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Distributing the revenue is not about compensating for harms. It's about ensuring that you don't have a net impact on people who are using the typical amount of
by asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
Distributing the revenue is not about compensating for harms. It's about ensuring that you don't have a net impact on people who are using the typical amount of energy. The idea is that the tax captures the externalized costs of economic actions, like emitting carbon. Once the cost of the actions is fully priced in, it is reasoned, consumption will decrease to the optimal level given the harm done by consumption.
The biggest problem with this idea is that we don't really know what the costs are going to be.
In practice, poor people would be beneficiaries of a externality-capturing tax, because by and large, rich people use a lot more carbon. More flights, bigger cars, bigger houses, etc.
- tylerhou 5y agoYou're right that you don't need to compensate for harms with such a tax (so my first sentence was imprecise). But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms.
- _rpd 5y ago> But I also don't see what's wrong with attempting to distribute (some of) the revenue in such a way to compensate for harms. It becomes a big political fight over how much of the revenue should be directed to social programs, so the tax policy changes every 4 years. A straight rebate gets wide support and taking it away becomes more and more unpopular as people get used to receiving it.
- tmathmeyer 5y agoBecause the attempt causes the laws to fail in referendum perhaps.
- trboyden 5y agoNo, redistribution is organized extortion. I make $100, the government takes $50 of it, pockets $30 of that, and then redistributes $20 to those that will keep them in office (A.K.A. a bribe).