This is reality today under capitalism. What happens to me if I don't choose to work?
I really fail to imagine an unconditional transfer (like the one you are replying to) turning into a monster of untraceable rules.
Increased prices would clearly make it more expensive to raise children. This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?
Reducing capitas will cause a much quicker and effective change than reducing per capita consumption.
I'm sorry, what's the issue? If we need children and need to incentivize it, it's what we'll do. And by definition, you're talking about advantages only to counterbalance new disadvantages. So we need to solve what?
I mean, if on one side we have exponential growth, and on the other we have no children leading to no one to support seniors, surely there is a middle ground where the right number of children are born each year.
On the other hand in Japan and elsewhere in developed countries women postpone having kids until in their in their 30s, because they're involved in the workforce.
So, one either ends up with exponential population growth or with the elderly working until they die and younger people postponing having chindren until mid age (with all the associated health issues, both for the mother and th child) or not having children at all.
It's rather hard if not impossible to keep a middle ground. As a woman one probably has to make a choice between bearing children after you finish college or getting a degree and joining the workforce. Guess what most women's choice is?
Taxation is a road to nowhere as rich people will always either find the way to avoid taxes or find the way to throw the costs of those taxes on the poor. This happens with every kind of tax.
The only solution to decrease CO2 emission is to behave in a rational way and use the only practical, tested and available now clean energy source - nuclear power plants. No amount of eco-talk will change reality that neither solar nor wind energy plants will be able to power modern economy. Europe is learning this the hard way right now.
Maybe Europe will do the suicidal jump with the ideas like "Fit for 55", and will kill its economy to lower global emission by 0.05% but the rest of the World, which emits much more CO2 and will emit even more when all production will be moved from Europe to Asia or USA cannot care less.
It gives the delivery company a big incentive to switch to electric vehicles or ebikes or something more efficient. This harnesses market power to push companies to be more efficient with their resources: the ones who are more innovative at avoiding CO2 usage will see financial benefits.
Delivery emissions should be attached to the person getting the delivery. Otherwise you could just skip most of your emissions by having everything delivered.
Either way, it changes your behavior, because if delivery is more expensive (to factor in the externalities it causes) you will either consume less, or pay more. This ultimately "attaches the emissions to the person getting the delivery" but in a far less complex and less game-able way.
If I order something off Amazon, do I get a say in where the package is shipped from to control "my" emissions.
Yes, you would have to use some of your carbon credits to pay for the delivery and manufacture of the shoe. The product would have both a monetary and a carbon price. If you don't have enough credits, then you can buy some on the spot market from someone who isn't using theirs up.
This would incentivise repair of the shoe, as it may require fewer carbon credits.
Probably yes, because that the whole point of Pigouvian taxes.
After all, the whole point of carbon tax is to reduce usage, not to gain revenue or penalize some people; so it works if and only if it meaningfully changes behavior, i.e. if the tax significantly raises prices of some specific market goods/services and thus drives people to use less of those specific goods/services. A simple income-proportional tax or just "tax the rich" doesn't incentivize reducing emissions, so it's useless for that goal; it's perhaps useful for social equity and wealth redistribution, but that's something not directly linked to climate change goals.
It's not about money, it's about CO2; driving deliveries needs to emit less CO2 so the goal is to either get more efficient deliveries (e.g. electric vehicles) or less deliveries (putting some of those delivery drivers out of jobs), and "who's paying for that" is just choosing the most effective means to achieve these goals.
The entire point of CO2 taxes is that you are supposed to avoid them.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-renewables-us...
If there really needs to be a carbon tax for delivery, it makes the most sense to transfer it directly to the consumer who demanded order-delivery. Any other mechanism will just leave a tax loophole.
And yes, emission taxes/standards should be applied to the whole world. Right now, they are adversely affecting the poor and lower middle class of the first world - none of whom are represented on HN. Meanwhile China can keep polluting away to its heart's content producing ~30% of the world's emissions by itself.
Yes, true. Guess what is used to compensate for lack of renewable output? Natural gas fired plants with short ramp up time. This will only drive electricity prices up.
The article is about gas shortages and people at risk of freezing this winter, yet almost everyone here is talking about CO2 taxes and taxing natural gas?
The distinction in the US is whether you make your money through labor (max 37% tax) or capital gains (max 20% tax). There is a lower tax rate for capitalists (who make money via ownership of capital) vs laborers (who make money through labor income). Furthermore, capital gains can be delayed until you realize your gains (sell your capital). This distinction is what practically gives the rich lower taxes than the poor.
Employers prefer keeping people full time and full time unemployed because it is more efficient per worker and the bargaining power of the unemployed doesn't exist. If everyone were to work according to their own demand for labor then this bargaining power cliff wouldn't exist and a whole lot of welfare programs could be abolished.