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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 t
by 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 agoThe person delivering to you will either raise their price, affecting you indirectly, or be subsidized directly by the tax rebate.
- mulmen 5y agoThe person delivering to me has no power to set prices. That is decided by the management at the delivering company.
- jedberg 5y agoSure they do. Your pizza delivery driver won't take that job if they lose money on the gas. Then the pizza place has to either raise their rate or cover their gas, which they would then pass on to you as an increased delivery fee.
- mulmen 5y agoPushing the consumption tax to the bottom squeezes the delivery driver’s margin more than the business’.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoShifting the cost onto the delivery service is actually good. Pretty much all delivery is done by a few large companies. The only exception are things like Grubhub/Doordash which put the fuel costs on the individual worker. A fuel tax across the board would no doubt just result in a price increase that would compensate the drivers since it would be a uniform tax. Outside of specific areas where gig services are regulated - using things like Grubhub/Uber. does cause harm to the poorer, worker because after accounting for costs and vehicle depreciation the profit is less than minimum wage. I would not be surprised if the profit is negative part of the time. The way to not cause this harm is to not use these services e.g. make your own food at home.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- thrashh 5y agoDeliveries would just get more expensive if fuel got more expensive. And I consider delivery to be basic infrastructure that’s the backbone of everything from small Etsy shops to Amazon to B2B shipping, so I wouldn’t want delivery prices to go up.