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Old 09-09-2008, 02:44 PM   #206
Ronald Pagan
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Join Date: Sep 2008
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Even assuming they did catch up to the Euros and Asian standards for transit, who is going to pay in the end? The taxpayer. Now you have ANOTHER TAX on top of the carbon tax on top of all the other taxes you are already paying. (Yes you still pay the carbon tax even if you don't drive, it would just show up in your bus pass and everything you eat and buy).
That's the point of a carbon tax or pricing carbon emissions through a cap and trade (both policies achieve essentially the same results if designed with similar parameters). The point that you aren't understanding is that your consumption of fossil fuels has social and environmental costs that aren't reflected in the price. Therefore goods that are more or less carbon intensive will be priced accordingly to reflect those social and environmental costs. Goods shipped from far away with have a higher carbon intensity and therefore we should place price signals on those goods to reduce their consumption. The great thing about carbon taxes or carbon pricing is that it follows the equi-marginal principle in that no one individual is being forced to stop consuming anything but the net aggregate emissions reductions will be achieved more efficiently than a simple regulation against carbon emitting behaviour or goods.

If you really like dragon fruit from Vietnam then you can still go ahead and buy it with a higher price thanks to the carbon tax. You or others will make tax payments savings (and thus carbon emissions reductions) on other goods you consume.

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Tax Tax Tax, it's the Liberal way, The Man always sticking his hand in the hard working middle-class Canadians' pockets to subsidize the ones too lazy to take control of their own lives, because the social safety net will always be there for them.
The Man? Liberal? middle-class Canadians subsidizing lazy people? What the hell does this ideological blather have to do with the discussion at hand?
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