[Aulig]

That's why i like the idea of a "climate dividend". Everyone will pay a carbon tax, which then finances the climate dividend, which is evenly paid out to the population. So if you emit below average amounts of carbon, you will actually be better off financially.

[5560675260]

This would also greatly help with social coherence. First make living costs so high, that they are unaffordable for the underclasses, leaving them no other choice than complete reliance on the state payouts. Then make subsidies conditional, tiered, assigned on sufficiently complicated rules (as a side effect this would improve employment opportunities is public sector). And finally, whenever serfs would choose to misbehave, there wouldn't even be a need to intimidate - just dangle a possibility of freezing to death in winter.

[HWR_14]

You're right that making it conditional would be bad. But we can just not do that. Why wouldn't we make it unconditional? It's not like you lose your Social Security payments for having committed criminal acts.

[marcosdumay]

Hum... Have you looked on the situation of ex-criminals?

I really fail to imagine an unconditional transfer (like the one you are replying to) turning into a monster of untraceable rules.

[cool_dude85]

>And finally, whenever serfs would choose to misbehave, there wouldn't even be a need to intimidate - just dangle a possibility of freezing to death in winter.

This is reality today under capitalism. What happens to me if I don't choose to work?

[dnautics]

you have so many no-work options. You can be nice to people and live off their (informal) charity. You could probably work out an arrangement where you barter services for lodging. You could go live with relatives that work.

[cool_dude85]

Same argument applies to the quote I'm responding to. Jackbooted gubmint thugs cut your power in winter? Go live with relatives that have power, or get charity, or barter things for firewood.

[rad_gruchalski]

I like the idea. However, I am afraid this would lead to people with no children being disadvantaged again.

Increased prices would clearly make it more expensive to raise children. This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?

[colinmhayes]

Developed countries aren't having enough children. We need to provide families with children more assistance, not less. Raising children deserves to be seen as a job because it provides value to society. I say that as a person without children who hopes to never have any.

[lotsofpulp]

But not having children reduces fossil fuel consumption the most, and that is the goal of the tax, is it not?

Reducing capitas will cause a much quicker and effective change than reducing per capita consumption.

[colinmhayes]

The goal of the tax is to force people the internalize the externalities caused by their consumption.

[conductr]

I would think the carbon tax part would be based on carbon usage which is a factor of consumption. The entire family’s consumption. So if the rebate is $1000 per person a family if 4 gets $4000. However the net gain/loss is only calculated after knowing what your family consumes. A family of 4 bicyclists may come out ahead while a family of 4 SUV drivers may have a net loss.

[HWR_14]

> This would lead to more social care towards people with children. How would you recommend solving that?

I'm sorry, what's the issue? If we need children and need to incentivize it, it's what we'll do. And by definition, you're talking about advantages only to counterbalance new disadvantages. So we need to solve what?

[rad_gruchalski]

What’s the reason to having more people and children? It’s to “grow the economy”. Is constant growth sustainable?

[HWR_14]

If we don't need them we won't subsidize them. The OP seems to think we'll need to subsidize children more for some reason.

[petre]

Look at Japan and you'll see the reason. Aging population.

[rad_gruchalski]

Which is not good for economy. I understand. So more children are needed to support the aging population in the future. My question still stands: is this sustainable indefinitely?

[HWR_14]

> My question still stands: is this sustainable indefinitely?

I mean, if on one side we have exponential growth, and on the other we have no children leading to no one to support seniors, surely there is a middle ground where the right number of children are born each year.

[piokoch]

Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

Taxation is a road to nowhere as rich people will always either find the way to avoid taxes or find the way to throw the costs of those taxes on the poor. This happens with every kind of tax.

The only solution to decrease CO2 emission is to behave in a rational way and use the only practical, tested and available now clean energy source - nuclear power plants. No amount of eco-talk will change reality that neither solar nor wind energy plants will be able to power modern economy. Europe is learning this the hard way right now.

Maybe Europe will do the suicidal jump with the ideas like "Fit for 55", and will kill its economy to lower global emission by 0.05% but the rest of the World, which emits much more CO2 and will emit even more when all production will be moved from Europe to Asia or USA cannot care less.

[PeterisP]

If delivery services emit a lot of CO2, then making delivery services (which is not about "someone who works as a delivery guy" but rather about the company selling delivery services) much more expensive is a key part of ensuring that delivery services get used less and only by those needs where those delivery services are relatively more important i.e. those who would be willing to pay the significantly increased price of deliveries.

After all, the whole point of carbon tax is to reduce usage, not to gain revenue or penalize some people; so it works if and only if it meaningfully changes behavior, i.e. if the tax significantly raises prices of some specific market goods/services and thus drives people to use less of those specific goods/services. A simple income-proportional tax or just "tax the rich" doesn't incentivize reducing emissions, so it's useless for that goal; it's perhaps useful for social equity and wealth redistribution, but that's something not directly linked to climate change goals.

It's not about money, it's about CO2; driving deliveries needs to emit less CO2 so the goal is to either get more efficient deliveries (e.g. electric vehicles) or less deliveries (putting some of those delivery drivers out of jobs), and "who's paying for that" is just choosing the most effective means to achieve these goals.

