Hacker News Reader

Comment by phkahler | Hacker News Reader

Carbon taxes are easy. You tax anyone who pulls it out of the ground or imports it. With international agreements you might drop the import tax and let to source country tax the extraction. The producers will just pass the added cost on to the users. Even this simple solution will be shot down by politics.

View on HN

It’s a fat regressive tax at a time when the lower working class is already rebelling. Invest more in technology and instead increase subsidies and build transmission lines

You can make it non-regressive by paying a dividend that is funded by the carbon tax revenues. This is also a possible mechanism for making it revenue-neutral, which could be politically advantageous.

I believe the common name for this approach is "fee and dividend". I'm surprised I don't see it discussed very much. I would think that it should be palatable across the political spectrum.

Carbon generates negative externalities paid by everyone : current system heavily subsidies carbon (and many polluting stuff)...

IMF says "Globally, subsidies remained large at $4.7 trillion" https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Glo...

Seems a fat regressive subsidie...

I don't think the poor are emitting that much CO2, they aren't getting on a plane to Bali for their holidays or driving to the Hamptons every weekend.

The solution is to shift taxes and benefits rather than just adding new ones.

Working examples of carbon taxes are revenue neutral by design but people don't understand that it would redistribute the money to low income people who can't afford e.g. expensive international flights. They would rather have no tax instead. So nothing will happen unless it happens through a backdoor.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com