OK you convinced me, now what?

Still influenced most academic disciplines. Neoclassical economics had to steal from Marxist thought to understand empirical labour phenomena.

And the Georgists? Just internet kids pretending rebellion.

 

Thank you for proving my point. You want me to vote for the side that's pushing a carbon tax. That's what I'm supposed to do after I'm converted.

 

I believe in reality and reality is everything would cost more with a carbon tax and those who could afford it least would suffer most.

 

Well at a minimum, if you are converted, I would expect you to support policies you think will reduce greenhouse emissions. Or at least not get in the way, if you don't feel informed enough to reach a decision on a particular policy.

I don't necessarily expect you to support any and all such proposals, because some proposals aren't going to pass a cost/benefit analysis. But I expect you to support (or at least not oppose) a workable plan if one is presented.

I personally think that includes a carbon tax, so we can put market mechanisms to work to help us reach our goal. I strongly prefer using market mechanisms rather than direct government regulation wherever possible. Don't you?

But if you have logical reasons for opposing such a tax, and have a workable alternative, great. I don't care about any particular strategy; I just care about coming up with a workable plan to reduce our emissions and control global warming.

 

So in market theory, prices exist to maximize the efficiency of resource distribution and usage. A fundamental aspect of market theory is that people respond to price signals, so if you want to reduce the usage of something you make it more expensive.

That's the point of a carbon tax: to use market forces to encourage the private sector to come up with ways to reduce carbon usage, while simultaneously paying for programs to further reduce missions or increase energy efficiency.

Another principle of markets is that producers are not able to freely set their prices: supply and demand sets prices. Simply put, producers usually cannot pass on the full amount of a cost increase to consumers, because competition or lack of demand would constrain them.

So under a carbon tax, products and practices that emit a lot of carbon would get more expensive. This isn't "everything": many products have a very small or non-existent carbon footprint.

In the short term, that might mean some people find some products have become unaffordable. But that's how markets work: it's the demand side of "supply and demand". It encourages producers to find ways to make the product affordable, either by improving manufacturing efficiency, or reducing the carbon footprint of their product, or finding a low-carbon alternative.

So in the long-term, we end up with a low-carbon product base that is affordable for consumers and doesn't destroy the planet.

You seem to either not understand or not believe in market theory. If I'm wrong, please explain why you think market theory is fine when it comes to most things, but bad when it comes to a carbon tax.

 

Feel free to make the appropriate lifestyle changes you deem necessary to control global warming but you are the one that listed a carbon tax as one things a newly converted believer should pursue and this is about who you vote for. In short your goal for converts is to convert them to Democrats.

"The 2016 Democratic Party platform endorses a carbon tax on the American people. The carbon tax language, added at the last minute, states:

“Democrats believe that carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases should be priced to reflect their negative externalities, and to accelerate the transition to a clean economy and help meet out climate goals.”

The move by Democrats to impose a carbon tax comes in clear contrast to the 2016 Republican Party platform opposition to any carbon tax"

https://www.atr.org/democratic-platform-calls-carbon-tax?amp

 

You are clearly arguing in bad faith, regardless of what I say.

Your stupid point seems to be "If I'm a convert, you expect me to support candidates who wish to do something about climate change. Since the only people who want to do something about climate change are Democrats, you are essentially telling me to vote for Democrats."

Which is circular reasoning that reverses cause and effect. If you agree climate change is real and we need to do something about it, but only one party is doing something about it, why is that my fault or your fault? It's simply reality.

It's also wrong. There are plenty of Republicans who support doing something about climate change.

The House Climate Solutions Caucus has 78 members, evenly split between Republicans and Democrats:
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/388354-three-republicans-join-climate-change-caucus

A third of young Republicans support doing something about climate change:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science...ightly-more-liberal-on-climate-change/560312/

You also have a third option if you don't want to vote for any of the above: push the Republicans you DO support to change their view on climate change.

So no, you aren't required to vote Democrat if you want to do something about climate change.

 

What you don't understand is the market theory is turned on it's head when you introduce outside forces such as a tax. All the essentials of modern Life are based on technologies that produce C02 and it is unavoidable that a carbon tax will make the price of everything essential go up. Food, clothing, housing, transportation,heat etc. The list is endless and if you think companies that produce these things can just absorb the cost without passing it on to the consumer you are dreaming.

