Jim Devine wrote:
> is my mind going? could it be that Greg Mankiw actually wrote a
> half-decent column?
>
> (see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/business/economy/09view.html)
Perhaps you should consider the case that the carbon tax is just another
disastrous marketplace method for dealing with global warming:
* It won't sufficiently affect carbon emissions.
* It will fall with greatest weight on the workers and the poor.
* It will end up being extremely complex. The way of setting the tax and
judging the carbon content, and the handling of the exceptions and special
regulations which will accompany any actual carbon tax, will be opaque, and
everything will be put into the hands of a horde of highly-paid specialists
with links to the industries. The same thing will happen here as happened to
cap and trade under Kyoto.
* The belief in the wonder-working effects of Pigovian taxes is just
another version of the belief in the benevolent effects of the "invisible
hand" of market forces.
* This belief in companies doing the right thing because of the carbon tax
is a market fundamentalist fantasy to avoid dealing with the need for direct
envrionmental regulation and the need for overall planning of the
environmental impact of the economy.
* It ends up being a way to pretend to do something while actually marking
time.
All this applies to the use of the carbon tax as the main or substantial
part of the plan to deal with global warming. Carbon taxes might play some
subsidiary role as part of a much broader plan of direct regulation and
direct planning, and it can also be noted that some quite ordinary taxes may
be labelled "carbon taxes" in the future.
See www.communistvoice.org/42cCarbonTax.html for elaboration of some of
these points..
-- Joseph Green
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