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Comment by gundmc | Hacker News Reader

That seems like it would be an extremely regressive tax and disproportionately affect lower income Americans, no?

Sin taxes (those on alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, etc) also hit low income people harder. Yet, we still raise them because the positive effects on society outweigh the consequences.

We want people to find ways to reduce their fuel consumption, just as we want them to stop smoking. It's painful, but necessary, because the consequences of inaction are so high.

I think that is a major false equivalence.

Assuming that you don’t have a problem, you can always curb your drinking.

You still have to get to work. Many jobs, especially low income ones, will always have to remain in-person. In many places, infrastructure is already too far built out as sparse for public transport to be feasible for a very long time.

It’s easy to say “just take the hit” if you’re not walking in their shoes.

EU has a min excise tax on gasoline of 0.359 euro per 1L, before VAT ($1.6 per gallon). Most countries have it way higher (Germany : 0.6545€, or ~ 0.78€ after VAT). Higher fuel taxes should incentivize public transport, smaller/more efficient engines, etc.

There's a catch though: fuel taxes in Europe are important part of government's tax income. In my country it is like 10% of all taxes collected. Now, if everyone switches to electric vehicles this income source will dry out. Governments will have to replace it with something, so my guess is, they will at some point impose similar taxes on electricity.

or transition everyone to a road usage charge.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

In the US that needs to come with policy though. We have woefully inadequate public transit here, save for outlier metroplexes like New York. I would get laughed out of the room if I suggested taking the bus to the grocery store here.

> We have woefully inadequate public transit here, save for outlier metroplexes like New York.

Yep, and the only areas that have good public transit within the USA also happen to be very expensive... Something the working class poor and lower middle class simply cannot afford to even live near.

We had similar discussions in Germany on taxes on any CO2 emissions. There were proposals of redistributing some of the earnings to people with very low emissions, a bit similar to negative income tax rates in concept. Sadly never really went anywhere.

Actually, maybe not.

https://web.stanford.edu/~goulder/Papers/Published%20Papers/...

"We find that a carbon tax is inherently progressive, narrowing the income gap between rich and poor households. Beyond that, we find that it can potentially raise real incomes of low-income households."

https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/550691-econom...

carbon tax != fuel tax you pay at the pump

offset it with more tax credits for lower income

That's just creating a poverty trap. Sure you can use math and do a phased in/out credit based on income but that just replaces a welfare cliff with a welfare "steep grade". Unless the credit is so generously applied as to defeat the point of the price hike you're still making the metaphorical gravity well of poverty deeper.

Edit: Did I say something mathematically incorrect or is it just inconvenient?

You don’t even need a phase-out, a flat redistribution would work well enough, maybe accompanied by funding for public transportation.

Take more money from poor people and then give it back at the end of the year - after paying the salary of all the new bureaucrats you had to hire. Great idea.

With the key added piece that you're trying to disincentivize carbon emissions in the process. I'm much more worried about the risks of the climate crisis than I am whether a few extra bureaucrats are hired.

Gas tax already exists, as does the earned income tax credit. Doesn’t take any new bureaucrats to change the numbers, although it will perhaps force some of them to get off their ass and modify some forms.

Implemented in the same spirit as this: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/2307...

It would actually reduce inequalities because the revenues of the tax is redistributed directly to every individual. Since rich household polluting more than the poors, the 7 lowest deciles should actually be better off.

The cost of not doing it would be much, much greater though, and disproportionately affect lower income folks

Yes it would and also inflation. Goods would cost more which would be another whammy. We should boost the tax credits for new EV purchases. And maybe extend to your first used EV purchase too.

Climate change also disproportionately affects lower income humans.

Perhaps we can subsidize the poor Americans with something other than a percentage of oil consumption.

The fundamental issue is incentive structures, not austerity.

That's the point. It exempts the poors who live in a shoebox apartment and take the bus and crushes the ones who are living far from their job and slogging out a crazy commute.

I doubt a decently sized gas tax (a few cents a gallon) would "crush" those who are commuting from afar.

Compared to the inflation already present for years in healthcare, housing/rent and college - all things with double digits for over a decade - the cost of gas rising a dime or two a gallon wouldn't even be noticed with the fluctuation of gas prices as is.

It won't be a few cents because few cents/gal isn't going to get the behavior change that is the point of the tax.

The fundamental issue here is that you need to take what a lot of people currently see as their best option (driving an ICE car) and make that sufficiently worse so that the next best option is the one tons of people choose.

Anything that gets the behavior change will necessarily screw a lot of people.

> Anything that gets the behavior change will necessarily screw a lot of people.

I disagree. Just look elsewhere around the world. It's doable, we just don't do it.

so? I say this to point out that if they're doing something that is to be deprecated there's nothing wrong with disincentivizing it, so long as we keep helping them get their needs met or towards self sufficiency.

For example nothing wrong with doubling tax on gas if we also improve public transit.

My main point is that regressive, nor disincentivizing the poor are wrong things to do if they're causing issues for society.

> That seems like it would be an extremely regressive tax and disproportionately affect lower income Americans, no?

> so?

This is a standard economically liberal position, at least stated openly.

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