Large inequality in international energy footprints between income groups | Hacker News Reader

Large inequality in international energy footprints between income groups

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> Energy-intensive goods tend to be more elastic, leading to higher energy footprints of high-income individuals.

This is great news. If energy intensive goods are more elastic, this means that carbon taxes will likely be very successful at reducing consumption of these goods.

Now we just need to get some strong carbon taxes in place.

Would progressive taxation not already accomplish the intended goal of such a carbon tax by suppressing high-income consumption? Why add a second mechanism?

We want to encourage the use of less energy overall, but we also want to encourage the use of more efficient/less damaging forms of energy to the extent that we do use it. Progressive taxation accomplishes the former, carbon taxes accomplish the latter.

Only very indirectly. Progressive taxation would reduce consumption of everything, even things that had minimal carbon impact, whereas a carbon tax would reduce specifically consumption of polluting behaviors.

The people earning high incomes from their labour are typically the most productive members of society. They need to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labour without needing to resort to elaborate tax schemes.

Part of the reason the USA is so much more successful and wealthier than Europe is because the taxes are much lower and simpler.

Poland has a lower tax rate than Germany so why is Poland still behind Germany?

How about an extreme example? Ukraine is not in the EU but it has an even lower tax rate than Poland. It's doing far worse even by polish standards (1/3 of the GDP per capita of Poland).

There are companies that specialize in only hiring contractors and in a lot of cases this is simply done to avoid paying for social benefits. These are not necessarily highly paid individuals. In fact, many are at the bottom of the economic ladder.

Overall quality of life is highly correlated with energy consumption. There's some nuance to it: higher population density countries often use less energy to deliver the same quality of life are more dispersed populations. But in general the better life is in a country, the more energy it consumes. Here's per-capita energy consumption plotted out on a map [1] and the correlation is crystal clear.

This part of why I think plans to decarbonize through the reduction of energy consumption are doomed to fail. People aren't going to reject a good standard of living, and countries that don't yet have a good standard of living aren't going to stop striving to achieve it.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_Map_-_Energy_Use_20...

That site isn’t working on my iPhone. Does it work for others?

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