From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 09:53:21 MDT
Bill Douglass wrote:
>
> Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> [snip]
> "If governments taxed products based on their total global impact at least
> the incentive to move offshore to avoid things like environmental
> regulations would disappear. Ultimately you have to get the consumer to
> accept the idea that he should pay fully for what he consumes and not be
> complacent with shifting the burden elsewhere. That would be real
> sustainability."
>
> This is an interesting idea, Robert. Could you (or anyone) recommend any
> readings on this idea of taxing products based on their "total global
> impact"?
I can say that one of the best means of doing so, if you actually think
that CO2 is actually a threat to the climate (where the opinion among
scientists working in the area have apparently voted 10 to 1 against,
according to the petition signatures), is through carbon taxes on
energy. Since energy is, beyond labor, the primary component of the
value of all products (involving materials refining, manufacturing,
transportation, inventory, and sales), taxing it based on the degree to
which the energy came from polluting sources would achieve this goal of
cost internalization most accurately. Since human labor costs are also
related to the cost of living, based on food (biggest cost is energy),
water (ditto), shelter (ditto), transportation and education (ditto,
ditto), they would similarly scale upward as carbon taxes were
instituted.
Without energy, none of the harm done to the environment is possible.
Taxing energy based on this fact is most reasonable and applies most
fairly across the entire economy. However, it is important to properly
calculate the actual externalized costs associated with each energy
source, keep it entirely scientific and unpoliticised. Establishing a
sort of non-partisan organization like the Federal Reserve to oversee
this would be the fair way to go about it, and it is also a libertarian
approach: taxes should only be based on the costs an individual
externalizes upon others.
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