8 ms·

Just raise taxes on fuel. It has the added benefit of actually saving lives too. The higher the cost of fuel, the less people are killed by cars.

bpodgursky 5y ago
This is, for better or for worse, a directly regressive tax in a way that is politically toxic.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  There is a really easy solution to that - tax carbon, and put 100% of the revenue into a single bucket, divide that by the number of citizens, and give each citizen that amount. This means that it is a net positive for anyone who uses less than the average amount of carbon, and incentivizes everyone to use less. Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon, so it will be a net positive for them.
  - mcguire 5y ago
    "Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon..." Do you have a citation for that?
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      There are quite a few: https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce4... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r... https://www.oxfam.ca/news/carbon-emissions-of-richest-1-per-cent-more-than-double-the-emissions-of-the-poorest-half-of-humanity/ https://www.oxfam.ca/news/carbon-emissions-of-richest-1-per-...
  - bpodgursky 5y ago
    > Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon This is not true in a world where most white-collar workers have been working from home for two years (or, increasingly, can afford Teslas), and service employees have to drive to work every day. Look, I want a carbon tax. It's good on net. But it's regressive and the people will never vote to support it. I live in deep-blue WA and even here the public rejected it.
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      The gap is large enough that I doubt the shift in work habits was enough to change it. Cars are not the only major source of carbon emissions, and wealthier people have bigger houses: https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce4... I think you are misunderstanding the reasons why carbon taxes don't get passed. One, the ones you mention failing were NOT of the type that I am talking about (revenue neutral ones, where all of the money taken in is given right back to the citizens). If you told citizens they would be getting a check every year, I bet you a lot more would support it. In fact, I don't have to be hypothetical: They implemented a revenue neutral carbon tax in British Columbia, and after nearly a decade of being in effect, 70% of residents supported it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-carbon-tax-popular-give-the-profits-to-the-people https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-... I think you will find that like most policy decisions, it is not the average citizen who is keeping a revenue neutral carbon tax from being implemented, but large carbon polluters who lobby against it and convince citizens not to support it.
  - pzo 5y ago
    This is hard to enforce. How about family that doesn't have kids vs one with 4? Each child contributes a lot to carbon emission until adulthood and after that. To be really honest families without children then should have more carbon credits.
    - adolph 5y ago
      > To be really honest families without children then should have more carbon credits. What about dead people? They are carbon negative since they are sequestering it in the grave. To be really honest murderers should have more carbon credits. Edit, in case it wasn't totally obvious, this is reductio ad absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      It wouldn't be given per family, it would be per person, so those kids would each get a share. I am not sure why that would be hard to enforce. I am not sure why you think it should be divided by family... that "family without children" was created by a family that had children... why would an adult be more worthy of their share than a kid? A kid probably uses less carbon than an adult. The whole point is that we don't have to figure out who uses more carbon or who deserves what... we tax the carbon at its source, and let the market figure out how to pass that cost along, and then pay the money directly to people. If you use less carbon than average you get more money than you pay... doesn't matter who you are or how old you are. You seem to be talking about incentivizing population control... I am very against that, but even if you are for it, I don't think carbon taxes are the way to go for that.
gundmc 5y ago
That seems like it would be an extremely regressive tax and disproportionately affect lower income Americans, no?
- exclusiv 5y ago
  Yes it would and also inflation. Goods would cost more which would be another whammy. We should boost the tax credits for new EV purchases. And maybe extend to your first used EV purchase too.
- kneel 5y ago
  offset it with more tax credits for lower income
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    That's just creating a poverty trap. Sure you can use math and do a phased in/out credit based on income but that just replaces a welfare cliff with a welfare "steep grade". Unless the credit is so generously applied as to defeat the point of the price hike you're still making the metaphorical gravity well of poverty deeper. Edit: Did I say something mathematically incorrect or is it just inconvenient?
