The Mitt-Lefty Paradox of taxation

[ApatheticNoMore]

Wait what problem are we trying to solve here, the federal budget deficit or ...

Yes, that would be hard, but not nearly as hard as telling the citizens of this country that THEIR gravy train is also coming to an end. Think $20 gas and $30 hamburger and $800 electric bills and...

the environmental exploitation of the whole world to disproportionally benefit the west? Because that's ultimately what that is about. Small populations of the world using most of the worlds resources. :\

It won't solve all the worlds problems but suffice to say many people have given a lot of thought to carbon taxes, it's not impossible, you could offset them with rebates (or payouts):
http://www.the9billion.com/2011/10/2...of-extraction/

It's very ambiguous whether subsidizing fossil fuels is some kind of net gain to the average person, and if it is, it doesn't mean Exxon doesn't benefit a lot more than the average person (they obviously do, being 1%ers and all, they have more and benefit more and of course being Exxon their benefit is from fossil fuel). For countless wars for oil the average person got maybe cheaper gas (doubtful it all goes on the world market anyway and assuming the gas was going to be sold anyway), and they got a runaway security state (oh they definitely got this), the spending on which is out of control and the behavior of which is out of control as well. If they know service members they got people to mourn for, and the survivors, people for the veterans administration to pay for for years, mentally damaged people, they got a a more militarized police force (ex-military are probably serving, the whole homeland security thing etc.), they got a more violent society (war damanged service members have killed, but also a militarized society is violent to the core), and all the side effects of that reverberating endlessly. Americans benefit from deep sea drilling right .... except all the fishermen, all the people that eat the fish ... The average person benefits that much, oh do they? But sure oil company profits do.

[Gregg]

So, let's you and I solve this problem. We've solved so many of the worlds problems on this forum, I think we are up to the task.

I'm game. And as usual, we aren't very far apart. AMN and creaker both touched on very valid parts of the bigger picture. I think we, as a society, DO have an entitlement mentality. I really do think that we believe we deserve to live the life we have. Even to the point of sweeping all the nasty bits under the carpet and hoping no one will really notice.

It's no secret that we're borrowing all we can from our kids and grandkids to fund our lifestyles. What gets overlooked is that we are borrowing a lot more than money from them. We're using up resources at a blinding rate and most of them can't be replaced. Forget oil, what about potable water? Top soil? Clean air? Maybe it's time to call a spade a spade and admit we aren't borrowing anything. We are flat out stealing the environment from future generations. In that light the money becomes kind of insignificant.

It's not the popular stand, but I don't really blame big oil or big anything else. I know we've talked about the chicken or the egg when it comes to consumers; does the product fill a need or create one? It's an interesting conversation, but at this point I'm not sure it really matters. Big oil got rich by producing something that is environmentally unsound because it makes our lives a whole lot easier so we keep buying it. In that sense it's no different than why people bought slaves for a couple hundred generations, but we can wax philosophical another time. I honestly believe most government subsidies were all created to keep the electorate pacified, not (initially) to benefit business, and that the extra profits were just a sparkly bonus in the good old boy network. Give us a job, a house (the American dream, you know), TV at night and a chicken in every pot and we Americans can ignore just about any atrocity you care to name. So the question becomes how to you get people to willingly leave their easy, comfortable and dare I say simple lives and make changes that, at first, will require more of their time and energy and will often be more expensive as well? It doesn't make for an easy sales pitch.

[Gregg]

The average person benefits that much, oh do they?

Well, yea they do. I'm not saying the downside of oil isn't extreme, but the upside of cheap oil is incredible. It gets a little esoteric pretty quickly, but there are dozens and dozens of books that trace the rise of our civilization to the discovery of oil and what it can do. More technological advances in the past generation than in the total of the 100 generations before it? You have to ask what changed? Lots of very bright people think it was oil.

Think of it this way: a barrel of oil has an energy equivalent of ~24,000 man hours of labor. That's SIX HUNDRED WEEKS at the all American pace of 40 hours a week. And all for under $100 with no need for food/clothing/shelter. Every one of us benefits from that and, because it is so versatile and portable, it is irreplaceable. So far we don't have anything even close. I'm all for changing the world, but we have to be realistic about what we're up against to do it.