You are also dreaming by thinking that making carbon producing technology more expensive will lead to "cleaner" technology. You can't put the cart ahead of the horse and that's what you are doing by demanding we stop using one technology before a replacement that is equal or better in cost and effeciency it is there to replace it.
In a true market economy someone finds a cheaper better alternative first and then people switch to it over from the old way of doing things. A carbon tax is the polar opposite to a market economy.

 

Again you make my point. First you get me to believe and then I vote for the party that also believes.

 

That's completely untrue.

Market forces are simply "it costs producers X to make an item. The actual price of the item is determined by supply and demand. If the price is too high, people will buy less of it. If the price is too low, producers will make less of it. The market more-or-less automatically finds the sweet spot between those two extremes, where the price is both high enough to encourage production and low enough to encourage demand."

Taxes are PART of that equation, not something separate from it.

That is nonsense. Increasingly, our economic output has become decoupled from carbon emissions. For instance, for several years now the global economy has grown while carbon emissions stayed flat:
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/flat-emissions-economy-growth/477873/

You are spouting ignorance. Please stop.

Well, since it's already happening, reality disagrees with you.

Here is what I wrote:

Increase energy efficiency and conservation.

As much as possible, move away from fossil fuels and toward clean energy sources like solar, wind and nuclear.


How does any of that lead you to hear "Stop using fossil fuels immediately before we have a viable alternative"?

Further, if you believe that climate change is a real threat, then the replacement doesn't have to be "equal or better in cost or efficiency". You have to factor in the value of lower emissions. So the replacement just has to be close enough that it's cost/benefit beats fossil fuels, with carbon emissions factored in.

In reality, you do what we are doing: subsidize research and investments into fossil fuel alternatives, and gradually switch to them as they make economic sense. The cost-per-kilowatt of solar power, for instance, is now competitive with fossil fuels. Which is why the solar industry now employs three times as many people as the coal industry, and is the fastest-growing segment of our energy economy.

Again, you clearly don't understand that taxes are part of a market economy, nor do you understand what "harnessing market mechanisms" means.

Do you really prefer direct government regulation instead of a market-based approach? Because those are your two options if you actually care about doing something about climate change.

 

You are amazing. I summarize YOUR point, then spend the rest of my post refuting it. You highlight my summary of YOUR point, claim it's my point, and ignore the rest of the post.

I think you have fully discredited yourself by this point. But I'm prepared to be surprised by your ability to discredit yourself even more.

 

The only way taxes are part of the market economy is that they make prices of goods and services go up. Punative taxes are even worse because they are outside the realm of taxes needed to run a government and a society.

Your solar coal example does nothing but prove my point and destroy yours. Coal is becoming obselete as new technologies come on to replace it that are cheaper and more efficient. Your attempt at implying solar is replacing coal is a joke though, natural gas is.
As for your last point there are more than two options if you believe and want to do something about it. Option three is personal responsibility. Why do you think government has to tell you or force you to live the way you say you should live. Just do it.

 

Problem is your attempt at refuting my point only strengthened it.

 

LOL! Okay, I'm done. You are ridiculous.

 

Sure taxes are part of the economy, but they are arbitrary and deliberately designed to warp the normal market forces. Taxes are the primary tool of "social engineering", tax what you want to eliminate or reduce.

 

I agree that taxes distort the market to a degree, but they are also a corrective for things that markets are ill-equipped to factor in.

There are all sorts of things, called "externalities", that are ignored by the market because they are difficult to price. Stuff like environmental degradation, or systemic risk (as happened with banking in the 2008 meltdown). Or health risks, like the huge increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria due to the widespread use of antibiotics in industrial farming.

Take oil, for example. As far as the market is concerned, the production cost of a barrel of oil only reflects actual spending: the dollar cost of locating, extracting, refining and shipping it.

It does not account for many other costs of gasoline: the pollution produced at all those stages, for example, or the cost of the wars we end up fighting in oil-rich regions because of our dependence on oil. Those costs may be indirect or hard to price, but they are real. Failing to account for them leads to gasoline being effectively subsidized, and can lead to really bad macroeconomic decisions: for instance, building an economy that is dependent on "cheap" gasoline.

