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Protesters are not protesting just the taxes on fuel. They protest the fact that taxing fuel is not the solution if you don't provide an alternative mode of tr

Protesters are not protesting just the taxes on fuel. They protest the fact that taxing fuel is not the solution if you don't provide an alternative mode of transport. Some people live far from the cities, Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden? The problem with taxing the diesel is that you are telling people that they are criminals and should stop polluting, but at the same time, airline companies, and freight transporters don't pay the same taxes. Rich/urban people don't care, they just rent an Uber or get a Lime and I guess that's ok, but lately, it seems that the only ones paying the price of carbon are the lower and middle classes. Surely, you can understand that people are tired of paying when they can't even feed their families properly? Should I remind you that there are 9 million people living close or below the poverty line in France? And half of those people are actually working or looking for work but can't find any, yet the government is asking those people with the least amount of disposable income to foot the bill for the entire country. Sounds like a shitty deal to me.

alphabettsy 8y ago
I understand your argument, but the people living in rural areas are bigger contributors to pollution since they tend to drive more and live in single family dwellings. Why shouldn’t the actual road users pay the cost of using the road? I agree any industry using fuel should pay an equal tax though.
- ams6110 8y ago
  The people in the cities benefit from the things the rural people produce (i.e.food). Why shouldn't they shoulder the cost of at least some of the the externalities also?
  - mhb 8y ago
    They do when they pay for the food.
  - freeone3000 8y ago
    Usually this would be accomplished by farmers passing on higher food prices on to the supermarkets and the consumer.
    - flukus 8y ago
      Unfortunately this doesn't work in a globalized race to the bottom. People can go buy a cheaper item that was shipped around the world 3 times before landing on supermarket shelves.
      - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        That is a completely separate problem. If country X can produce food cheaper than yours, your farmers will be unprofitable and you'll end up importing food (or subsidizing local food somehow). If both countries impose a carbon tax in the same amount, nothing about that has changed. Moreover, the best way to do a carbon tax is to just give the money back to people -- use it to fund a UBI. Then the amount can be as high as you want because the higher you make the tax, the more progressive it is, because it increases the amount of the UBI. Let corporations pay more for diesel with the money going to individuals. Paying $900/month in additional fuel tax to get $1000/month in UBI would be great for the poor. Not so much for the oil companies.
        rlucas 8y ago
        No, you've got comparative advantage crucially wrong. If country X can produce food a bit cheaper/better than you, but produces shoes much cheaper/better, then you end up growing at least some of your own food and importing shoes from X. https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadvantage.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativead...
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        Comparative advantage has nothing to do with it. The market price of a global commodity has the opportunity costs already priced in. It's the reason more prosperous countries have higher labor costs. If you and some other country are producing food for the same cost (e.g. because you pay more for an hour of labor but have better automation), adding the same cost to each doesn't affect your competitiveness. You both still have the same costs as each other. The same amount of fuel tax only affects you differently if you require a different amount of fuel to produce the same amount of food. Then the party using less fuel has the advantage and may end up producing more food while the party using more fuel produces less. But that's what we want to happen -- having the other country produce food in that case is the desired outcome, because it can do it for lower cost once the externalities of burning carbon are priced in.
  - alphabettsy 8y ago
    Is that what prices are for?
- rdm_blackhole 8y ago
  Some people have no choice but to live in the countryside. I don't live in France anymore but in the village that I used to live in which was 40km from Paris, the rent for a decent size apartment i.e, not a broom closet was around 700 euros per month. Many people in France make less than 1800 euros per month. Which means that in the best case scenario they are left with 1k euro before any basic necessities such as food, electricity, water insurance, phone bill and what not. The result is that the end of the month they got nothing or barely anything. So what do people do, they move further away so they can save a few hundred euros in rent, even if that means paying more for fuel because they just want to live a little not just survive! And guess what, there is a reason that the rent is lower further away from Paris. The reason is that there are no trains, very little buses, so where does that leave those people, they are stuck! Yet the government comes around and says, you guys are polluting? Well Fk me, what do you want those people to do about it, they just want to survive! Do you think people are actually waking up in the morning and saying: "Today I am going to spend 60euros to fill up my tank and I am just going to drive in circles for hours to screw up the climate!" The governments have known about climate change for DECADES, now that it's actually threatening the economies of the world, they decided to react by making people pay their own lack of foresight? As always, the little guy is getting shafted while the biggest polluters in this world, the freighters, and the airline companies are spared. And for what?
