If carbon emissions were taxed I would have no issue with this. Ostensibly, the rich have earned their greater share of the national wealth/output (including CO2 emission budget), as long as they are paying fairly for it.
Do you think the "greater share" he "earned" is really 10,000x the average tech worker? Or 640,000x the minimum wage?
He was clearly worth the money for those people.
Yes. It doesn't seem unreasonable to the point of dismissal to consider that he's changed the world to within many orders of magnitude of that which the avererage person, particularly the average minimum-wage earner, does. That doesn't mean he has. But the number being four or five orders of magnitude doesn't strike me as damning.
Golly.
He changed the world, so now he gets to burn it?
Non sequitur. A college student having a pet can be reasonable. That doesn't mean they can do whatever they like with it.
Yes. That is my point
Destroy the world = unreasonable
Nobody is saying the second but you. They are unrelated, hence the non sequitur.
Burning tonnes of carbon in your private jet
Zero for your private jet
> Do you think it matters if they offset it?
What does that even mean, if not crooked lies and imaginary foolishness?
For example, consider the Tobacco industry. While yes they did, and somewhat still do, make a lot of money, they did not create any value. They siphoned it - they exchanged the purchase of tobacco for the cost of healthcare. I'm speculating, but if you were calculating the communal cost, that is the profits of tobacco minus the healthcare costs, I'm positive it would be negative.
Therefore, tobacco has a negative value onto the world, but it is profitable. The profit is a facade, that money is really stolen. This demostrates one of the core flaws with current economic systems - you can create profit without creating value. You can simply move money around and get some profit, and you can even destroy money and yet make money.
Keep in mind Facebook gets it's profit via advertising. The money they make is due to manipulating people to spend their money on things they wouldn't otherwise buy. The analysis is difficult, and I'm not saying what they're doing is bad per se, but the actual value they create is certainly debatable.
All that is to say, simply changing the world is a meaningless metric. Certainly, I can change the world for the worse, if I want, and profit in-between. In such a scenario not only am I not equivalent to a janitor, I actually create less value. While making orders of magnitude more money.
If someone had 10,000 tons of gold, they would have made a similar “hourly wage” this last year.
This has nothing to do with earning anything. It’s about value appreciation of an already held asset.
The problem with carbon tax is the opposite. It would disproportionately tax poor higher. The carbon usage doesn't go up by 100x if the income increases by 100x.
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgA0UgSEDjI (2m22s)
IIRC carbon tax would be at point of use? So biggest "hard to transition" polluters like metal, concrete, electricity would pay most?
IIRC 2, most carbon tax advocates are also huge into investing in public transit, EVs, weatherization, heat pumps. In fact, BIL and IRA stipulate 40% apportionment. So doesn't that mitigate the regressiveness of a carbon tax?
No, the people using metal, concrete, electricity would pay it. It's not like the profitability of industry goes down over tax.
Source?
Really?
> the rich have earned their greater share of the national wealth/output (including CO2 emission budget),
Do you think so?
The future of our organised society is threatened by this. Is that OK if you are rich and have "earned [sic] their greater share"
Think about it....