One way to account for those costs is direct regulation: forcing oil companies to install pollution-reduction equipment, for instance. Pollution is avoided, and the cost of installing that gear can be captured by the market.

Sometimes it is simpler and less-intrusive to use taxation: adding the estimated cost of those externalities to a gallon of gasoline, so people buying gasoline can make economic decisions that reflect the true cost of that gas.

Ideally, the end result is the same: the price of gas reflects its true cost, we end up with less pollution, and people are able to make better economic decisions.

 

That's fine but keep in mind this is SOP for the DNC. They identify a Boogeyman then convince you they can save you from the monster while Republicans ate the monsters friend. They did it with logging in the Clinton era, nuclear war with Reagan and war in Europe before that which ironically they got us into.

 

In the case of oil regulation to meet environmental standards is fine but a punative tax would just be collected and squandered by government and do nothing to help the environment.

 

Many things influence many other things, and those costs do not and should not be accounted for in one thing. The cost for a barrel of oil for example, should not include the cost of wars, pollution due to cars, the emphysema someone develops. If you wrap all the direct and indirect costs - some costs many times removed from oil - then the price of oil would be infinitely high.

And those things are far too complicated to quantify. The costs are very subjective and very political. Global warming for example is extremely political and not at all universally accepted.

Originally, taxation was simply a means of funding the govt so the govt could perform specific quantifiable tasks. In that role, taxation pays for specific services, the govt is just like any other economic business whose services can be tied directly to costs and to supply and demand.

Now taxation is a political tool which groups use to force the population down a political ideology. It has little to do with actual costs and more to do with politics and power.

 

I agree that in many cases the issue is complex enough that it's more or less impossible to use taxation to set the "true" price of something.

In such cases, direct regulation of the problem is the remaining option.

That doesn't invalidate the general point, though. There are cases where the cost is relatively clear, or else the externalities are big enough that even a "close enough" tax rate accomplishes the goal of making the market behave more rationally.

There are other times when you use taxation to achieve legitimate societal goals that would be difficult to do otherwise. Cigarette taxes, for instance, have been instrumental in reducing the public-health problem caused by cigarettes.

Yes, taxation can be a political tool. But not always, or even mostly. And the cure for that is voting and civic involvement, so that we have established norms that say such use is unacceptable, and our elected representatives know that if they try that, they will be punished.

 

And in many of those cases in which the cost is clear, it is clear because there is a direct and visible connection between the item and the impact, and it is already factored into the cost of the item and taxation is not needed.

When the relationship is not clear, then its open to great subjectivity - and politics.

That is completely subjective. "Rational" means anything you want it to mean. To a follower of AGW, rational means massive taxation and regulation, which is opposite the policy of those who do not subscribe to AGW. If its not AGW, then pick "social justice", reparations for slavery, "diversity", green energy, or any of a host of totally political and subjective and controversial items.

Again totally political and subjective and controversial.

Look at cigarettes. If the individual pays the price for his actions, then there is no social issue. If someone chooses to smoke, or drink, or drive a motorcycle, that's their decision, and they should pay the consequences and reap the rewards.

Why is it a social issue? Because of socialized medicine. Socialized medicine shifts the costs or an individuals actions to society.

You write that "taxation can be a political tool. But not always, or even mostly" but the major part of your argument is over taxation to achieve "rational" or "legitimate" goals - politics.

 

it depends on the cost benefit analysis, oil pollution and wars for oil do not cost as much as welfare for the unemployed.

dependence on oil creates good paying jobs for the poor so they may have cars and single family homes and not overdose on opiates.

 

For the worse: post-modernism, deconstructionism, similar trash.

No, to AVOID understanding the difference between the contributory role of the factory owner vs the non-contributory role of the landowner.

LOL!! Location subsidy repayment (LSR) is the revolution, son. The real revolution. The revolution all the other revolutions should have been, and the revolution that will make all the future revolutions unnecessary. The Georgists didn't quite get it right, but they at least, unlike the capitalists and socialists, went in the right direction.

 

LOL! So you actually think taxing land can eliminate or reduce it?? Be serious.

 

No it doesn't, don't be absurd.

Like the USA.

No they don't. You are just makin' $#!+ up.

Garbage. The poor in Canada are at least better off than in the USA.