Republican-Proposed “Carbon Dividend” Is a Sign of Progress | Hacker News Reader

Republican-Proposed “Carbon Dividend” Is a Sign of Progress

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39 pointspanic19 comments

This could be the biggest part of Trump's legacy, if he made sure it was enacted. It'd single-handedly make him a better and more significant leader than anyone recent president.

Likelihood: 0.00%

This is from February. While it's a great idea to tax externalities and let the market determine the optimal solution, the GOP has already once again scuttled the idea.

I thought carbon credits were an old idea that was already implemented.

Carbon credits operate on a voluntary basis and are not a tax.

In the end, businesses will pass on the cost of the tax in the form of inflated prices, hurting the poor most. For their trouble, the poor get the promise of a government check later. What could go wrong?

If you don't want people without money getting hurt, you may want to consider finding an alternative to capitalism.

Because, historically capitalism has been the single most efficient machine to lift people out of poverty ?

It doesn't seem to be the best way to get the American poor out of poverty. If it were, there would be far more economic mobility in the US.

Unfortunately the word 'poverty' here just doesn't mean the same thing at all. Most American's tagged as 'poor' or 'living in poverty' are pretty darn rich compared to global measurements of 'poverty'. Same word, different metrics.

Another confounding practice is that official US poverty statistics don't include many forms of government assistance. So a statement like '14% of American's live in poverty' is before this assistance. With this representation of data, you could give those 14% $10,000/month in government benefits and they would still be 'living in poverty'.

Here is a nice calculator you can play 'what if' measurement games with to see how it affects the poverty rate: http://uspovertydata.com/povcal/index.php

A quick google search shows there isn't a consensus on that argument.

And also the single biggest contributor to carbon emmissions. Lets decouple these and fix the bad one.

It works well in Northern Europe. The Nordic model is capitalism mixed with equality, transparency, a shared healthcare system, free education, proportional representation and a few more things.

http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21570835-nordic...

The Nordic countries are the size of a small US state(~6M), which is why many people in the US prefer to have these programs managed at a state level rather than apply to ~310M US citizens.

I've never really understood this argument. Perhaps it would make sense if the U.S. was a poor country, but U.S. is a very rich country per capita. It can afford to pay everyone healthcare, especially if it was serious about increasing hospital and pharmaceutical competition as well as medical services transparency.

It also requires changing some priorities like say not being involved in 7 wars at once. The current administration has just increased the military budget by another $60 billion. But in 2016 the media on both sides was all about how the U.S. "couldn't afford to pay $70 billion a year for free public college." It's bullshit. It's all about priorities.

Saying it should be up to states makes no sense, because obviously a lot of states wouldn't be able to afford it this way. It would be like saying let's let the Nordic villages handle their own healthcare. That wouldn't work, would it? But it works at a more centralized level because the country is rich per capita. And so is the U.S.

Thanks for sharing, I had not really considered that viewpoint. I have just looked at the complexity cost of a system distributed to 10s of millions that can't afford to fail at any point. From that biased, simple, and domain specific view a smaller system has made more sense to me personally.

>It would be like saying let's let the Nordic villages

Were Nordic villages founded as sovereign states? Based on your comment history (I read enough HN comments not to have to look at your history), I think we agree FB has amassed too much power as a central entity? That was a major concern at the founding of the US. Power needs to be decentralized or its corrupting force will overwhelm a free people.

I don't disagree, as I consider part of the success in the EU is decentralisation of democracy. EU power is limited and the power it has is actually relatively well implemented, with notable exceptions such as the agricultural policy.

The most successful countries are primarily smaller. I think they are essentially easier to run. Germany is an exception, but it is a federation of smaller states. http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/#/11111111111

The poor are presumably also the least equipped to handle the negative externalities of unpriced carbon emissions, so how is a carbon tax worse for them?

The poor in the US, like those living in coal power plant areas, can't afford to pay for the cancers and other body damage they get from inhaling coal for a couple of decades. So I would argue using coal is affecting them much more.

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