Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AnthonyMouse | Hacker News Reader

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> They will? It sounded like people with less efficient vehicles/heating would get smaller tax credits, not larger.

Everyone gets the same tax credit. It's the people who burn more carbon that pay more taxes. But if you use your tax credit to reduce your carbon footprint to below average, or if it already was, then you're receiving more than you're paying. And buying those things save you money in general (nobody gains from losing heat to poor insulation), so you come out ahead twice, at the expense of Richie Rich now paying twice as much to fly around in a private jet without changing his behavior.

> have no children

You're assuming the children (or their parents) don't get the tax credit. There is no reason that would have to be the case. It should be a fixed amount per-person and children are people.

> The argument that I am making is that knowing a person is 'poor' is not sufficient to predict their emissions or amenities, and extrapolating the lifestyle of one poor straw person onto all of them is stupid.

Then the argument you're making has nothing to do with whether a carbon tax is regressive or not. Finding one poor person with a high carbon footprint doesn't tell you anything about the average. And poor people in general do not consume more resources in absolute terms than more affluent people -- that's nearly the definition of being poor.

> Lol. Maybe facts are actually important here.

Indeed. So who burns more carbon per capita in actual fact, people with more money or people with less money? It would be quite surprising to discover it was the latter. But it isn't:

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/12/1/1671884...

Poor people are poor. They don't have money to afford things. That's what it means to be poor, and that's who we're talking about when we're talking about poor people.

So it is a matter of definition that poor people cannot afford to decrease their carbon footprint. I've said nothing to compare poor people to affluent, or made any argument dependent upon demographics whatsoever. (In fact, I've been arging that the only thing safe to assume about poor people is that they are poor.) And poor people cannot afford new cars and homes.

Given this, they will not be getting new cars and homes unless someone else pays for them. If you give them a tax credit and then immediately charge them for having inefficient homes/cars, then you haven't changed anything. They still can't afford new cars or homes, because they are still poor. Certainly they will not spend their <$5000 on highly efficient cars and homes.. both because this is not enough money for such things, and because they have more pressing needs to spend that money on.

The only way a tax policy will not be regressive is if you give more money to poor people than to rich people. Giving people discounts for taking specific actions does not achieve this in any way, because rich people always have more options, more easily taken, than poor people.

> I've said nothing to compare poor people to affluent, or made any argument dependent upon demographics whatsoever.

Which is where you're going wrong, because if the tax is structured in this way then who comes out ahead depends entirely on where they are in relation to other people. It's revenue neutral but results in net transfers to those who burn less carbon than average -- and the poor characteristically burn less carbon than average.

> If you give them a tax credit and then immediately charge them for having inefficient homes/cars, then you haven't changed anything.

Poor people start off with lower carbon footprints, because being poor means they had less money to spend burning carbon to begin with. So they start by paying e.g. $2000 in carbon tax while receiving $5000 in credit, leaving $3000 to spend reducing their carbon footprint even more.

> Certainly they will not spend their <$5000 on highly efficient cars and homes.. both because this is not enough money for such things, and because they have more pressing needs to spend that money on.

It is enough, and they're not stupid.

Currently a used hybrid uses e.g. $1000/year less fuel than a different used car that costs $1500 less. If the fuel cost difference doubles to $2000/year but they get a $5000/year credit, they use the first $1500 to trade their car for the hybrid because now it saves them $2000/year, which is more than $1500. The logic of doing this has nothing to do with what else you have to buy; either way it nets you $500 more this year and $2000 more next year.

> The only way a tax policy will not be regressive is if you give more money to poor people than to rich people.

Not so. It is also possible to do it by giving the same amount to everyone while the rich pay more in taxes.

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