But they take the minerals for free. Why not make them pay for the resources they’re exploiting? Instead, the American public and native reservations get nothing, except they lose access and use of that land. That should be remunerated somehow.
I’m glad you’re aware, but I think few people are actually aware of just how much actual bullshit mining companies get away with. They’re basically consequence free by default.
Have you worked at a mine in USA in the past four decades? Pollution controls in all industries improve over time. Piston aircraft still use leaded fuel. Humanity is a process of progression and innovation.
We do, however, have equal protection, and you are welcome to go find those resources for yourself.
In economics there is a thing called deadweight loss, which is the value lost when some kind of policy (like an inefficient tax) distorts the quantity supplied:quantity demanded relationship. When you tax only income and profits, you generally avoid deadweight loss because you shift the taxation to be “after” the supply:demand has already been determined; by allowing for expenses paid to other companies to be deducted, value isn’t taxed twice because ultimately that money always ends up as someone else’s income or profits. If you’re purely interested in more taxes to capture value for the government more efficiently (and not as a vice or pigouvian tax) instituting more taxes introduces double taxation that shifts the tax before the transaction and introduced deadweight loss which lowers overall output and value generated.
If you do mean to suggest the tax should be Pigouvian, that kind of already exists. Corporations have to pay a lot of the costs for compliance and remediation. I’m pretty sure to avoid all the issues of the past, companies have to put a bunch of money/assets in escrow so if they fuck up the government doesn’t get stuck with the bill. It is true though that all taxpayers pay for eg the EPA and the fees paid by corporations generally don’t cover the full environment cost; generally this means the externalities of production aren’t being accurately priced and it would be better to shift those externalities into the companies.
But those kinds of pigouvian taxes have a major flaw in that we live in a global market economy, so without full international cooperation they just make your local industry uncompetitive and shift production to places with less regulations. Also, even though natural resource extraction generates some profits for private individuals, we generally all benefit from it. So it’s not too bad to tax some of the environmental compliance costs in a non-pigouvian manner.
No. They can pay and they should pay. Don’t worry: they’ll be fine.
Well put. However, with the additional stipulation that it is sometimes useful to leave minerals in the ground if the company that extracts them does not make an unpaid/ unremediated toxic enviromental mess when extracting them.
> The reservations get what they're entitled to, which is nothing.
Depends on who "owns" the land. If the land is owned by the federal government then the reseservations aren't technically owed anything. However, was the land taken from the reservations by force in the past ? If so, then 0% share is highly objectionable. Would you like it I came to you, forcibly took away your assets, made profit from them and then claimed that I didn't owe you anything because it wasn't yours anymore ?
Now, it is fully possible that these federal lands were virgin in the past so then the the federal government does not owe anything extra to any special group of citizens.
TL;DR We must go into the history of the land. Depending on the history of the land, local communities/reservations _may_ deserve a small formal share in the profits of the mining company.
In any case, the government must work for the betterment of all its residents and citizens whether in cities, farms or mining areas. Mining areas deserve special care because they house some of the historically most poor and opressed citizens.