduce a tax on something so intangible as emissions, you would need to build easy to track and easy to use tax system.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if climate change turns out to be real, and caused by man, but not harmful to humans soon? https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-wi... EDIT: downvoting this because you don't agree with it won't make it go away. Scientific American isn't Fox News!
Then we really lucked out, although it would still be a bummer about the corals. (And shell fish, acidification is already disrupting oyster farming in Washington)
If the choice is between people having electricity and clean, running water in India, or corals dying out, it isn't moral to choose the corals. Human lives matter.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that a 10% increase in electricity costs is probably going disproportionately affect the poor?
The proposed tax is basically a spending tax, much like a sales tax. It would effectively raise the price of any products/services that rely on carbon-based energy to be made/delivered. Remind me: how does a spending tax disproportionately affect the poor? The tax goes into a local/federal budget, where poor disproportionately benefit from it (compared to what they put in). Also, the arguably biggest global challenge…
Poor living in rural/exurban areas, spend more of their money on utilities & transportation overall
You're assuming here that the money will be spent on the poor, but we really have to make sure that will actulaly happen if we want the carbon tax to have fair distributional implications
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
The fact that a 10% increase in electricity costs is probably going disproportionately affect the poor?
The proposed tax is basically a spending tax, much like a sales tax. It would effectively raise the price of any products/services that rely on carbon-based energy to be made/delivered. Remind me: how does a spending tax disproportionately affect the poor? The tax goes into a local/federal budget, where poor disproportionately benefit from it (compared to what they put in). Also, the arguably biggest global challenge…
Some people need to scrape together cash to buy enough gas to get to work. Poor people spend a disproportionate amount of their income on necessities like fuel for an aging inefficient vehicle, electricity or natural gas to heat a cheaply-constructed home, and factory-farmed food created with cheap nitrogen fertilizer.
All of those necessities get more expensive with a carbon tax, so we need a way to cushion the impact on those who struggle to pay for the basics.
While the impact of global warming does impact the global poor quite heavily (think of places like Bangladesh) it doesn't really hurt the poor in developed places much more than the rich in developed places. I was a lot less worried about El Niño when I rented an apartment, for example.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#68I don't think will ever work. There are countries where taxes are way higher than US. For example in Italy [1] we are around 50% (including VAT and local taxes) and other than decreasing the productivity of companies it never had a "mind" impact. In fact Italy is one of the countries with most cars (per citizen) and that invest less/nothing in alternative energies. [1] https://home.kpmg.com/xx/en/home/services/tax/ta…
From the article:
> Musk, who has pushed for a carbon tax before, said the tax should be revenue neutral and phased in over a period of years. A revenue neutral tax means governments would still receive the same amount of money despite a change in the tax code. Under Musk’s scenario, taxes would be weighted heavily on carbon, and reduced in other areas. This approach already occurs, Musk said, citing how taxes are higher on cigarettes and alcohol than fruits and vegetables.
He's proposing lowering other taxes simultaneously, so the government gets the same amount, no tax hike necessary.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#69Spending is a lot easier than taxing.
A country could just offer to buy a increasing amount of zero emission electricity and sell it on the free market until electricity was no longer generated from sources that yielded carbon.
The same approach could work for battery cells that could be used in cars until non-electric vehicles were no longer competitive.
This could be funded by that country's current (probably) progressive tax system.
This doesn't cover air, sea, heating and agriculture emissions. But a carbon tax may not be an adequate incentive to develop electric aircraft or cargo vessels in any case.
Re: Elon Musk: Only a Carbon Tax Will Accelerate the World's Exit from Fossil Fuels
#70You cannot just introduce tax and hope for best when the whole tax system and tax recovery is a joke that hurts mainly SMBs. Its not like big corporations will pay them anyway. If you want to introduce a tax on something so intangible as emissions, you would need to build easy to track and easy to use tax system.
??
You just tax sales of oil, natural gas, etc. and a few other specific activities, like raising livestock, it's super easy
If Congress can implement something as complex as the Dodd-Frank act, I'm sure it can measure and tax something as basic as carbon emissions