[davidw]

> Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

It gives the delivery company a big incentive to switch to electric vehicles or ebikes or something more efficient. This harnesses market power to push companies to be more efficient with their resources: the ones who are more innovative at avoiding CO2 usage will see financial benefits.

[EricE]

why are you assuming an electric car will be an overall reduction in CO2?

[davidw]

It's not an assumption. Of course, it depends on a lot of things, but broadly speaking, they use less CO2. And the great thing about a carbon tax is that this shakes out through the system: if they're not reducing CO2, you would see it in costs and could react accordingly. This price signal is a lot more convenient than having to, as an end user, try to figure out what the best and worst things to do in terms of CO2.

[wonderwonder]

Company will just hire the delivery drivers as contractors a la Uber and pass the costs onto them.

[davidw]

Same logic applies though. If you're a contractor and it costs too much because gas is expensive, you either don't do it or demand more money. Or maybe only people with low-emissions vehicles get into it.

[imtringued]

>Taxation is a road to nowhere as rich people will always either find the way to avoid taxes

The entire point of CO2 taxes is that you are supposed to avoid them.

[tapas73]

There is more than one way to avoid taxes. (hollywood accounting)

[soperj]

>Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend.

Delivery emissions should be attached to the person getting the delivery. Otherwise you could just skip most of your emissions by having everything delivered.

[newt_slowly]

It would be far to complicated to try and count every bit of emissions like this. Instead, the emissions are taxed at the source - when buying fuel. Therefore, the delivery company would be paying the carbon taxes, and they could choose to either pass those costs on to you, or to, for example, switch to electric vehicles to be more competitive against their rivals.

Either way, it changes your behavior, because if delivery is more expensive (to factor in the externalities it causes) you will either consume less, or pay more. This ultimately "attaches the emissions to the person getting the delivery" but in a far less complex and less game-able way.

[stonemetal12]

I go into the store and buy a pair of shoes. Am I given a bit of the emissions of the supply chain that delivered it to the store from the manufacturer?

If I order something off Amazon, do I get a say in where the package is shipped from to control "my" emissions.

[aembleton]

> Am I given a bit of the emissions of the supply chain that delivered it to the store from the manufacturer?

Yes, you would have to use some of your carbon credits to pay for the delivery and manufacture of the shoe. The product would have both a monetary and a carbon price. If you don't have enough credits, then you can buy some on the spot market from someone who isn't using theirs up.

This would incentivise repair of the shoe, as it may require fewer carbon credits.

[lenkite]

Pity that you are getting down-voted for a rational position. Wind output dropping is one of the factors behind Electricity prices surging in the EU this year. But folks here are reluctant to even acknowledge this fact due to effective renewables brainwashing.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/german-renewables-us...

If there really needs to be a carbon tax for delivery, it makes the most sense to transfer it directly to the consumer who demanded order-delivery. Any other mechanism will just leave a tax loophole.

And yes, emission taxes/standards should be applied to the whole world. Right now, they are adversely affecting the poor and lower middle class of the first world - none of whom are represented on HN. Meanwhile China can keep polluting away to its heart's content producing ~30% of the world's emissions by itself.

[petre]

> Wind output dropping is one of the factors behind Electricity prices surging

Yes, true. Guess what is used to compensate for lack of renewable output? Natural gas fired plants with short ramp up time. This will only drive electricity prices up.

The article is about gas shortages and people at risk of freezing this winter, yet almost everyone here is talking about CO2 taxes and taxing natural gas?

[jhgb]

> Someone who works as a delivery guy needs to drive a car a lot, such person would have to pay big climate dividend. Is that ok? Probably not.

Probably yes, because that the whole point of Pigouvian taxes.

[MonkeyClub]

I wonder whether this will be like income tax, theoretically proportional, but practically affecting the rich less than the poor, and companies even less?

[rovolo]

Just to clarify this point, the income tax is progressive and affects the rich more than the poor on income. A software developer making $150k will pay 24% on additional income while someone making $30k will pay 12% on additional income.

The distinction in the US is whether you make your money through labor (max 37% tax) or capital gains (max 20% tax). There is a lower tax rate for capitalists (who make money via ownership of capital) vs laborers (who make money through labor income). Furthermore, capital gains can be delayed until you realize your gains (sell your capital). This distinction is what practically gives the rich lower taxes than the poor.

[imtringued]

All this nonsense should be rolled into a single income tax and then the overall tax rate should be lowered. Yeah sure there might be good reasons for a low capital gains tax but if that is the case then there are good reasons for a low income tax as well. The only thing the income tax should be doing is discourage employers from piling up all the work on as few people as possible.

Employers prefer keeping people full time and full time unemployed because it is more efficient per worker and the bargaining power of the unemployed doesn't exist. If everyone were to work according to their own demand for labor then this bargaining power cliff wouldn't exist and a whole lot of welfare programs could be abolished.

[raxxorrax]

This would need a huge apparatus to measure and distribute funds that will be ineffective. There is no effect on climate.