Comments on: Those green taxes

By: The Remittance Man

The Remittance Man — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:55:01 +0000

I’m more interested in how he came up with his 1-2% number in the first place.

Personally, I can’t shake the feeling that an estimate with a 33% possible error has been pulled from someone’s bum.

By: David Gillies

David Gillies — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:33:57 +0000

The tool says we should all turn vegetarian to save the planet. I had a delicious New York strip tonight just to say fuck him.

By: Oliver Latham

Oliver Latham — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:14:13 +0000

Matt hits the nail on the head, but without sufficient force.

Stern’s argument is that we need to stop global warming, but that doing so will require us to accept a level of GDP 2% below where it would otherwise be and, furthermore, that a suitable instrument to achieve the required changes is Pigouvian taxation.

How this statement can be mangled into ‘if Pigouvian tax revenue equals 2% of GDP we’ll be fine’ is utterly beyond me and I think Tim owes his readers an apology.

By: AntiCitizenOne

AntiCitizenOne — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:20:06 +0000

Taxes merely transfer pollution from taxed to recipient.

By: Matthew Sinclair

Matthew Sinclair — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:57:06 +0000

Tim,

I think the response to this would be that Stern is citing the economic cost whereas you are measuring the transfer from taxpayers to government. A transfer doesn’t inherently have any economic cost, though there are obviously deadweight losses associated with most of them.

Best,
Matt

By: Serf

Serf — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:02:03 +0000

They are probably misallocated though at least, with green taxes on road transportation too high, and air transportation too low.

I would bhe happy to see them even higher if, and its a big if, they were matched with tax cuts on things like employment. After all we charge companies for employing people even though there is a social benefit rather than a cost.