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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 taxe

by 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.

by sparrc 8y ago

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.