6 ms·

Can we just tax carbon and stop with all the bozo virtue signaling? Pretty please?

kelseyfrog 3y ago
It's funny, because I could, with zero incredulity, say that information disclosure allows consumers to accurately price externalities and market-based solutions are the most efficient ways to arrive at realistic price equilibria.
- scotty79 3y ago
  Consumers can't price externalities even given full information becuse they are not educated and not rational.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  There is a very large body of evidence that demonstrates consumers are unwilling to pay higher prices for environmental benefits. The entire premise of Pigouvian taxes is that they force consumers to pay the external cost, not let them optionally avoid them. This leads to substitution effects lowering consumption of the pollutant. All market participants must be subject to that price or you introduce arbitrage opportunity. Information alone is not enough.
jtriangle 3y ago
Strictly speaking, we already do. We're taxing carbon-based fuel quite a bit. All it really does is make things more expensive though. You can say that such things are funding social services, but, realistically, all of government is funded by an unfathomable amount of debt, so raising taxes, or creating new taxes, isn't likely to change much of anything outside of increasing how much debt is available.
- scotty79 3y ago
  I though fossil fuels were heavily subsidized and taxed disproportionately low to their environmental impact.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  We tax road fuel as a proxy for road usage; it’s mostly a use tax. Use taxes are nearly optimal policy. Carbon taxes (Pigouvian taxes) are a solution to the problem of pricing externalities by incentivizing alternatives. The tax creates a wedge where consumers choose alternatives. Incentives matter and produce better outcomes by changing behavior.
  - xienze 3y ago
    If you’re going to tax gas into oblivion, you better have an affordable alternative fully ready to go or people will lose their minds. And no, “just buy a $50K electric car” isn’t a viable solution for a large segment of the population.
    - anonuser123456 3y ago
      Today it’s not viable. But we don’t have to implement this as a cliff function. Start at 50$/ton and increase it to 500$ over 20 years. This gives industry a major signal to invest for the down the road changes and for technology to develop/business to adapt. With the right signal, by 2035 BEV will be cheaper than ICE. This of course assumes we don’t let the Sierra Club prevent us from mining lithium to protect some random beetle in the desert.
anigbrowl 3y ago
How are you going to tax it if you don't track it? stop with all the bozo virtue signaling How about stop with all the well-poisoning and the cheap shots, and make your point in a more adult fashion.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > How are you going to tax it if you don't track it? This is a very good point, you should have stopped here instead of devolving into a purity spiral by attacking somebody who's obviously coming from a similar point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
- stickfigure 3y ago
  You don't need to track your carbon if the carbon tax is already integrated into the electricity price. From the article: > By 2026, those companies will have to publicly disclose how much carbon is produced by their operations and electricity use. Basically this puts a reporting burden on everyone instead of the place where the carbon is sourced - probably an oil or gas company.
- anonuser123456 3y ago
  Point of sale, like every other taxed commodity. Asking corporations to track their supply chain for their carbon usage is a complete waste of time. All the information a firm needs is already reflected in the price of its goods/services. This is why economists are in near universal agreement that a carbon tax is the optimal policy. It’s dead simple to implement as it only requires tracking the sales of producers.
thelastgallon 3y ago
Forget taxes, first stop trillions of dollars in subsidies and growing! Why Are Governments Still Subsidizing Fossil Fuels?https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climate-change-why-are-governments-still-subsidizing-fossil-fuels https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat... Ethanol subsidies and 40 million acres wasted just in US.

It's funny, because I could, with zero incredulity, say that information disclosure allows consumers to accurately price externalities and market-based solutions are the most efficient ways to arrive at realistic price equilibria.

scotty79 3y ago
Consumers can't price externalities even given full information becuse they are not educated and not rational.
anonuser123456 3y ago
There is a very large body of evidence that demonstrates consumers are unwilling to pay higher prices for environmental benefits. The entire premise of Pigouvian taxes is that they force consumers to pay the external cost, not let them optionally avoid them. This leads to substitution effects lowering consumption of the pollutant. All market participants must be subject to that price or you introduce arbitrage opportunity. Information alone is not enough.

jtriangle 3y ago

Strictly speaking, we already do. We're taxing carbon-based fuel quite a bit. All it really does is make things more expensive though. You can say that such things are funding social services, but, realistically, all of government is funded by an unfathomable amount of debt, so raising taxes, or creating new taxes, isn't likely to change much of anything outside of increasing how much debt is available.

scotty79 3y ago
I though fossil fuels were heavily subsidized and taxed disproportionately low to their environmental impact.
anonuser123456 3y ago
We tax road fuel as a proxy for road usage; it’s mostly a use tax. Use taxes are nearly optimal policy. Carbon taxes (Pigouvian taxes) are a solution to the problem of pricing externalities by incentivizing alternatives. The tax creates a wedge where consumers choose alternatives. Incentives matter and produce better outcomes by changing behavior.
- xienze 3y ago
  If you’re going to tax gas into oblivion, you better have an affordable alternative fully ready to go or people will lose their minds. And no, “just buy a $50K electric car” isn’t a viable solution for a large segment of the population.
  - anonuser123456 3y ago
    Today it’s not viable. But we don’t have to implement this as a cliff function. Start at 50$/ton and increase it to 500$ over 20 years. This gives industry a major signal to invest for the down the road changes and for technology to develop/business to adapt. With the right signal, by 2035 BEV will be cheaper than ICE. This of course assumes we don’t let the Sierra Club prevent us from mining lithium to protect some random beetle in the desert.

anigbrowl 3y ago

How are you going to tax it if you don't track it? stop with all the bozo virtue signaling How about stop with all the well-poisoning and the cheap shots, and make your point in a more adult fashion.

mcpackieh 3y ago
> How are you going to tax it if you don't track it? This is a very good point, you should have stopped here instead of devolving into a purity spiral by attacking somebody who's obviously coming from a similar point of view: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
stickfigure 3y ago
You don't need to track your carbon if the carbon tax is already integrated into the electricity price. From the article: > By 2026, those companies will have to publicly disclose how much carbon is produced by their operations and electricity use. Basically this puts a reporting burden on everyone instead of the place where the carbon is sourced - probably an oil or gas company.
anonuser123456 3y ago
Point of sale, like every other taxed commodity. Asking corporations to track their supply chain for their carbon usage is a complete waste of time. All the information a firm needs is already reflected in the price of its goods/services. This is why economists are in near universal agreement that a carbon tax is the optimal policy. It’s dead simple to implement as it only requires tracking the sales of producers.

thelastgallon 3y ago

Forget taxes, first stop trillions of dollars in subsidies and growing! Why Are Governments Still Subsidizing Fossil Fuels?https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climate-change-why-are-governments-still-subsidizing-fossil-fuels https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-16/climat... Ethanol subsidies and 40 million acres wasted just in US.