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Comment by wahnfrieden | Hacker News Reader

carbon tax applied across the spectrum has an outsized impact on the poor and working class despite a lower spend. an economic solution without considering class impact is risky

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In Canada, it’s implemented as a carbon dividend, IIRC. The tax earnings are distributed to the entire population, so those who pollute less get more than they spent. Presumably that includes people who consume less because they’re poor.

Depends where you put the revenue. Use it to fund a UBI, if the tax is set to raise $100b and everyone on earth gets $12.50, then that benefits the poor.

sure but carbon tax advocates are not pushing UBI

Well yeah, but the onrushing climate catastrophe is going to selectively wreak havoc on the poor, and especially poor brown people nearer the equator.

that’s why I’m in favor of systemic change that doesn’t bias against the global south or working class, you can have both and better avoid capitalist whitewashing techniques that mask yet another form of working class oppression

Could you give more context to why that is so? Couldn't it be adjusted the way something like income tax is?

Income tax also has an outsized impact on wage laborers

From your replies you seem to be genuine, but I think you've probably picked up this ides that carbon taxes hurt the poor from someone who wasn't genuine and didn't actually care about the poor or believe a carbon tax would be bad for them.

I don't know where to start deprogramming you from this misinformation, but maybe just look into the actual discussions about the real carbon prices already in use im the world.

Not the politics when one is proposed in the USA, but the boring implementation details in the countries that have used them for decades.

A just transition and carbon pricing are in no way opposed.

https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/opendocs/bitstream/handle/20.500....

That doc dives into the political, administrative and political complexities of real world implementations in developing nations.

Thanks, I am still learning

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