Posted on 11/10/2006 11:57:30 AM PST by Lorianne
Is a CO2 tax in America's future? ___ Two days after the election, a movement is afoot to achieve an audacious Democratic goal. The weird part is that the people behind it are Republicans.
In a Nov. 9 Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Bush speechwriter David Frum suggested that President Bush propose a carbon tax. N. Gregory Mankiw, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Bush White House, suggested the same thing in an Oct. 20 op-ed in the Journal, and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan talked it up in late September. Harvard's Martin Feldstein and Weekly Standard contributing editor Irwin Stelzer like the idea, too. Slate "Moneybox" columnist Dan Gross took note of this unexpected GOP trend in an Oct. 8 New York Times column ("Raise the Gasoline Tax? Funny, It Doesn't Sound Republican").
On a purely theoretical level, it's not at all inconsistent for a Republican to advocate a carbon tax. Conservatives prefer taxing transactions to taxing income because it's a way to avoid progressivity; rich and poor get taxed at the same rate. (In his op-ed, Frum makes no bones about wanting to use the carbon tax to "split the opposition" and to lower taxes on "work, savings and investment.") Even libertarians recognize that if one person's activities impose costs on society as a whole (in this instance, by contributing to global warming), then that person ought to compensate society. This is what's known as a Pigovian tax, named after an English economist of the early 20th century named Arthur Pigou. Mankiw has pronounced fellow advocates of higher energy taxes, who include liberals like Paul Krugman, Robert Frank, and, most famously, Al Gore, the "Pigou Club."
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Someone tell me this is bullshit.
It's bullshit. Sadly, bullshit is usually what ends up being made law.
I always new if the dims could find a way, they'd tax you for breathing.
Bwahahahaha, it's official folks. The GOP is now the DEM party and the DEM party is now communists.
"carbon tax"
Got to get rid of all my illegal carbon...might as well dump that extra hydrogen too.
Yeah, find some unemployed Republicans to say something stupid and then proclaim it official GOP policy.
Tell me you're not that easily duped.
Its an interesting idea. And the author is right is that this idea has some basis in Conservative thought. My very conservative economic prof in college was a big supporter of something like this.
You can impose a tax or perhaps give "Carbon tax credits" if that is more appealing to the base
This is what's known as a Pigovian taxAll taxes are pig taxes. How else can you hope to keep the public trough full?
Yeah, find some unemployed Republicans to say something stupid and then proclaim it official GOP policy.
Tell me you're not that easily duped.
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It was mainly in jest, with some "hope it's fake" thought. But, when the Repubs spend like Dems, when they create huge Government like Dems, when they ignore our border security like Dems....it would not suprise me to see them offer up a carbon tax idea....like a Dem.
"Someone tell me this is bullshit."
Probably not.
Bush sowed this junk by proclaiming the "hydrogen economy" and "addiction to oil." Global warming is "b s" but a noble goal is cutting pollution anyway and getting off oil.
But Bush is a Texas oil man and if anyone thinks he has the best interests of this nation and its people instead of his class, time to get real folks.
Instead of moving to hydro vehicles we will get these carbon credit scams and such which are international money laundering schemes.
Bush will go for them because it's a two-fer. Juices profits and makes him seem "environmental," like with his Amnerica-busting immigration plans to "remove" the source of the attraction of Mexican labor- the American lifestyle of people not as rich as he.
The Dems are too stupid to figure out the carbon scam. There was a moment when I thought Bush might be a leader in 2001 when he talked about the hydrogen economy...
....but I fear he might go to the carbon scams...
I hope not,
but he insists on traitoring us on immigration, so my hopes are not high.
I think we need to keep Bush in check for 2 years.
"You can impose a tax or perhaps give "Carbon tax credits" if that is more appealing to the base"
Thank you, no. Appelaing to the base, did your professor tell you this?
We'll see what Republican lawmakers end up learning as a lesson from this election.
They could be pulled two ways. Either try to be more like Democrats, or realize that why they really lost is because they forgot how to more like Republicans.
I'd be surprised if they conclude that they need to be bigger tax and spenders to get elected in 2008.
Well we did mention Carbon tax credits and no it didnt use the terms "appealing to the base". But like I said that does have a place in conservative thought as the article correctly points out.
Lets say we go the tax credit route. Why is that so unappealing. There is a incentive for industry to use cleaner technology. That benifits us all.
"Lets say we go the tax credit route. Why is that so unappealing. There is a incentive for industry to use cleaner technology. That benifits us all."
Tax credits might be good for cleaner energy, but beware the carbon credit trading, trade-n-cap schemes. These are unverifiable international money laundering schemes. Keywords - hydrogen, reducing pollution, ending reliance on foreign oil - good. Whenever you hear "carbon" only, presume it's a scam.
There was a moment in 2001 I thought Bush would make a grand move and make a big government project into hydrogen, none of this "market-based" junk when the "market" is against moving off oil.
He never did it.
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