    - occamrazor 5y ago
      You don’t even need a phase-out, a flat redistribution would work well enough, maybe accompanied by funding for public transportation.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    Take more money from poor people and then give it back at the end of the year - after paying the salary of all the new bureaucrats you had to hire. Great idea.
    - smeyer 5y ago
      With the key added piece that you're trying to disincentivize carbon emissions in the process. I'm much more worried about the risks of the climate crisis than I am whether a few extra bureaucrats are hired.
Avicebron 5y ago
true, less people able to afford a Tesla on the roads, maybe we can build a nice walking lane with the proceeds so the good folks doing the gardening at the presidio can make it to work.
koolba 5y ago
You could do the same thing about cigarettes and cheeseburgers too. The problem is that it’s inherently a regressive approach where the brunt is borne by the lowest income classes.
- robocat 5y ago
  Cigarettes is a great example where there are highly taxed in some countries, so the US has a population of foreign experiments that the US can study to see the effects on the poor. In New Zealand a pack of 20 costs about NZD36. Minimum wage is NZD20 per hour here. Or adjusting to match median per capita incomes, that is about USD40 for a pack. Also see this list of world cigarette prices: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=17 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings... Edit: Disclaimer: when you are old enough to have close friends with smoking related cancers and emphysema etcetera, using dollars to represent the future cost to yourself seems more reasonable. It also breaks the social dynamic of handing cigarettes around and getting others addicted - when a single cigarette is expensive to you, you don’t just offer them to others.
- ErikVandeWater 5y ago
  Step 1. Send a $50 check to everyone who earned less than 30k last year or who is unemployed now at the beginning of every month Step 2. Raise gas/burger/cigarette taxes
gibolt 5y ago
The easiest approach is to remove the billions (nearing trillions) in annual fossil fuel subsidies. People fight against subsidies to clean energy, forgetting how much more flows into an industry that is killing us.
- wang_li 5y ago
  >forgetting how much more flows into an industry that is killing us. It's not very much. People who write white papers for their think tank or who want to push a particular agenda like to say that not taxing something or someone is the same as subsidizing them. Which is definitely not true in reality. It should be simple enough to see that not taxing has a floor at $0.00, while subsidizing something has no limiting bound at all.
  - scatters 5y ago
    Absorbing the negative externalities of a process is the same as subsidizing it. The subsidy value here is bounded above by the net present value of the negative externalities in question.
    - wang_li 5y ago
      What are the externalities of extracting fossil fuels? Or are you attributing the consumption of fossil fuels to the extraction companies? How many degrees removed does one continue to be responsible?
      - scatters 5y ago
        The externality is in removing the carbon from the geosphere and introducing it into the biosphere, since it'll end up in the atmosphere eventually. So yes, the responsibility for the externality is attributable to the extracting companies.
- shiftpgdn 5y ago
  This is a weak talking point. There are no direct subsidies to US oil and gas companies. None. The subsidies people frequently talk about are “externalities.”
barbazoo 5y ago
> The higher the cost of fuel, the less people are killed by cars. Not if your goal is to move from ICE to EV. Just because it's an EV, doesn't mean fewer people are "killed by cars".
- paulgb 5y ago
  EV are still susceptible to accidents (the way they're driven 'round here, I might even say more susceptible), but pollution from ICE also reduces lifetimes of people who have to breathe it in. (e.g. this is probably a bit alarmist but: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/cars-killing-us-driving-environment-phase-out https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/cars-k...)
ppeetteerr 5y ago
Agreed but only if we subsidize low income earners.
mrtksn 5y ago
In Europe, fuel taxes are high. In Turkey, taxes are high but also the income is much lower. As a result, in EU the cars tend to be much more smaller and economical than those in the USA. In Turkey, the cars are like the cars in EU but the engines are much less powerful and fuel economy is everything. In Turkey, the car that the average Joe would buy will have 1.0 to 1.6 engine. Anything larger is reserved for the rich. However I would like to note that, not only the fuel taxes are high but also the car taxes are high. In fact, the taxes in Turkey are so high on the powerful and expensive cars that it started catching World Wide attention[0]. But I would be careful on overtaxing. In Turkey's case, cars are so expensive that it's like buying a house. People take very long term loans to buy these things, which greatly reduces the disposable income and the life quality. On the flip side, cars value don't depreciate as quickly as in the USA or EU. Cars in Turkey tend to be well maintained and very few clunkers would be on the road(unlike Eastern Europe) and once you get a car, you can actually upgrade it after few years much easily since the old one will hold it's value pretty well. As a result, from environmental and safety perspective taxing high works but it comes at a great cost of life quality. I would prefer the EU approach. Taxes are still high but not excessive and goals of reducing emissions are achieved through regulation instead of tax pressure. [0]"Why This $150,000 Porsche Costs $600,000 In Turkey?" https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-in-turkey-1847572799 https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-...
- jakub_g 5y ago
  I knew Denmark had high taxes on cars but this is probably even higher!
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    It's horrible for cars, electronics and Alcohol. The base model iPhone 13 Pro is 1850$ in Turkey(the min. salary is 330$). There's this thing called ÖTV, or "excise tax" which is applied to everything that is not basic biological need, essentially. It's not just very high(%50 for the cheapest and least powerful cars and goes to a few hundred percent for the luxury ones) but also it is applied before VAT, so you pay VAT on the tax too. Oh, maybe you can just buy stuff from abroad, right? Nope, very hard to import cars. Phones are required to be registered to you passport or the carriers would block the IMEI after few months and you guessed it right the registration fee is high(300$) and you can do it once veery 2 years. Maybe you can bring alcohol at least? Nope, max 2 litres per passenger allowed and it is again match to you passport.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
This will hit poor, and low middle class, the hardest. We are barely getting by as it is. The poor don't have the luxury of buying new fuel efficient, or electric cars. Our roads are not safe for motorcycles 365 days out of the year. They buy what will get them to work and back hopefully, at a price that won't put them further into debt. My biggest fear with Global Warming is they make the poor pay for it in sneaky ways. When smog checks were required in CA, they made it sound like the low income wouldn't be hit hard financially. It didn't turn out that way though. If your vechicle doesn't pass increasing harder smog tests every two years; you end up paying a lot. (I can work on my own vechicles, but thinking about buying a smoke machine because they are now failing for tiny holes where hydrocarbons might escape.)
- jedberg 5y ago
  The assumption is that the tax money would be redistributed to low earners on a monthly basis, much like the child tax credit works now. That way the poor aren't affected and rich bear much of the burden, which makes sense since they also do most of the polluting.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Do the rich do most of the polluting by buying gas though? I am middle class and work from home. I pollute by having a lot of things delivered. Consumption tax shifts the burden to the person delivering things to me, who is probably poorer than I am. Isn't this the standard argument against consumption taxes?
    - jedberg 5y ago
      The person delivering to you will either raise their price, affecting you indirectly, or be subsidized directly by the tax rebate.
      - mulmen 5y ago
        The person delivering to me has no power to set prices. That is decided by the management at the delivering company.
lscotte 5y ago
No, let's not do that. Taxes should exist purely to cover government costs, not to finance causes.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The people of a country have an incentive to shape collective behavior that affects the collective, now and in the future. Straight taxes on the item causing problems is the least corruptible way to do it. Such as taxing fossil fuel. The market will then allocate to which needs the remaining fossil fuel usage should go towards. Presumably, not to using pickup trucks and SUVs to take kids to soccer games and shop for groceries.
jakub_g 5y ago
When Macron tried doing that in France pre-covid, people went on streets ("yellow vests"). 50€ more on fuel each month is a lot of money for many people who have to commute to work many kms from small towns.
- it_citizen 5y ago
  The tax was implemented in an extremely unfair way. The bright side is that it has made it clear that the ecology transition should work hand in hand with an effort to reduce inequalities. Here's a different implementation https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ Regarding people living in isolated areas and forced to drive, Canada throws an additional 10% on top of the tax cut you get. (Nitpick: Hollande and the Ayrault government implemented the tax. The yellow vests happened because Macron tried to raise that toothless tax)
invisible 5y ago
Perhaps instead we could levy a 0.05% or $300 income tax, whichever is less, and have a tax credit if you do not own a ICE vehicle to negate that.
speedgoose 5y ago
That's how we got the yellow vest protests. You cannot do that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests

