Just so you know, we aren’t even going to get to the central point of the headline before seeing some very, very interesting information in this article by Vox
One weird trick to fix climate change: Close the offshore wealth loophole
How closing tax havens can fund climate policy.
Governments have long tried pricing carbon to induce companies to make the kind of serious emissions reductions actually needed to address the climate emergency.
They’ve done this by imposing a carbon tax, an additional fee for each ton of carbon dioxide emitted, or through “cap and trade†schemes, which give companies limited allowances for how much CO2 they can emit and then allow them to buy and sell those allowances to offer more flexibility. (3 more paragraphs on this, including how carbon taxes have failed. You know how Vox writers like to run on and on)
Jessica F. Green, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto whose work focuses on global environmental politics, argues that’s partly because focusing on the technicalities of carbon pricing is a good way to avoid addressing the harder problem of actually ending fossil fuel use.
“We’ve been working on how to measure carbon for 30 years and we’re still debating about or refining what it is because it’s easier to do that than it is to actually decarbonize,†Green told me.
Green argues in a new paper that climate change is not a “market failure†to be fixed through mechanisms like carbon pricing. Rather, she says, it’s “a problem of societal transformation†that requires “strong state intervention to reorganize the economy.â€
Surprise? I wonder what she wants to transform society to and what type of economy. Why is it that this supposed science problem always requires Government tyranny?
Green says countries should aggressively pursue taxation (one of the basic functions of the state), but of the rich — and use the money generated to fund climate policy.
And tax the rich. Do you get a paycheck? Then you’ll be considered rich. People said I was nuts back in the early part of this Century when I said the global warming/climate change issue had almost nothing to do with science and was mostly about empowering government, about taxing the masses out the ying yang, taking away freedom, liberty, and choice, and creating an authoritarian government.
Eventually Green gets into the offshore wealth loopholes. The beginning of the article tells you all you need to know.
Not to fund reducing carbon or reducing pollution. Just to fund policy. In other words, transferring wealth to dot orgs who are professional advocates for carbon limits. They are trying to lock in a more secure income stream than depending on donations from rich white people.
Professor Paul Krugman disagrees with Green in that he states CO2-caused warming IS a market failure from not accounting for the negative externalities associated with the the market for fossil fuels, i.e., that the market price does not represent the true societal costs of fossil fuels.
Would Green’s opinion that multinational corporation tax reform and solving wealth inequality will solve global climate change? She makes the point that the carbon pricing has proven politically difficult and not terribly effective.
Teach seems surprised that global climate change requires government involvement. Regulating pollutants is a government responsibility, whether regulating “snake oil” medicaments (although we don’t regulate supplements), lead paint, dioxin dumping, acid rain, oil spills, DDT, heroin, oxy, crystal meth, cigarettes, mercury, sewage, pathogens etc.
Teach has tunnel vision, thinking every government action is intended to lead to Nazi, Kim or Soviet style tyranny – unless it’s a tyrant he loves.
Come on, Teach. You know our tax system isn’t fair and gets less fair with time. The trumps of America should pay more than $750 for the privilege of getting rich in America. I bet you pay more than $750/yr in income tax!! I sure do.
Yes, we’re badly in need of tax reform. But, if you read the article it seems her case linking tax reform to solving globing warming is weak.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1758-5899.12920
“Our tax system isn’t fairâ€. How so? It’s one of the most progressive in the western world in that a very small number of people pay most of the income tax.
Professor Paul Krugman is a charlatan and a political hack for the extreme left. He is a Keynesian (himself discredited) and has had no significant contributions to the science of economics since his questionable New Trade Theory. The guy is a bullshit hack the radical left pulls out every once in a while to bat for some cockamamie anti-capitalist, anti-American scam they’re trying to pull off. This particular taxing scam being their latest in an uninterrupted line of bullshit.
It figures that a personality such as The Elwood would constantly rely on a fool like Krugman for economic advice just as he has relied on Fauci for medical advice and now on chairman Xiden the Commie in Chief for international advice. They can all grift together.
Hey, you Elwood’s out there. Notice the difference? We do!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/6c5ae9111c87928267a71fe4ee6d4c1196eace493e78bd0c0eebe9c49f0d5cbb.jpg?w=600&h=693
The Kye is an untalented bullshit artiste and crony capitalist, brimming with hate. He’s an extreme hack, but without a Nobel Prize in economics.
Of course The Kye opposes any change to a system that keeps him privileged and entitled. Taxpayers rewarded him with nearly $1 million for the Covid. How much did the rest of you get? $600?
He’s hurt and angry when all those he considers inferior don’t bow and scrape to him. He’s white, rich and a veteran – he deserves your adoration!!
He’s angry that the majority of Americans didn’t recognize the greatness of trump as he did. trump was The One to deliver America from the grip of secular humanism, diversity, “fags”, “mooslims”, “commies”, “leeches” and “illegals”.
When America rejected trump they rejected The Kyes.
The Right Honourable Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of our great neighbor to the North, and son of a past Prime Minister, seems unconcerned that some of his own people will get very, very cold during Canadian winters if they use fossil fuels to heat their homes.
His carbon taxing scheme, already at $30/tonne, is scheduled to rise to $170/tonne in nine years.
What will life be like when Trudeau increases the carbon tax to $170 per ton?
The metropolitan elites think that everybody should heat their holes with sparktricity, but many rural Canadians have spotty connectivity — if they aren’t completely off the grid — and when a powerline goes down in the northern part of Manitoba or Saskatchewan or the Yukon, in January, people could be out of heat for a long time . . . in subzero temperatures.
We had our floods here, and if my house was (barely) saved, my HVAC system was not. If we didn’t have the propane fireplace we installed in the summer of 2018, we would have been out of heat since March 3rd, for who knows how much longer. It got down to 50º in the house before I was able to muscle the propane tank back into position and get the gas flowing again.
The esteemed Mr Dowd, of course, would want me to pay through the nose for using propane like that, and while I could affords it, there are may eastern Kentuckians who currently depend on propane who simply could not. But, Mr Dowd being reasonably wealthy — or so he’s told us — doesn’t seem to understand that.
The carbon tax advocates in the United States have pushed rebates for the poor, but obvious questions arise:
1 – What documentation and filings will be required to get such rebates; and
2 – How frequently will such rebates be paid?
Without documentation, how will the government know to whom and how much the rebates should be sent? Would the government impose some sort of quarterly tax filings on lower-income people?
If the rebates are paid quarterly, how much good does that do for people living paycheck-to-paycheck?