Want to cut the deficit? Try a carbon tax.

Yeah, a carbon tax. You kill two birds with one stone, deal with the deficit and retard destructive climate change. Some kickback policies would be needed to help the poor weather the additional costs but it is all manageable. James Hansen's dollar a gallon tax which is then in part kicked back equally to every citizen is worth considering. It provides an incentive to support the tax and also to use less fuel.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/14/2944781/carbon-tax-cut-deficit/

 

A tax would merely lead to an increase in spending. It would also dampen economic activity.

Think of it this way. How many people would work if you taxed 99% of what they earned?

 

Why is a Federal deficit a bad thing?
Why should the state of the Federal budget take precedence over the state of the real economy?
Why should the state of the Federal budget even be the subject of policy?

 

Wait, you want to increase taxes to decrease the defecit? Give me a break! The LAST thing you want to do is hurt the economy with new taxes if you want to increase revenues. This is one of the most fundamental things "progressives" can't wrap their heads around.

 

Given a carbon tax is effectively internalising an externality, the standard economic games don't apply. Indeed, arguing against such taxes is tacit support for inefficiency.

The real problem is these taxes tend to be regressive. Its only of the few occasions where there is a clear-cut trade-off between efficiency and equity

 

A Carbon tax is a great idea. The negative effects of a tax on the economy can be balanced with tax cuts on other taxes.

 

It would have to be tax cuts focused on the lower income deciles. That is necessary to minimise any shift to tax regressivity

 

Agree!

 

While new taxes or increased taxes may initially produce a budget deficit reduction, they tend to be short term and in the end only increase the governments ability to create new spending programs, and/or increase spending on existing programs.

The only way to cut deficits are to cut spending, and much could be accomplished by diligently looking for where waste and corruption exist, and eliminating it. With very few exceptions it is very likely that a 10% reduction of most every budget could be accomplished simply by reducing the funding available and demanding that each department make spending adjustments as they determine necessary to operate more efficiently within the means provided without having effect on their performance.
If we don't return to government as originally intended, the people being represented in the House, and the States represented in the Senate, allowing all members of our Congress to have a say in representing their constituents, and voting on bills in accordance with those they were elected to represent, and NOT just the party they belong to or those who had contributed large sums to the campaigns, our debt which is passed on to the people who work and try and improve their lives will be consumed by the debt eventually.

 

Great point. I try without success to get so called free marketers to understand that a free market is meaningless unless you have something close to real cost pricing. Otherwise it is a subsidized market with fossil fuel being subsidized up to our eye balls.

If you add the kickback feature, ie say a dollar a gallon tax is distributed equally to every citizen, then I would think it is for the most part progressive. If you use less gas you come out ahead.

 

My complaint when it comes to the deficit is not that we're taxing too little, but that we're spending too much. Not because spending this much will lower societal utility, but because it's the forceful acquisition of property on a massive scale.

If you think carbon emissions are coercive then open businesses up to have their pants sued off by class actions. Otherwise get out of my life.

 

Let's try it this way, too much carbon gas kills. You don't like to pay for laws against murder and police to enforce them then suggest an alternative. This mindless anti-government crap is so phony. You don't want government until you need it.

 

My alternative is self-defense and private security options. I have nothing against government, per se - I am opposed to coercion. Where government uses it (taxation, victimless crimes, offensive war, etc) I'm opposed to it. Where government doesn't use it I am not opposed to it, although I may be opposed to their funding method.

I have no problem with the use of retaliatory force. Go right ahead. It's taking the property of others through force that I dislike.

[hr][/hr]

Government is playing the regulatory game when it comes to carbon emissions because it wants to collude with the large corporations doing most of the emitting. It's a half arsed solution. If carbon emissions really are coercive then open people up to sue their pants off.

 

Given the pollution involved, coercion already exists. Those that argue against these form of taxes are essentially supporters of coercive relations. Its naive to suggest that its a legal issue. First, there is no Coase Theorem solution (i.e. protecting property rights is impossible). Second, we're really talking about an optimal level of pollution (rather than an independent 'bad')

 

90% of what government does is make laws and enforce them. Government = coercion. You just want the coercion you like and not the coercion you don't like. That's everybody's desire. Suing the corporations is just getting the government courts to coerce the corporations under government laws and regulations to pay fines and/or change their behavior. Taxes and product costs are still involved. You are arguing a distinction without a difference. But that is pretty typical. We all like the posture of being independent players, but its pretty much fun and games, hide and seek - not serious.

 

Not to mention assault.

 

We have different conceptions of coercion.

- - - Updated - - -

Hey, trying my best to leave. They don't make it easy.

 

There is one tax that, unlike all others, does NOT add to prices, deter production, distort market mechanisms or otherwise create deadweight losses. An Economic Rent Tax.

The efficiency of such a tax has been "established knowledge since Adam Smith".

 

The bit about "established since Adam Smith" gives the game away. Where's the updating of the approach? For example, given industrialisation (and then deindustrialisation towards a service based economy), economic rents are much more focused on labour underpayment. There is no tax solution to those rents

- - - Updated - - -

Negative externalities are a cost imposed on others. Its coercion, by definition.

 

Economic Rent has a rich intellectual tradition that continues to this day.
I'm not sure what you want but here's a very brief list of economists that wrote/write on the topic.

• David Ricardo
• Simon Patten
• Thorstein Veblen
• Johann Heinrich von Thünen
• Joseph Schumpeter
• Michael Hudson

I'm sorry, but you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

You missed the point. Analysis has moved on since the likes of Ricardo and Smith. Rent is very much related to labour market exploitation: inefficient profits based on underpayment. This is something orthodox and heterodox economists agree on.

 

THIS logic is why the current tax code is so long it is nearly impossible to do your taxes correctly without a professional.

 

The deficit will ONLY be reduced by reduction of spending. Tax increases or new forms of taxes, while they may temporarily produce the appearance of reducing the deficit, only maintain the ability of government to continue to spend wastefully, increasing the sources of where corruption can exist, and all that is achieved is an initial reduction of the deficit as a percentage of all government spending, which then grows as a result of unfunded future costs of benefits paid to those who must be hired to perform the work related to the application of the programs created to assess and collect the tax as they retire, not to mention the annual cost increases relative to inflation, and the effects of all government spending making social programs more costly.

Cut spending, cut taxes, cut government, cut waste, cut corruption, cut cronyism, and ONLY then might you begin to see the deficit reduced and gradually eliminated.

 

How about cutting pollution? The more pollution, the more spending required to clean it up. A nice carbon tax will help with that plus raise revenues to cut deficits. How is that for killing two birds with one stone?

 

As for pollution, hold those responsible for the pollution responsible for the clean up. A carbon tax would do nothing to decrease the deficit.