bpodgursky 5y ago

This is, for better or for worse, a directly regressive tax in a way that is politically toxic.

cortesoft 5y ago
There is a really easy solution to that - tax carbon, and put 100% of the revenue into a single bucket, divide that by the number of citizens, and give each citizen that amount. This means that it is a net positive for anyone who uses less than the average amount of carbon, and incentivizes everyone to use less. Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon, so it will be a net positive for them.
- mcguire 5y ago
  "Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon..." Do you have a citation for that?
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    There are quite a few: https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce4... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-richest-1-cause-double-co2-emissions-of-poorest-50-says-oxfam https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r... https://www.oxfam.ca/news/carbon-emissions-of-richest-1-per-cent-more-than-double-the-emissions-of-the-poorest-half-of-humanity/ https://www.oxfam.ca/news/carbon-emissions-of-richest-1-per-...
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  > Poor people use way less than the average amount of carbon This is not true in a world where most white-collar workers have been working from home for two years (or, increasingly, can afford Teslas), and service employees have to drive to work every day. Look, I want a carbon tax. It's good on net. But it's regressive and the people will never vote to support it. I live in deep-blue WA and even here the public rejected it.
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    The gap is large enough that I doubt the shift in work habits was enough to change it. Cars are not the only major source of carbon emissions, and wealthier people have bigger houses: https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc https://apnews.com/article/science-be099434a414a0cb647640ce4... I think you are misunderstanding the reasons why carbon taxes don't get passed. One, the ones you mention failing were NOT of the type that I am talking about (revenue neutral ones, where all of the money taken in is given right back to the citizens). If you told citizens they would be getting a check every year, I bet you a lot more would support it. In fact, I don't have to be hypothetical: They implemented a revenue neutral carbon tax in British Columbia, and after nearly a decade of being in effect, 70% of residents supported it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-carbon-tax-popular-give-the-profits-to-the-people https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/04/how-to-make-a-... I think you will find that like most policy decisions, it is not the average citizen who is keeping a revenue neutral carbon tax from being implemented, but large carbon polluters who lobby against it and convince citizens not to support it.
- pzo 5y ago
  This is hard to enforce. How about family that doesn't have kids vs one with 4? Each child contributes a lot to carbon emission until adulthood and after that. To be really honest families without children then should have more carbon credits.
  - adolph 5y ago
    > To be really honest families without children then should have more carbon credits. What about dead people? They are carbon negative since they are sequestering it in the grave. To be really honest murderers should have more carbon credits. Edit, in case it wasn't totally obvious, this is reductio ad absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    It wouldn't be given per family, it would be per person, so those kids would each get a share. I am not sure why that would be hard to enforce. I am not sure why you think it should be divided by family... that "family without children" was created by a family that had children... why would an adult be more worthy of their share than a kid? A kid probably uses less carbon than an adult. The whole point is that we don't have to figure out who uses more carbon or who deserves what... we tax the carbon at its source, and let the market figure out how to pass that cost along, and then pay the money directly to people. If you use less carbon than average you get more money than you pay... doesn't matter who you are or how old you are. You seem to be talking about incentivizing population control... I am very against that, but even if you are for it, I don't think carbon taxes are the way to go for that.

gundmc 5y ago

That seems like it would be an extremely regressive tax and disproportionately affect lower income Americans, no?

exclusiv 5y ago
Yes it would and also inflation. Goods would cost more which would be another whammy. We should boost the tax credits for new EV purchases. And maybe extend to your first used EV purchase too.
kneel 5y ago
offset it with more tax credits for lower income
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  That's just creating a poverty trap. Sure you can use math and do a phased in/out credit based on income but that just replaces a welfare cliff with a welfare "steep grade". Unless the credit is so generously applied as to defeat the point of the price hike you're still making the metaphorical gravity well of poverty deeper. Edit: Did I say something mathematically incorrect or is it just inconvenient?
  - occamrazor 5y ago
    You don’t even need a phase-out, a flat redistribution would work well enough, maybe accompanied by funding for public transportation.
- dahfizz 5y ago
  Take more money from poor people and then give it back at the end of the year - after paying the salary of all the new bureaucrats you had to hire. Great idea.
  - smeyer 5y ago
    With the key added piece that you're trying to disincentivize carbon emissions in the process. I'm much more worried about the risks of the climate crisis than I am whether a few extra bureaucrats are hired.