  - IanCal 8y ago
    Isn't this all the point though? People live further out and travel more because it's cheaper. The goal is to change behaviour by making more polluting choices less cheap. If the problem is the poorest, why not use the fuel duty raised to help them? They're surely not using all the fuel, so this could be a net benefit to them.
    - shard972 8y ago
      > Isn't this all the point though? People live further out and travel more because it's cheaper. The goal is to change behaviour by making more polluting choices less cheap. The problem I have is that those incentives are driving people to kill themselves as they cannot afford to live anymore. I guess that's what the government wants though, less pollution. Can't pollute if your dead.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I think you're confusing rural areas and suburban areas. It's the suburban wastelands that are saturated with families of daily-driven automobiles and commuters. I live in a rural area, most of my neighbors only drive to a grocery store ~10 miles away once a week. The rest of the time is spent at home. Then on the weekends a bunch of city folks blast through disrupting everything on their way to/from Las Vegas and/or to hike in the national park. It's absolutely nuts, the small town becomes a microcosm of LA via weekend tourism, every weekend. The rural folks I know are mostly poor, they can't afford to be burning fossil fuels like it's going out of style. They live relatively frugal lives, they're not the problem.
  - eigenstuff 8y ago
    I live in a rural area, I love it when I go days at a time without leaving. I'm very strategic about my trips into town, and with few exceptions won't leave unless I have a minimum of two things I need to do. I definitely did WAY more driving when I lived in the city and the burbs, but out here it's just so inconvenient/time consuming to run into town that I avoid it at all costs.
freeone3000 8y ago
"Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden?" A carbon tax, which taxes carbon, taxes the people who use carbon less, does not sound like users aren't paying "their fair share". They ARE paying their fair share, because they use less. The problem of use-based taxes affecting the poor disproportionately is well-known, but a use-based tax is the most effective at causing user behavior change. The point of the tax isn't the revenue, the point is to make stuff cost more.
- rdm_blackhole 8y ago
  The reason that people in cities won't pay the tax is that they have buses and trains available. That is not available to the people from the countryside. You can't just say stop polluting but not give any alternative mode of transport for this people. What about the rest of the people of this the planet who don't live in a city? Should they just shut up and take it? Easy to say when you are not the one who has to pay. The NIMBY syndrome in all its splendor.
  - ip26 8y ago
    You can't just say stop polluting but not give any alternative mode of transport for this people. Part of the reason they don't have alternative modes of transport is because driving is so (artificially) cheap that other modes have a hard time getting off the ground & staying operational. Yes, I know it's chicken & egg.
  - mywittyname 8y ago
    People in cities pay higher costs for housing and sacrifice space, comfort and privacy for the amenities of city life. They also suffer the most from localized pollution. The entire point of the tax is to incentivize people to use less fuel. How they accomplish that is their own prerogative. They can move, travel less, buy a more fuel efficient vehicle, look to increase their earning, or any of a number of alternatives not listed here. This is precisely why usage taxes are so effective. Rather than prescribing a solution to a problem, you let people figure out the best way to minimize how much they are effected.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
WalterBright 8y ago
The way to make fuel taxes palatable is to have corresponding tax reductions in other taxes that hit the poor, such as the VAT.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
How is a tax on a bad behavior akin to calling someone a criminal? Their choice to have a diesel car and live where they did means they are poisoning the atmosphere for the rest of us. That's a negative externality to their behavior that is not being accounted for. Should they get to pollute the air for free? If we're so worried about the poor, why not levy new taxes on the rich with super yachts and palatial estates? Why not use a revenue-neutral carbon tax with a progressive rebate of some kind. Let's not destroy our atmosphere to support poor polluting individuals. Let's protect our atmosphere and reward poor individuals whose choices are better for our planet, biosphere, and the future wars and devastation bad behaviors like this will surely lead to.

