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81 sats \ 9 replies \ @SimpleStacker 5 May \ on: The Economics of Carbon Taxes, Canada Edition (FT, Simon Mundy) econ
I dunno, I still kinda support it in principle. I mean, I put a non-zero probability on carbon actually being a problem, and so if the government was going to tax something I'd rather they tax carbon than my personal income, which is a roundabout way of saying, "Plz rebate me the carbon tax receipts."
In the broader zeitgeist though, I think the bigger problem is just that climate activists are off the reservation, which gives the opening for any climate policy to be attacked via guilt by association. I have friends who refuse to drive EVs because they oppose them ideologically, not for any reason about cost, convenience, or drive quality.
Maybe in a world where climate activists weren't crazy, a revenue neutral carbon tax would be more politically feasible.
Also, maybe it's just a branding problem. I dunno what Canadian tax returns are like, but in America everyone files their own taxes and thus the various tax credits are very in your face. If people here got used to a substantial annual "carbon credit" on their tax returns, they'd be reluctant to let go of it.
One of the big problems, though, is that there are pretty good reasons to think CO2 is actually a social good (at least for Americans).
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Ouuuwwh, feisty.
You mean in terms of greening of the world, or fewer people dying fr heat than cold...?
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Both, and more. Bob Murphy walks through this, using the IPCC's own numbers and models. Obviously, there are plenty of credible climate scientists who are skeptical of those.
Even for the "consensus", whether CO2 should be treated as a good or a bad depends on the discount rate in the model. That's because their own models have CO2 being a net benefit for the next few hundred years. It only is a problem now, because they think it will become a problem in the far distant future, if we stay on our recent emission trend.
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right.... the optimal temperature/Nordhaus projection argument.
I haven't heard this mechanical "net benefit" thing...?
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This isn't exactly what I was thinking of, but it seems to hit most of the same points.
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which is a roundabout way of saying, "Plz rebate me the carbon tax receipts." indeed!
Beautifully put.
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While you deny and reject the overwhelming global scientific consensus that human caused climate change is real and a significant threat.
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read the article again (or this one that I just released too, #972338) and tell me what your (asinine) comment brings to the table
To the extent that
overwhelming global scientific consensus that human caused climate change is real and a significant threat is a sentence with any meaning, it's irrelevant/immaterial to my much larger, much more important point
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What is your self defined 'larger point'?
This?
'You can't make people (feel) poorer when implementing (mostly symbolic) measures to save the world.'
This statement if it is your larger point is full of holes- the biggest obvious one is that climate change is a GLOBAL problem and so any action taken by any jurisdiction will be only proportional in relation to that jurisdictions size globally but this is where the difficulty is- nobody with your mindset wants to take responsibility for their share of the problem- because what any jurisdiction can do can always be portrays as insignificant on a global scale- what you completely miss is that this is a problem that requires all jurisdictions to do their bit toward solving the problem rather than denying there is a problem and making excuses for doing nothing.
You then say-
' Good riddance, carbon taxes. May you never return to the civilized world.'
So how would you address climate change in a politically practical and economically equitable manner?
Or do you deny human caused climate change?
You do not offer any credible alternative to the carbon taxes you criticise- you leave the 'larger problem' of climate change itself unsolved and implicitly, denied.
Your implicit denial of climate change is a reckless irrational, unscientific, irrational and untenable position for anyone who asserts it.
The evidence of human caused climate change is now undeniable.
It is simply a lazy way of avoiding the problem- in your case probably because it is a problem that cannot be fixed with 'market forces' and implicitly demands a consensus for collective government led response.
It is not a problem that market forces can logically address because climate change is due to consequences of human actions which do not provide any meaningful market driven disincentive or penalty to the beneficiaries and initiators of those actions.
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