Avicebron 5y ago

true, less people able to afford a Tesla on the roads, maybe we can build a nice walking lane with the proceeds so the good folks doing the gardening at the presidio can make it to work.

koolba 5y ago

You could do the same thing about cigarettes and cheeseburgers too. The problem is that it’s inherently a regressive approach where the brunt is borne by the lowest income classes.

robocat 5y ago
Cigarettes is a great example where there are highly taxed in some countries, so the US has a population of foreign experiments that the US can study to see the effects on the poor. In New Zealand a pack of 20 costs about NZD36. Minimum wage is NZD20 per hour here. Or adjusting to match median per capita incomes, that is about USD40 for a pack. Also see this list of world cigarette prices: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=17 https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings... Edit: Disclaimer: when you are old enough to have close friends with smoking related cancers and emphysema etcetera, using dollars to represent the future cost to yourself seems more reasonable. It also breaks the social dynamic of handing cigarettes around and getting others addicted - when a single cigarette is expensive to you, you don’t just offer them to others.
ErikVandeWater 5y ago
Step 1. Send a $50 check to everyone who earned less than 30k last year or who is unemployed now at the beginning of every month Step 2. Raise gas/burger/cigarette taxes

gibolt 5y ago

The easiest approach is to remove the billions (nearing trillions) in annual fossil fuel subsidies. People fight against subsidies to clean energy, forgetting how much more flows into an industry that is killing us.

wang_li 5y ago
>forgetting how much more flows into an industry that is killing us. It's not very much. People who write white papers for their think tank or who want to push a particular agenda like to say that not taxing something or someone is the same as subsidizing them. Which is definitely not true in reality. It should be simple enough to see that not taxing has a floor at $0.00, while subsidizing something has no limiting bound at all.
- scatters 5y ago
  Absorbing the negative externalities of a process is the same as subsidizing it. The subsidy value here is bounded above by the net present value of the negative externalities in question.
  - wang_li 5y ago
    What are the externalities of extracting fossil fuels? Or are you attributing the consumption of fossil fuels to the extraction companies? How many degrees removed does one continue to be responsible?
    - scatters 5y ago
      The externality is in removing the carbon from the geosphere and introducing it into the biosphere, since it'll end up in the atmosphere eventually. So yes, the responsibility for the externality is attributable to the extracting companies.
shiftpgdn 5y ago
This is a weak talking point. There are no direct subsidies to US oil and gas companies. None. The subsidies people frequently talk about are “externalities.”

barbazoo 5y ago

> The higher the cost of fuel, the less people are killed by cars. Not if your goal is to move from ICE to EV. Just because it's an EV, doesn't mean fewer people are "killed by cars".

paulgb 5y ago
EV are still susceptible to accidents (the way they're driven 'round here, I might even say more susceptible), but pollution from ICE also reduces lifetimes of people who have to breathe it in. (e.g. this is probably a bit alarmist but: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/cars-killing-us-driving-environment-phase-out https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/07/cars-k...)

ppeetteerr 5y ago

Agreed but only if we subsidize low income earners.

mrtksn 5y ago

In Europe, fuel taxes are high. In Turkey, taxes are high but also the income is much lower. As a result, in EU the cars tend to be much more smaller and economical than those in the USA. In Turkey, the cars are like the cars in EU but the engines are much less powerful and fuel economy is everything. In Turkey, the car that the average Joe would buy will have 1.0 to 1.6 engine. Anything larger is reserved for the rich. However I would like to note that, not only the fuel taxes are high but also the car taxes are high. In fact, the taxes in Turkey are so high on the powerful and expensive cars that it started catching World Wide attention[0]. But I would be careful on overtaxing. In Turkey's case, cars are so expensive that it's like buying a house. People take very long term loans to buy these things, which greatly reduces the disposable income and the life quality. On the flip side, cars value don't depreciate as quickly as in the USA or EU. Cars in Turkey tend to be well maintained and very few clunkers would be on the road(unlike Eastern Europe) and once you get a car, you can actually upgrade it after few years much easily since the old one will hold it's value pretty well. As a result, from environmental and safety perspective taxing high works but it comes at a great cost of life quality. I would prefer the EU approach. Taxes are still high but not excessive and goals of reducing emissions are achieved through regulation instead of tax pressure. [0]"Why This $150,000 Porsche Costs $600,000 In Turkey?" https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-in-turkey-1847572799 https://jalopnik.com/why-this-150-000-porsche-costs-600-000-...

