Quote:
Originally Posted by Bownesian
(taking the bait)
I'm actually in favour of carbon taxes and consumption taxes in general. What I'm not in favour of is increasing the tax base under the cloak of environmentalism and using it to fund new, very costly social programs, and then creating exemptions that favour certain regionally important pet industries. Nor am I in favour of increased taxes going to fund politically top-down energy generation projects that aren't economical and don't save GHG emissions like the Ontario Liberals did. They blew billions on green jobs that disappeared the same minute the subsidies did and microgeneration projects that are totally inefficient pipe dreams that still aren't hooked up to the grid.
Exemption-free carbon taxes that replaced personal and corporate income taxes would efficient and useful if they were high enough to make a real difference, (say enough to bump your gasoline or natural gas bill by 25%) but that's not what was proposed in either of the last two elections. Instead, the first iteration targeted one industry's emissions preferentially over heating oil, transportation fuel and industries that are especially important to everything east of Manitoba and funnelled a significant chunk of the funds from that one targeted industry into per-capita (Ontario and Quebec) and lower-income targeted (Ontario and East) social programs. The second iteration I've talked about at length in this thread already and don't need to retread.
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I'm sorry. I stopped reading after the point you increased taxes to curb behavior part. Not everyone has the luxury or ability to not have to drive long distances to work, or just stop using things such as a vehicle. I'm not sure why right wingers feel that its appropriate to utilize punishment to alter behavior (and yes that's punishment).
On topic I don't like rob anders
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