What Dingell is suggesting is political suicide. Americans will never support a 50 cent gasoline tax nor will they take cutting back home owner deductions lightly, particularly in the current housing market where loans are defaulting. Dingell can get away with introducing ridiculous ideas like this because he is in a gerrymandered seat and has no threat of losing. There are plenty of other Congressmen who don't have that luxury and they won't line up behind such a radical proposal.

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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

President George W. Bush, 8-5-2004

Carolina Politics Online

THIS IS REAL HOPE AND CHANGE!

Americans would never support this the way junkies never support the people that throw the intervention.

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"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

I was just about to make a post on gas taxes and carbon taxes when I saw this one. Is it political suicide? Probably in most cases. But does it make sense?

Dealing with global warming by raising fuel efficiency standards, subsidising biofuels, and other indirect measures are hugely wasteful. Taxes are the most effective way to deal with the problem.

For people concerned with global warming, what is the argument against using taxes as a means of addressing the issue instead of skirting around it like we do now? Is the problem with higher gas taxes and a carbon tax just that people don't want them because then we would have to face the actual cost of what we are trying to do?

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"Some years ago I had a sobering realization about women, which was that there are just too many nice ones. One simply can't fall in love with, sleep with, or marry all the nice women...One of the saddening facts of life is that there is always going to be a delightful woman somewhere who, for whatever accident of timing or attraction, simply slips by and recedes to return only in a dream."
-Larry McMurtry in Roads

The first problem is that a significant amount of the people who would be affected by such measures dont accept the extremist view of climate change. The second is that there are far better ways to reduce c02 if thats the goal. One better way is Richard Bransons private funding of researching technology to clean the air.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

As I've said before about carbon taxes: giving governments windfall revenues from such 'pollution' taxes is madness.

It gives the government an inherent and vested financial interest in maintaining and/or increasing pollution levels.

I have to agree with you White Rabbit. Although I am a severe skeptic of whether human beings are really causing global warming, your logic makes sense to me. If humans really are causing global warming then a tax on carbon emissions and gas would only cause the government to want to keep such carbon emissions up so that they would keep making money off the tax. It might even lead them to try and get carbon emissions to increase so as to make more money.

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Serious Quotes:


Funny But True Quotes
Those who argue for complete secularism are funny. They see what government does and then argue that we don't need it to start with prayer.

I'm wondering why so many people seem to believe that taxing the hell out of something will ensure behavior modification? That tactic hasn't really worked in the past so there is no way I can see that it will work with this. But you're right, they DO make a lot of money in the bargain, regardless of whether it works or not.

And why would anyone in his right mind trust the government with this anyway? Their commitment to air pollution was clearly demonstrated about 20 years ago when they put out those stricter emissions rules for autos. Of course, when they did that, they also allowed the increasingly popular SUVs to be classified as small trucks, which exempted them from the regs.

And of course, there's the poor slob with the minimum wage job, who was forced to buy an old gas burner that somebody else traded in for a more fuel efficient car. ANY gas tax increase is going to go right for the throats of these lower income people.

There must be a better way, and I trust the Congress won't be the ones to come up with it.

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Not a day goes by that I don't see something that reinforces my belief that people are idiots.

As it regards transportation, I think our money would be better invested in mass transportation. Look at Richard Branson again. He is switching all he trains to biodiesel and investing the profits in renewable energy research. This is evidence of how private companies can excel over govt.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

The extremist view propagated by those extremists at the national acadamies of science of all the developed nations of the world?

Nothing about the tax idea stops anyone from privately funding any research they like. So we should do both.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

No, the extremist view that the world will be a burning ball of fire in ten years. This is not the consensus, and even the consensus is far from certain and not much of a consensus. Regardless, a significant portion of the world does not beleive we need to take drastic measures to stop climate change, and so proposals like this will fail.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

A "burning ball of fire" is not a prerequisite for responsible tax policies to address the climate change, security, and pollution issues.
It's hard to conceive of a consensus more certain than that of the academies of science of all the industrialized nations on earth.
The ignorance of that scientific consensus of a "significant portion of the world" may well kill measures like this but that doesn't make ignorance a sound basis for tax policy.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

You seem to be the only one here who sees this as a responsible tax policy.

__________________
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

President George W. Bush, 8-5-2004

Carolina Politics Online

THIS IS REAL HOPE AND CHANGE!

I also seem to be the only one here who doesn't think climate change is some kind of weird scientific conspiracy. The fact is that tax policy has been used to encourage some forms of behavior and discourage others for as long as people have lived together in large scale societies. Tax policy is also often used to obtain money to address public policy issues by taking it from those most responsible for the problem. Taxing petroleum products can accomplish both the behavioral and the "you broke it - you bought it" goals.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

There are many examples of scientific consensus that later proved wrong (the world is flat, the sun revolves around it, global cooling). The argument is that the political solution is on a scale that does not meet the scale of the problem. No one is claiming climate change to be a conspiracy, only that it is not clearly defined, or of such a large importance as the scientific community makes it. Im not here to argue the science, only to point out the reason the political pushes will fail, which is that a large portion of the population remains unconvinced of the problem.

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http://www.fairtax.org

Elminate all taxes on income and replace with a national sales tax.

Belief in a flat earth and a geocentric universe were never scientific consensus or really even "science" at all.
Climate change is clearly enough defined by scientific consensus to merit a serious and timely response. This is exactly that. Taxing petroleum products to pay for weaning us from petroleum products seems to me to scale perfectly. When you add the benefits to national security and reduction of pollution it is even more appropriate.
Once again ignorance is not a valid basis for tax policy and it doesn't matter whether you call it "does not believe" or "unconvinced".

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon