Regressive Carbon Taxes

I think it's the lower-middle class, honestly. There are a lot of people in America driving older used cars that already get bad mileage.Then there's the issue that most carbon tax proposals try to invest the money in green energy R&D or electric vehicle subsidies.Making gas 2x as expensive and Teslas 20% cheaper doesn't help these people at all - they simply can't afford a brand new car to begin with.Unless 100% of carbon taxes are given back directly to

All costs are regressive to people with less ability to bear them. By making them not regressive we don't change behavior! It doesn't matter if they're regressive if the objective is to get people to not drive or to burn less gas. Shifting the cost to the rich doesn't change behavior and it doesn't reduce actual carbon. There's a lot more low-income emitters than high income ones.

How so? When you tax energy consumption more, poor people won't be able to afford driving a car. It doesn't affect the upper and upper middle classes, that's very true, but if i.e. transport of goods is taxed by travel distance, or flying is taxed more heavily, that will just mean that the lower classes can't fly and can't afford tropical fruits.

Many carbon reduction (or insidiously, pro car sales) policies have this effect. Poorer people spend a bigger portion of income on petrol, so petrol/carbon txes hit them harder. registration taxes or other requirements favour newer, more expensive cars (richer owners) which perform better relative to new (more carbon focused) standards.In terms of political dynamic (in some of europe, in any case) the "side" of politics most concerned with avoiding regressive taxes is also the

I am a fan of a carbon tax, but one issue I’ve never seen addressed by proponents is the regressive structure of the tax. Oftentimes the poorest areas are using the most carbon-intensive energy sources and thus stand to be hurt the most by a carbon tax. There is little the average poor person can do to avoid this Similar logic applies for, e.g. EV subsidies - the people most capable of dishing out the cash to secure a subsidy are those in the financially best positions.

That's unpopular in part because it's extremely regressive. The amount you will have to change your life is going to be directly related to how wealthy you are. The rich are unlikely to change. They'll simply pay more and move on, or dodge it by refueling and shopping in other countries. The middle class will have some adjustments. Maybe running the heat less, maybe they trade in their SUV for a sedan, maybe they vacation less. They'll get by fine.The poor will be utterly

I think the idea is, say the average person uses 100 gallons of petrol a year. You add a $1 tax to each gallon, thereby costing the average person $100 per year, but you give them $100 back. The average person is no better or worse off, but it's an incentive to use less fuel.You could make the argument either way that this fall's more on the rich. They tand to have more bigger cars, bit then you could argue that the poor have older less efficient cars, but it isn't really aimed

"Should they be the ones paying for everybody else and let the people living in the cities without a car not pay their fair share of the burden?"A carbon tax, which taxes carbon, taxes the people who use carbon less, does not sound like users aren't paying "their fair share". They ARE paying their fair share, because they use less.The problem of use-based taxes affecting the poor disproportionately is well-known, but a use-based tax is the most effective at causing

It offers a way to offset the regressive nature of carbon taxes. Poor people don't have to pay much net carbon tax for heating and gasoline, but rich people with massive houses and heated pools will pay more.

Don't necessarily have to punish poor people in net. The revenue from such a fossil-fuel tax could be either redistributed directly to everyone (the so-called "revenue-neutral" carbon tax) or the revenue could be used by the government to provide services to the poor.The more important question you comment skips over is: should people (poor or not) be commuting significant distances using fossil fuels in the first place? Such a tax on fossil-fuels will naturally cause employe