Comment by leoedin

Comment by leoedin a day ago

9 replies

Rich people use more energy. That’s been shown by loads of studies.

Maybe they drive a more efficient car, but they own much larger houses which are heated or cooled consistently, they travel a lot more, and they buy things with embodied carbon emissions.

michpoch a day ago

Right, but now you're talking about adding the tax to the whole economy, not just car fuel?

That's close to impossible to implement. You'd need to track production and usage of everything in an extreme detail. Plus tracking all purchases (items + services) to a given person. So complete state surveillance of citizens. Globally.

  • xnx a day ago

    > That's close to impossible to implement.

    For a carbon tax, I think you only need to track imports, and domestic extraction of coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

    • michpoch a day ago

      „Only” track imports?

      • xnx a day ago

        I think customs already tracks this. Smuggling oil and coal into the US at any meaningful scale seems very unlikely.

  • edoceo a day ago

    Tax all fuel. So those energy consumption of wealthy cost more?

    • michpoch a day ago

      Ok, let's assume you do. Let's tax all fuels 300% in the US. Now all manufacturing stops as your production costs are all over the roof. Everything is imported from countries that do not have these taxes.

      What problem was solved here? None.

      • triceratops a day ago

        > Everything is imported from countries that do not have these taxes.

        Finally a good use for tariffs!