I often wonder why the elites don’t understand what their mistreatment of the proletariat will lead to…
This is often way more expensive than paying for heating.
> will implement Home Office
This only works for well paying IT jobs. Not the working class that actually physically work at factories, stores, restaurants, hospitals, etc etc that are underpaid and hit the most by taxes.
> will demand public transport
Demands are cool and everything, but you can’t sit around jobless for 1-2 decades waiting for laws to pass and municipalities to build out the transport infrastructure.
> will drive electric
Very few cities have the infrastructure for this. Once that’s fixed, carbon taxation would work better.
> drive as groups instead of individuals
This already happens in Europe, but people are still wage slaves. It changes nothing.
Some jobs will also get pay raises if there is demand for them, but people can't afford to take them.
Working remote doesn't work just for IT, and I didn't claim everything works for everybody. And incrementally increased taxation will allow for planning.
Poor people have a low enough foot print to profit with a dividend anyways.
The real problem with carbon taxing is that it must be realized globally
> profit with a dividend anyways
See, the thing is, there are no carbon dividends yet. We do have lots of carbon-like taxes (in the EU and elsewhere) though. So, there’s only loss, no gain.
Generally, there is no silver bullet, but there are a lot of possible solutions as you can see. And I am sure I didn't include most of them
> See, the thing is, there are no carbon dividends yet. We do have lots of carbon-like taxes (in the EU and elsewhere) though. So, there’s only loss, no gain.
Well, what not is ...
I’m not ascribing to a perfection mindset. Just pointing out the ridiculousness of the elites telling others how to live their lives, while simultaneously finding ways to further suppress them.
“We could have an ideal world, if you just stopped doing everything that enables your survival. Me? I just make/support the rules - despite them not materially affecting me.”
So basically choose your poison or hope for magic tech to appear soon.
What do you mean?? Literally, you could redistribute billionaire/millionaire wealth and it would be more useful than taxing the average person tens/hundreds of euros more, when they can barely afford to survive.
In fact, ongoing taxation that reduces the loopholes that elites get away with, would be even more beneficial.
There may not be a way to make that burden fall on the rich. I'm not sure what percentage of a society's energy is spent on maintaining the lifestyles of the wealthy but it wouldn't be weird if it is low in absolute terms.
I think this is patently false; but even more generally, wealthier people and “developed” countries are the biggest polluters.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...
I suppose they might be millionaires since around 9% of the US are millionaires [0]. That isn't a very exclusive club these days. A tax that knocks the lifestyle of that many people down to something like what an individual with a <$100k income experiences is going to be look radical.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_numbe...
Why shouldn’t it be radical? Why should the %-ers get to pollute and live lavish lifestyles, while enforcing frugality and poverty on the remaining 90-99%?
Reducing loopholes won't reduce carbon emissions. Internalizing the cost will, so I can't even imagine how this would be more beneficial. So, just do both
Most of that wealth is stocks of companies that only exist because they serve needs of billions of people that are not rich. If you redistribute the wealth (so - who owns the stocks) - you don't change the emissions because the needs of billions of people are still there (in fact - you will probably increase net emissions because now more people have money to spend) and companies will continue to try to satisfy these needs to earn money. And emit CO2 while doing so.
If you want to reduce the emissions you have to stop these needs from being satisfied (or invent magic tech). Redistribution of wealth (while reasonable for other reasons) - won't help with global warming.
Side effect of cutting CO2 emissions is that these companies lose big percent of their value, so wealth of everybody drops, but that's the least of our problems.
Another thing is - significant part of the world is just now achieving living standards considered bare minimum in the west. That's more than billion people that will double their CO2 emissions soon. If you cut the 15% of emissions caused by top 1% to 0 - it doesn't matter because at the same time 20% or 30% of world population is increasing their emissions by 100%.
We have 2 issues - life is unfair (and to fix that we need to tax the rich), and global warming (and to fix that we need to tax CO2 emissions, no matter who cause them). The end result will be that everybody but the poor people in 3rd world countries will significantly lower their living standards.
What will actually happen is probably that we just tax CO2, so everybody living standards will drop. Or we do nothing and we all suffer the climate crisis, mass imigrations, starvations, wars etc.
But carbon tax (ideally with a dividend) catches this anyways
The common man is definitely less polluting than the average HNer - HN represents the upper % of the upper middle class. So really, the way you frame your reply makes me think you haven’t thought through the impact on your own polluting lifestyle.
The common man in the developed world is still part of the problem.
>So really, the way you frame your reply makes me think you haven’t thought through the impact on your own polluting lifestyle.
You are jumping to an incorrect conclusion there. I've been thinking about it for decades which is why I don't fly nor own a car. My spending (hence consumption) is around the poverty line for my country.