[KenSF]

What amazes me is that none of the stories I have read address the decrease in health costs these changes will bring. “An EPA analysis showed that the Clean Air Act’s benefits outweigh its costs by a factor of 30.” [0] Nor has any one talked about how this will drive adoptions of other transportation methods including public transportation. If we fully baked in the actual costs, health and environmental, I suspect gasoline would cost much, much more.

[0] https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/clean-air-act-50-year...

[rqtwteye]

It’s probably really hard to determine the cost of pollution and other things. I suspect sugar producers and fast food companies would look really bad

[Gibbon1]

Balance sheet accounting vs total cost to society when extenalities are included is a huge source of problems.

A good to know is California has some programs where they will buy back your older vehicle and pay you a grant of you replace it with a new or used low emissions vehicle. You can also get public transit vouchers instead I think.

Note. Low emissions includes hybrids. And some used EV's are really affordable.

[spacephysics]

How far does this go? Should we charge taxes on sugar due to health care costs? What about taxes on fiber due to increase wear on sewers?

Go to electric. What about the environmental impact on battery creation/recycling/maintenance? Or the electricity to power them (until nuclear comes online)?

This line of argumentation can go on endlessly. How about instead let’s reduce taxes and try focusing on lowering the cost of living for middle and lower income brackets.

[BadHumans]

Many countries introduce taxes on sugary drinks and snacks with varying outcomes[0]. These type of things only go endlessly if you have all or nothing thinking and taxes like this are meant to shape behavior so unless you want people shitting less then no you don't need to tax fiber.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax#Impact

[spacephysics]

My concern is the behavior shaping is not a simple, single variable equation. Many times these policies have knock on effects that produce a worse outcome for those struggling.

[BadHumans]

We have data on this in the form of cigarette taxes that show good outcomes in preventing people from starting smoking and bad outcomes for existing smokers since they don't quit due to increased prices and just keep smoking while paying more so that this could go either way. So I understand your concern. I just take issue with the reasoning "this can go on endlessly!"

[cjbgkagh]

Work in priority order and stop when things are fantastic

[spacephysics]

Sounds like utopic thinking seeking an unattainable perfection.

What happens when taxes are so high, we have an egress of businesses from regions within the US causing collapse of local communities like saw with Detroit?

[cjbgkagh]

I'm in general against using the reductio ad absurdism to suggest we can't do something positive because there is an absurd inevitable point at which it stops being positive.

The point is, when navigating a highly dimensional design space it's ok to use a gradient descent / greedy optimization approach. If step 1 works then proceed to step 2, if step 1 did not work then we learned something and can pick a different step. Fix whatever went wrong in making the mistake with picking step 1 as the current top priority. It makes no sense to say that we can't make step 1 because step 1001 might be bad.

On the point of taxation, I personally dislike tax precisely because I think the money is not allocated in anything close to priority order. If it was we would be living in a vastly different world.

[johnnyanmac]

>Sounds like utopic thinking seeking an unattainable perfection.

Like you just magically saying "let's cut taxes and reduce cost of living"?

>we have an egress of businesses from regions within the US causing collapse of local communities like saw with Detroit?

If all you're worried about is big business, don't worry. They already leaving. Communities are already collapsing. And we voted for it, so hey. Democracy works right?

[amrocha]

I can’t imagine any scenario where lower taxes is the right move. I guess maybe if you’re dying in a few years and don’t care about global warming?

[spacephysics]

Reducing taxes should push for local and federal governments to become more efficient and waste less.

We’re at an incredible deficit as a nation, interest alone on that deficit outpacing defense spending.

Creating additional taxes, which will potentially slow growth/gdp, will only harm our efforts to resolve our woeful financial situation as a nation. Additional taxes further pushes business out of the country, leading to a spiral to insolvency.

Californian’s should be asking, where do these taxes go? Not to solving homelessness or violent crime. Not to resolving catastrophic water issues (reservoirs drying up), or fixing brownouts across the region.

[grakker]

Felonies are down in California, year over year, for the past decade. Reservioirs are above historical averages. Homelessness is a problem, but people freak out when you address real solutions, like minimum wage changes. Brownouts and blackouts are far less likely than they were a decade or two ago. Thanks to green tech like solar panels and batteries.

[Scipio_Afri]

Thanks to Enron being stopped from causing artificial blackouts by creating electrical supply constraints through shutting off power plants. And they could profit from it by purchasing contracts that made money if electricity costs went higher. Then sold those off before they then told them to turn the power plants back on. Cost California billions. See “Enron, the smartest guys in the room”

[amrocha]

Natural deficit is literally meaningless. You’re telling on yourself by mentioning it that you don’t understand economics.

And you haven’t addressed how you’re going to get people to stop using oil without taxes.

[Dylan16807]

Sugar tax doesn't work well. The fiber thing sounds like a joke? Pollution from producing electricity sounds like a great thing to tax. What makes you treat that as an idea so obviously bad you don't need to say why? And the impact of manufacturing already is addressed in a lot of ways, even if it could be better.

[johnnyanmac]

For health it's the opposite. Stop offering subsidies on high fructose corn syrup and I bet obesity would mysteriously go down in a few years.

>How about instead let’s reduce taxes and try focusing on lowering the cost of living for middle and lower income brackets.

Oh don't worry, Musk is getting a huge tax cut.

[TaylorAlexander]

> Should we charge taxes on sugar due to health care costs?

Doesn’t New York City do this with a soda tax?

[akira2501]

> “An EPA analysis showed that the Clean Air Act’s benefits outweigh its costs by a factor of 30.”

For Americans. For the Chinese? Probably a different story.

[dangus]

It's a very similar story, actually: as China industrialized, it has very similarly realized that curtailing air pollution is an extremely important issue with benefits that outweigh costs.

It has continually tightened standards and its overall air quality is improving (although it still has notable areas where more improvement is needed)

https://enviliance.com/regions/east-asia/cn/cn-air/cn-air-ac...

https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-battle-against-air-pollution...

[chiefalchemist]

Exactly. The USA brags about its environmental improvements but fails to mention it exported plenty of manufacturing to do that. Come the summer when the media highlights the smog over Beijing, The West ownes a good chunk of that violation of Mother Nature.

China, etc is cheaper not only because of the cost of labor but because of lack of environmental protections.

[dzhiurgis]

Classic whataboutism

[akira2501]

Classic bullying.

We know now that while these laws have local impacts they clearly also have global impacts and they are not always positive.

Attempting to use the local success of the EPA Clean Air Act to justify a flat 16%+ increase in the price of a widely used and important commodity is inappropriate.

[chiefalchemist]

Classic let me stick my head in the sand as I bow my thinking to the propaganda.

[ReptileMan]

>Nor has any one talked about how this will drive adoptions of other transportation methods including public transportation

How is the high speed rail in California going? Asking for a friend. Is California able to build public transport fast? To make it safe? Is is able to keep the vagrants, homeless, smelly, and crazy away so to make it palatable for the good standing citizens to use them?