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True but I think some of these issues are also fundamentally harder to tax. Everything uses land and water, the problem is how much cattle use per calorie produ

by sparrc 8y ago

True but I think some of these issues are also fundamentally harder to tax. Everything uses land and water, the problem is how much cattle use per calorie produced. I suppose you're saying we should tax usage of these things based on calorie produced?

avar 8y ago
Nothing needs to be taxed based on calorie produced. For the purposes of sustainability you tax externalities. Whether that's releasing carbon into the atmosphere, or whatever it costs to fix the land or water you're polluting. If you're polluting as much as your neighbor but producing fewer calories you'll make less money, so market forces will take care of that and you'll be more likely to go out of business. There's no need to tax anything based on caloric production for the purposes of taxing pollution. That of course assumes that you're producing the same product as your neighbor, but maybe he's making dogfood and you're making Kobe beef. Then it's OK for your business if you're producing fewer calories per unit of pollution.
- sparrc 8y ago
  Right, my point is that producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food, I guess what I'm asking is: how do you classify 'land' as an externality?
  - avar 8y ago
    With per-acre property taxes. If you need 10x the land to produce a kg of beef v.s. a kg of lentils you'll pay 10x the property taxes, which'll be worked into the price of your product. The question of e.g. water consumption or pollution is a separate question. It's possible to pollute a lot in a very small area, and that should be priced accordingly.
    - sparrc 8y ago
      Fair enough, I see the logic behind what you're saying, but taxing that as an externality would require a massive change in the way farmland is managed and taxed in most of the western world. I'm not saying this is right, but farming is such a difficult and low-margin occupation that most countries have policies of helping farmers and having low to no taxes (even to the point of giving cashback in the EU) on land classified as "farmland" So "sin taxes" would be a way of targeting some of the biggest problems (meat) without completely restructuring the food and taxation system around the world.
      - avar 8y ago
        The "sin taxes" would just be another and less efficient form of restructuring. You'd reduce meat consumption, thus screwing over some polluting farmers, but also equally screwing over other farmers who pollute less to produce the same product. But on the topic of say EU farming subsidies: You'd still raise the taxes dramatically to price the externality of pollution, but could just on top of that decide to give tax rebates that would amount to the same net subsidy. The reason it's important to do it that way is two-fold.: First you want to as a matter of public policy see how much you're actually paying for this subsidy. E.g. corporations in the EU usually pay a reduced VAT rate via rebates, we don't pretend that the concept of VAT doesn't apply to them. We could see that we like farming so much that we're spending however many billions of EUR/yr on offloading pollution on future generations. Secondly because such a tax subsidy could be structured to give more money to farmers if they pollute less, instead of them coming out even if they continue doing what they're doing now. Right now a farmer who releases way more CO^2 than his neighbor doesn't pay any more taxes, maybe you'd like to keep it that way for political reasons, but we could at least structure it so that his neighbor makes money by polluting less.
  - theptip 8y ago
    I agree with what avar is saying above and in the sibling thread. > producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food I think this is quite different from CO2 and pollution, which I'd agree are true externalities. I'm not sure I follow " how do you classify 'land' as an externality" though. Why is it an externality? It is a good that has a price. It sounds like you're believe that there's something inherently bad about meat consuming more land to produce than other types of food. But I think to first approximation, the free market just sorts that one out; if there were other uses for that land that were more profitable on a per-acre basis, then you'd expect land-owners to convert to those uses.

by sparrc 8y ago

avar 8y ago

Nothing needs to be taxed based on calorie produced. For the purposes of sustainability you tax externalities. Whether that's releasing carbon into the atmosphere, or whatever it costs to fix the land or water you're polluting. If you're polluting as much as your neighbor but producing fewer calories you'll make less money, so market forces will take care of that and you'll be more likely to go out of business. There's no need to tax anything based on caloric production for the purposes of taxing pollution. That of course assumes that you're producing the same product as your neighbor, but maybe he's making dogfood and you're making Kobe beef. Then it's OK for your business if you're producing fewer calories per unit of pollution.

sparrc 8y ago
Right, my point is that producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food, I guess what I'm asking is: how do you classify 'land' as an externality?
- avar 8y ago
  With per-acre property taxes. If you need 10x the land to produce a kg of beef v.s. a kg of lentils you'll pay 10x the property taxes, which'll be worked into the price of your product. The question of e.g. water consumption or pollution is a separate question. It's possible to pollute a lot in a very small area, and that should be priced accordingly.
  - sparrc 8y ago
    Fair enough, I see the logic behind what you're saying, but taxing that as an externality would require a massive change in the way farmland is managed and taxed in most of the western world. I'm not saying this is right, but farming is such a difficult and low-margin occupation that most countries have policies of helping farmers and having low to no taxes (even to the point of giving cashback in the EU) on land classified as "farmland" So "sin taxes" would be a way of targeting some of the biggest problems (meat) without completely restructuring the food and taxation system around the world.
    - avar 8y ago
      The "sin taxes" would just be another and less efficient form of restructuring. You'd reduce meat consumption, thus screwing over some polluting farmers, but also equally screwing over other farmers who pollute less to produce the same product. But on the topic of say EU farming subsidies: You'd still raise the taxes dramatically to price the externality of pollution, but could just on top of that decide to give tax rebates that would amount to the same net subsidy. The reason it's important to do it that way is two-fold.: First you want to as a matter of public policy see how much you're actually paying for this subsidy. E.g. corporations in the EU usually pay a reduced VAT rate via rebates, we don't pretend that the concept of VAT doesn't apply to them. We could see that we like farming so much that we're spending however many billions of EUR/yr on offloading pollution on future generations. Secondly because such a tax subsidy could be structured to give more money to farmers if they pollute less, instead of them coming out even if they continue doing what they're doing now. Right now a farmer who releases way more CO^2 than his neighbor doesn't pay any more taxes, maybe you'd like to keep it that way for political reasons, but we could at least structure it so that his neighbor makes money by polluting less.
- theptip 8y ago
  I agree with what avar is saying above and in the sibling thread. > producing any type of meat consumes excessive amounts of land vs other forms of producing food I think this is quite different from CO2 and pollution, which I'd agree are true externalities. I'm not sure I follow " how do you classify 'land' as an externality" though. Why is it an externality? It is a good that has a price. It sounds like you're believe that there's something inherently bad about meat consuming more land to produce than other types of food. But I think to first approximation, the free market just sorts that one out; if there were other uses for that land that were more profitable on a per-acre basis, then you'd expect land-owners to convert to those uses.