alphabettsy 8y ago

I understand your argument, but the people living in rural areas are bigger contributors to pollution since they tend to drive more and live in single family dwellings. Why shouldn’t the actual road users pay the cost of using the road? I agree any industry using fuel should pay an equal tax though.

ams6110 8y ago
The people in the cities benefit from the things the rural people produce (i.e.food). Why shouldn't they shoulder the cost of at least some of the the externalities also?
- mhb 8y ago
  They do when they pay for the food.
- freeone3000 8y ago
  Usually this would be accomplished by farmers passing on higher food prices on to the supermarkets and the consumer.
  - flukus 8y ago
    Unfortunately this doesn't work in a globalized race to the bottom. People can go buy a cheaper item that was shipped around the world 3 times before landing on supermarket shelves.
    - AnthonyMouse 8y ago
      That is a completely separate problem. If country X can produce food cheaper than yours, your farmers will be unprofitable and you'll end up importing food (or subsidizing local food somehow). If both countries impose a carbon tax in the same amount, nothing about that has changed. Moreover, the best way to do a carbon tax is to just give the money back to people -- use it to fund a UBI. Then the amount can be as high as you want because the higher you make the tax, the more progressive it is, because it increases the amount of the UBI. Let corporations pay more for diesel with the money going to individuals. Paying $900/month in additional fuel tax to get $1000/month in UBI would be great for the poor. Not so much for the oil companies.
      - rlucas 8y ago
        No, you've got comparative advantage crucially wrong. If country X can produce food a bit cheaper/better than you, but produces shoes much cheaper/better, then you end up growing at least some of your own food and importing shoes from X. https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativeadvantage.html https://www.econlib.org/library/Topics/Details/comparativead...
        AnthonyMouse 8y ago
        Comparative advantage has nothing to do with it. The market price of a global commodity has the opportunity costs already priced in. It's the reason more prosperous countries have higher labor costs. If you and some other country are producing food for the same cost (e.g. because you pay more for an hour of labor but have better automation), adding the same cost to each doesn't affect your competitiveness. You both still have the same costs as each other. The same amount of fuel tax only affects you differently if you require a different amount of fuel to produce the same amount of food. Then the party using less fuel has the advantage and may end up producing more food while the party using more fuel produces less. But that's what we want to happen -- having the other country produce food in that case is the desired outcome, because it can do it for lower cost once the externalities of burning carbon are priced in.
- alphabettsy 8y ago
  Is that what prices are for?
rdm_blackhole 8y ago
Some people have no choice but to live in the countryside. I don't live in France anymore but in the village that I used to live in which was 40km from Paris, the rent for a decent size apartment i.e, not a broom closet was around 700 euros per month. Many people in France make less than 1800 euros per month. Which means that in the best case scenario they are left with 1k euro before any basic necessities such as food, electricity, water insurance, phone bill and what not. The result is that the end of the month they got nothing or barely anything. So what do people do, they move further away so they can save a few hundred euros in rent, even if that means paying more for fuel because they just want to live a little not just survive! And guess what, there is a reason that the rent is lower further away from Paris. The reason is that there are no trains, very little buses, so where does that leave those people, they are stuck! Yet the government comes around and says, you guys are polluting? Well Fk me, what do you want those people to do about it, they just want to survive! Do you think people are actually waking up in the morning and saying: "Today I am going to spend 60euros to fill up my tank and I am just going to drive in circles for hours to screw up the climate!" The governments have known about climate change for DECADES, now that it's actually threatening the economies of the world, they decided to react by making people pay their own lack of foresight? As always, the little guy is getting shafted while the biggest polluters in this world, the freighters, and the airline companies are spared. And for what?
- IanCal 8y ago
  Isn't this all the point though? People live further out and travel more because it's cheaper. The goal is to change behaviour by making more polluting choices less cheap. If the problem is the poorest, why not use the fuel duty raised to help them? They're surely not using all the fuel, so this could be a net benefit to them.
  - shard972 8y ago
    > Isn't this all the point though? People live further out and travel more because it's cheaper. The goal is to change behaviour by making more polluting choices less cheap. The problem I have is that those incentives are driving people to kill themselves as they cannot afford to live anymore. I guess that's what the government wants though, less pollution. Can't pollute if your dead.
newnewpdro 8y ago
I think you're confusing rural areas and suburban areas. It's the suburban wastelands that are saturated with families of daily-driven automobiles and commuters. I live in a rural area, most of my neighbors only drive to a grocery store ~10 miles away once a week. The rest of the time is spent at home. Then on the weekends a bunch of city folks blast through disrupting everything on their way to/from Las Vegas and/or to hike in the national park. It's absolutely nuts, the small town becomes a microcosm of LA via weekend tourism, every weekend. The rural folks I know are mostly poor, they can't afford to be burning fossil fuels like it's going out of style. They live relatively frugal lives, they're not the problem.
- eigenstuff 8y ago
  I live in a rural area, I love it when I go days at a time without leaving. I'm very strategic about my trips into town, and with few exceptions won't leave unless I have a minimum of two things I need to do. I definitely did WAY more driving when I lived in the city and the burbs, but out here it's just so inconvenient/time consuming to run into town that I avoid it at all costs.