jakub_g 5y ago
I knew Denmark had high taxes on cars but this is probably even higher!
- mrtksn 5y ago
  It's horrible for cars, electronics and Alcohol. The base model iPhone 13 Pro is 1850$ in Turkey(the min. salary is 330$). There's this thing called ÖTV, or "excise tax" which is applied to everything that is not basic biological need, essentially. It's not just very high(%50 for the cheapest and least powerful cars and goes to a few hundred percent for the luxury ones) but also it is applied before VAT, so you pay VAT on the tax too. Oh, maybe you can just buy stuff from abroad, right? Nope, very hard to import cars. Phones are required to be registered to you passport or the carriers would block the IMEI after few months and you guessed it right the registration fee is high(300$) and you can do it once veery 2 years. Maybe you can bring alcohol at least? Nope, max 2 litres per passenger allowed and it is again match to you passport.

hellbannedguy 5y ago

This will hit poor, and low middle class, the hardest. We are barely getting by as it is. The poor don't have the luxury of buying new fuel efficient, or electric cars. Our roads are not safe for motorcycles 365 days out of the year. They buy what will get them to work and back hopefully, at a price that won't put them further into debt. My biggest fear with Global Warming is they make the poor pay for it in sneaky ways. When smog checks were required in CA, they made it sound like the low income wouldn't be hit hard financially. It didn't turn out that way though. If your vechicle doesn't pass increasing harder smog tests every two years; you end up paying a lot. (I can work on my own vechicles, but thinking about buying a smoke machine because they are now failing for tiny holes where hydrocarbons might escape.)

jedberg 5y ago
The assumption is that the tax money would be redistributed to low earners on a monthly basis, much like the child tax credit works now. That way the poor aren't affected and rich bear much of the burden, which makes sense since they also do most of the polluting.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Do the rich do most of the polluting by buying gas though? I am middle class and work from home. I pollute by having a lot of things delivered. Consumption tax shifts the burden to the person delivering things to me, who is probably poorer than I am. Isn't this the standard argument against consumption taxes?
  - jedberg 5y ago
    The person delivering to you will either raise their price, affecting you indirectly, or be subsidized directly by the tax rebate.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      The person delivering to me has no power to set prices. That is decided by the management at the delivering company.

lscotte 5y ago

No, let's not do that. Taxes should exist purely to cover government costs, not to finance causes.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
The people of a country have an incentive to shape collective behavior that affects the collective, now and in the future. Straight taxes on the item causing problems is the least corruptible way to do it. Such as taxing fossil fuel. The market will then allocate to which needs the remaining fossil fuel usage should go towards. Presumably, not to using pickup trucks and SUVs to take kids to soccer games and shop for groceries.

jakub_g 5y ago

When Macron tried doing that in France pre-covid, people went on streets ("yellow vests"). 50€ more on fuel each month is a lot of money for many people who have to commute to work many kms from small towns.

it_citizen 5y ago
The tax was implemented in an extremely unfair way. The bright side is that it has made it clear that the ecology transition should work hand in hand with an effort to reduce inequalities. Here's a different implementation https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ https://clcouncil.org/our-plan/ Regarding people living in isolated areas and forced to drive, Canada throws an additional 10% on top of the tax cut you get. (Nitpick: Hollande and the Ayrault government implemented the tax. The yellow vests happened because Macron tried to raise that toothless tax)

invisible 5y ago

Perhaps instead we could levy a 0.05% or $300 income tax, whichever is less, and have a tax credit if you do not own a ICE vehicle to negate that.

speedgoose 5y ago

That's how we got the yellow vest protests. You cannot do that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_vests_protests