Comments on: It’s A Price, Not A Tax

By: NBohr

NBohr — Wed, 13 May 2009 19:22:54 +0000

Words Do Matter. There is a crucial difference between a TAX and a Price. That fundamental difference is FORCE.

Government, the monopolist of force, imposes taxes on items for two distinct purposes.
To recoup the cost of providing acknowledges services like enforcement of contract via law fee, toll on government improved roads, etc.. Or a tax can be levied to destroy or to detur behavior on the part of individuals that the government does not like.

Price is set by free market exchanges between buyers and sellers. If neither reaches agreement there is no sale. However no individual can evade a tax. A tax will not be repealed (Pennsylvanian liquor buyers are still paying a tax for the original Johnstown flood to the best of my knowledge). Prices can and do decrease when innovation and efficiences are brought to the production or distribution of a good or service.

So to be disingenious to call a tax a price is to be dishonest. If the buying public wanted the environmental benefits of clean air and clean water they would be willing to buy them and providers would enter the market freely. The Water Softner industry is an example --- the cost of the softness quality of ones water is manifest in the price of thise service.

Government is not that honest. The collection of taxes (fees) on nuclear waste (and governmental assertion of a monopoly on reprocessing of said waste) is a case in point. These taxes were collected and dishonestly not used as advertised.

Republicans must be honest in their use of terms and they must remember that we first and foremost believe in the rights and duties of an individual for it is fron the individuals that we have all of our rights.
.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:41:38 +0000

"The basic problem is this: We conservatives have been fighting against high taxes for so long, that we have never bothered to explain to the American people just what taxes we do consider to be necessary or desirable. As if our ultimate goal is to reduce taxes to zero, and shrink the Federal Government to "drown in the bathtub," as Grover Norquist once put it. That is a libertarian fantasy, and it's high time we abandoned that fantasy."

This is a very good point! Its like republicans have become economic anarchists! Some taxes are necessary people! And taxes right now are at historic lows! With the deficit being such a huge concern, and lower spending not being an immediate option, maybe we should start thinking about the irresponsibility of undertaxing ourselves.

Also I don't mean to be pimping my site but I do have a post about this topic (conservatives and taxation) that's pretty comprehensive:
http://thefactofmyignorance.com/politics/some-historical-perspective-for-tea-partiers/

By: cb55

cb55 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 16:42:20 +0000

Jim DiPeso, you can call it whatever you want, it is a tax. Whether climate change is occurring or not, we need to see cost benefit comparisons between what we can actually do about it comparesd with the consequences of paying the costs. If very little can be done, at great expenses that cause as harmful if not more results than climate change would, this becomes a legitimate argument, even if everyone accepted that climate change was real.

This debate is a hard one because there is so much differing information. And the groups that predominantly shove this down our throats all seem to be from the same curcles that conservative minded people do not trust. and it seems to fit nicely with ideology and other previously disproven doomsday scares that conservative are rightfully suspicious of.

Accepting the left's premise as the only way to look at this issue, or any other issue is not a way to beat them.

If climate change is real, then, yes, we should look at solutions and alternatives, granted that the costs of doing so do not create somethign worse. But they should be looked at using conservative principles. Not automatically accepting the left's ideas of fixing it, that conveniently fit into all they have been working for for the last 100 years.

By: sjohnson104

sjohnson104 — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 12:19:54 +0000

Whether or not you truly believe it to be a tax or not, Jim is right.

First, Republican labeling it a tax is going to doom them losing debate. When the debate heats up, the left will rightly use evidence from the 1990s with acid rain (FoxNews just did this), public opinion will eventually see the weakness of Republican arguments, thereby eliminating their credibility on the issue. Democrats framing the issue as a green jobs, energy security/independence issue is already helping them win the debate, too.

Second, Republican infighting threatens further negative stigma associated with our party. While some segment doesn't believe that it even exists, others don't want to do anything, and another segment that wants to address it but lacks a clear message on how to (maybe another smaller group wants a tax or cap-trade). So, 10-20 years from now, when the segment of the younger population ages--the group that especially cares about the environment--they will not look to the Republican party as a group that has an answer to it.

