5 ms·
One would assume that you tax carbon across the entire value chain for any product that's to be sold within your borders. Insofar as the atmosphere doesn't con
by mumblemumble 5y ago
One would assume that you tax carbon across the entire value chain for any product that's to be sold within your borders.
Insofar as the atmosphere doesn't confine itself to political boundaries, it certainly seems to me like that would be the sensible way to attempt such a thing. Why faff around?
Companies that don't want to pay this tax would, of course, be free to simply not sell their products in the USA. But I doubt that every participant in, e.g., China's consumer product manufacturing industry would be able to stomach such a course of action.
It would be similar for a hypothetical sugar tax. Which, of course, the US already has something like that, but of course it's currently being used to favor domestic sugar production over international sugar production, so it's not applied consistently to all sugar. But still, I think we can see from that that it's not a question of practicalities. If we can do it for the sake of economic protectionism, then I'm sure it would also work when the motivation is to mold people's diets.
(In case I need to put a finer point on it, I'm speaking here about the feasibility of actually implementing an excise tax policy; I'll refrain from speculating about its ability to achieve its stated goals.)
Long story short, I think that this sort of thing is probably less a question of practicalities than it is a question of political will. If you have political reasons to like this idea, it's very easy to come up with motivated reasoning for why it would be something approaching a panacea. If you have political reasons to dislike it, it's very easy to come up with motivated reasoning for why it could never work.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe Soviet Union attempted to set prices for all goods in the economy. The trouble was that a raise in the price of say wood, would have downstream effects on things like the price of toothpicks. It was a big mess. I'd say it's harder to create a measure of carbon output for a given finished product that is remotely accurate. It really depends where each part of the pencil was manufactured, what specific materials are used, what manufacturing processes were applied, how each raw material was shipped, etc. Take that multiply it by a billion products and you have a huge mess.
- mumblemumble 5y agoExcise taxation is not the same thing as price setting, though. If you want a good explanation for what excise taxation's about, albeit one that uses stodgy, old-fashioned language, you need look no further than Adam Smith's writings on the subject in The Wealth of Nations.
- willcipriano 5y agoIf the intention is to implement a carbon tax, I see no way of doing so without some relatively accurate measure of carbon output. Without that you are taxing not carbon but instead something else.
- nradov 5y agoSensible carbon tax proposals are generally based on extraction, not consumption. There are only a limited number of companies mining coal and drilling oil. Those can be measured fairly easily.
- willcipriano 5y agoThe simplifies the problem technically and complicates it politically, at least in the US. Those hardest hit by a tax implemented that way are friendly with the elite of the US, so much so we have been at war with their enemies for decades.