freeone3000 8y ago

"Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden?" A carbon tax, which taxes carbon, taxes the people who use carbon less, does not sound like users aren't paying "their fair share". They ARE paying their fair share, because they use less. The problem of use-based taxes affecting the poor disproportionately is well-known, but a use-based tax is the most effective at causing user behavior change. The point of the tax isn't the revenue, the point is to make stuff cost more.

rdm_blackhole 8y ago
The reason that people in cities won't pay the tax is that they have buses and trains available. That is not available to the people from the countryside. You can't just say stop polluting but not give any alternative mode of transport for this people. What about the rest of the people of this the planet who don't live in a city? Should they just shut up and take it? Easy to say when you are not the one who has to pay. The NIMBY syndrome in all its splendor.
- ip26 8y ago
  You can't just say stop polluting but not give any alternative mode of transport for this people. Part of the reason they don't have alternative modes of transport is because driving is so (artificially) cheap that other modes have a hard time getting off the ground & staying operational. Yes, I know it's chicken & egg.
- mywittyname 8y ago
  People in cities pay higher costs for housing and sacrifice space, comfort and privacy for the amenities of city life. They also suffer the most from localized pollution. The entire point of the tax is to incentivize people to use less fuel. How they accomplish that is their own prerogative. They can move, travel less, buy a more fuel efficient vehicle, look to increase their earning, or any of a number of alternatives not listed here. This is precisely why usage taxes are so effective. Rather than prescribing a solution to a problem, you let people figure out the best way to minimize how much they are effected.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

WalterBright 8y ago

The way to make fuel taxes palatable is to have corresponding tax reductions in other taxes that hit the poor, such as the VAT.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

How is a tax on a bad behavior akin to calling someone a criminal? Their choice to have a diesel car and live where they did means they are poisoning the atmosphere for the rest of us. That's a negative externality to their behavior that is not being accounted for. Should they get to pollute the air for free? If we're so worried about the poor, why not levy new taxes on the rich with super yachts and palatial estates? Why not use a revenue-neutral carbon tax with a progressive rebate of some kind. Let's not destroy our atmosphere to support poor polluting individuals. Let's protect our atmosphere and reward poor individuals whose choices are better for our planet, biosphere, and the future wars and devastation bad behaviors like this will surely lead to.