Finally, the House Waman-Markey bill addresses the Right's issue with India/China, and shipping jobs overseas through rebates and tariffs. This doesn't help Republicans' contribution to the issue.

Republicans, by taking the tax message, are not going to be able show any future credibility on the issue or take any credit for climate legislation like they could with the acid rain/clean air amendments in 1990.

By: Jeffersonian

Jeffersonian — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:20:57 +0000

All that comes to mind is silly, silly, silly. First there has been no legitimate science put forward proving global warming. Yes global warming, not climate change as that is just a SILLY use of phraseology used for the attempt at misdirection. Climate change happens all the time, and is so vague as to be unusable. SILLY also in attempting to label a tax as something other than a tax. If it is a price, then nowhere in the Constitution is Congress empowered to charge for anything, so this would be an unlawful abd unenforcable(except through further illegal actions) act. It also fails to fall under any presently given powers of Congress, and would require the passing of an amendment to bring it about.

By: Jeffersonian

Jeffersonian — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 19:13:40 +0000

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 20:39:45 +0000

dendup: That's not the only problem. The U.S., with the world's largest economy (and one that is based on fossil fuels for transportation), produces the largest share of greenhouse gases on Earth. Hence any agreement to reduce greenhouse gases is going to end up putting more of the onus on the U.S. than on any other nations.

Since 60% of America's energy needs are for transportation, and since there is no good alternative to fossil fuels for transportation at this time, what this boils down to is the U.S. sacrificing its economy for the rest of the planet. (Unless there is some breakthrough in transportation technology in the near future.)

And that really riles us conservatives, since we tend to be nationalists who don't like to see the U.S. being made a sacrificial goat for the developing world. Even though I think global warming is an important problem, it even riles me that the U.S. has to deliberately throttle back its economy, just so India and China can continue to expand their economies at full speed.

That was what derailed passage of the Kyoto Protocol. The Senate passed a sense-of-the-Senate resolution that no agreement on global warming was acceptable unless India and China were bound by the same restrictions as America. Faced with that, President Clinton decided not even to try to bring Kyoto up for a vote.

By: dendup

dendup — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 15:43:17 +0000

sinz: My point is not so much the function of taxes (you're right about that) as the perception of them. The push and pull of a carbon tax, I maintain, is less important to many conservatives than the idea of having to pay for a common resource ie of having to pay for something they already own.

I think this is part of the resistence to the very idea of human enhanced climate change - if that is happening to a dangerous extent, many conservatives fear that only large scale communal action (huge taxes, socialism, world gov't) will ammerioralate the probelm enough. Since such action is not acceptable, indeed, flies in the face of man's natural state, it must not be happening, or the resulting catastrophe is better than the catastrophe of the solution.

That at least is my perception.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 14:02:46 +0000

dendup: Taxes serve both purposes–they can serve common goals, but they can also act as economic disincentives. For example, advocates of raising the cigarette tax say explicitly that they hope that the high price of cigarettes will discourage smoking.Now in the case of a carbon tax, it’s NOT just that a carbon tax will help pay for the use of the atmosphere. It’s ALSO that the resulting higher prices for fossil fuels will help incentivize a shift to alternative forms of energy. Which must happen inevitably anyway, sincewe’re fast approaching the point of “peak oil.”

By: barker13

barker13 — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:00:56 +0000

Jim,

I don't believe there's any such thing as a "climate change" sceptic. Indeed, we all know that climates CHANGE...

(*SNORT*)

Skepticism revolves around how accurate computer modeling is and to what extent man's activities lead to "unnatural" climate changes.

Beyond the "how and why" debate there's also the question of "would global warming do more good or harm" worldwide overall assuming global warming or cooling is within man's ability to substantively influence climate changes in the first place.

BTW... what's the deal with all the multiple threads on the same topic? Is this coordinated...??? Hey... NM can do what it wants with its blog, but being this heavy handed seems to me counter productive.

BILL