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(March 12, 2019 at 10:33 pm)tackattack Wrote: emotional and medical support for veterans and the disenfranchised,
Interesting how you bring out veterans as a special class of people who need "emotional and medical support"...
I'm not saying they don't need it. They do!
But that support should be available for everyone who needs it, not just certain classes.
Your wording shows your geographic bias, while talking about a global problem.
OT
Bringing about a situation where the environment can be kept moderately free from pollution and where animal and plant and fungal and microbial species can thrive as they did before the industrial revolution is a worthy goal and one we should all be for. However, it needs to somehow be done in a way that doesn't see our modern comforts removed from us. People will always resist to losing those. And this is the real challenge - how to change the way people perceive certain comforts without it being too sudden?
The suddenness of it is what drove the Yellow Vests in France a few months ago. A high hike of gas prices as an attempt to curb fuel consumption... it can't be done when society relies on so much gas powered vehicles. But this encouragement can be gradual, it can be put as a promise to the future and gradually increase the tax on fuel to get there... in the meantime, support and assist development and implementation of alternatives - hydrogen, EV, etc... EVs seems to be the most likely option, as it's the simplest solution for now. During this transition period, people will have to think about the future cost of fuel before buying a new car and select that which is more adequate for their use.
Having solar panels at home is a great way to save some money, both in water heating and electricity. Unfortunately, it's not a solution that is available to all. In cities, it is common for people to live in apartment blocks - no amount of solar on the roof of such a building can provide enough for everyone, but it can help... shouldn't help more than 5% (area of roof, divided by the number of apartments in the building... yeah, for most cases 5% is a very high estimate), but every little bit helps. However, the cost of installing and maintaining such systems can be too high for such a low impact on each individual. It's true that the cost must be weighed over the lifetime of the system, but there will always be a need for large and more efficient centralized power plants.
On Power Plants, burning fossil fuels has been the main way of generating electricity in Europe and the US, China and almost everywhere.
The push to nuclear saw much of the greenhouse gases being removed, but the threat of an accident and all the radioactivity it brings about has seen this power source look much worse than fossil fuel burning. It certainly has a more immediate and visible outcome.
But there is another kind of nuclear, one that doesn't require heavy elements, like Plutonium or Uranium... one nuclear that isn't Fission... it's Fusion. It only requires Deuterium and Tritium. Deuterium can be extracted from seawater and the Earth's oceans are estimated to have enough of it to last us until the sun burns out.... and any country with access to water can have access to this virtually inexhaustible fuel source. Tritium can be taken from Lithium which is abundant on the Earth's crust (and in seawater too!), given that it's the lightest of all metals, but is often bonded to other elements and needs extraction. In the end, unlike a fission plant where all the fuel is radioactive to begin with, in fusion the radioactivity is produced as the two fuels combine, or fuse, producing helium and a neutron that is used to both heat up a closed circuit turbine, and to release more tritium from a lithium breeding blanket.
Humanity should be pouring all the money it can into developing this, but it is so difficult, politically, to justify spending money on something that is yet not certain. The outcome, however, will be a virtually limitless supply of power at an extremely cheap price and it will be available to practically all nations on Earth, breaking the oil monopoly of those nations that, by sheer luck, happen to be sitting on pockets of oil, or that managed to find uranium deposits.
This kind of cheap electricity is what can power our future EVs.
I agree that support should be available for everyone who needs it, not just certain classes. But in the immediate short term, the clinically mentally impaired and veterans clearly strongly need it now. I'd then move onto first-responders, victims of crimes, etc...
I'm not advocating everyone doesn't get the help they need to get better. Helping one group, then another is a staged approach to release and it's much more effective than saying "OK everyone gets free psychiatric help and meds, come on down" And yes I realize that it is not practicing equanimity of opportunity for certain classes or groups, and idc.
To your point about gas, that is laughably illogical. Let me break down what you highlighted.
1. We want people to stop using gas so let's tax it.
2. We don't want to upset people so let's do it gradually so it's normative
If one is a goal, then you do want to upset people. If the goal of one is to get people to accept a tax to make a pile of money from their crimes against the planet then proceed.
For fusion, that's great if it is sustainable. Resources are being plied into this. https://www.livescience.com/64846-fusion-kid.html great kid made a reactor in his playroom. His kind of action is great and I fully support.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
(March 13, 2019 at 9:00 am)tackattack Wrote: To your point about gas, that is laughably illogical. Let me break down what you highlighted.
1. We want people to stop using gas so let's tax it.
2. We don't want to upset people so let's do it gradually so it's normative
If one is a goal, then you do want to upset people. If the goal of one is to get people to accept a tax to make a pile of money from their crimes against the planet then proceed.
It doesn't work, as was proven by the yellow vests.
Taxes must be increased slowly so as to discourage people when they decide to buy a new vehicle.
The problem of this is that vehicles have a lifetime that is usually more than one decade, so you can't penalize (too much) those who didn't know about these price increases when they purchased their cars.
March 13, 2019 at 9:48 am (This post was last modified: March 13, 2019 at 10:15 am by Drich.)
(March 11, 2019 at 3:11 pm)tackattack Wrote: I don't think climate change matters nearly as much as 2 dozen other things that would bring people together for a common good and better society as a whole (and even move us closer to a climate solution). I've reviewed the video and I'm not an expert in climate and it's not a particular interesting field for me either. To think that Humans have no detrimental cumulative affect on their environment though is easily dismissed by modern simple observation of human behavior. They may have mis-categorized some influences and numbers, it doesn't help with a solution. BTW @Drich , could you please stop quoting entire walls of text withoout hiding them, especially if you're going to follow with an all caps "you're stupid" rant, it gets really tiresome on the eyes.
The whole weather change issue based on human activity is based on one flawed and poorly understood foundation. In that all models are based on a constant heat source. meaning the sun always stay with in a predictable range meaning we receive the same units of energy from the sun from the end of the last ice age to where we are now. This is the only way to properly say that human activity is only variable that spawned climate change.
The problem with that is the sun is on a solar cycle where out put ranged from like 20 units of solar energy to 130 units then the sun is not stationary it has a small orbit and out earth's orbit is not true/cicular it is more like a hula hoop going around the sun. so when the sun is at max out put and out orbits bring us closer together we have a blazing hot year not only that the earth is in a slow north to south tumble meaning the north and south poles stay the same but on the surface they migrate meaning our magnetic shield there is a thinning or bald spot and that weakness in our planetary hair line is also migrating south allowing more of the sun's energy in.
So why the rapid up tick? because the ice is melting and the faster it melts the more energy is retained on earth rather than reflected. why does the ice melt? because again the sun can 'bring the heat' when we are in alignment.
Again my point here is not to say which is correct but point to the faith that it takes to follow the 25 year old al gore the sky is falling climate change, verse what i posted above that has 500 years of man's meteorological knowledge and solar observation coming together to explain everything we know. This is the same amount of faith God requires to establish and maintain a presence or relationship.
Concerning MY wall of text.. it was a little short sighted of you to summarize my response as calling someone a name to answer a wall of text.. Why? because the wall of text was my own words. My opponent took hours worth of research and effort seemingly did not read any of it, and then tried to create a strawman from it and take the discussion in a different direction. if scrolling down on your mouse wheel is truly so much bother to you, imagine how much more bother you would be if that were your wall of research and writing and it be summed us by you calling someone stupid.
(March 11, 2019 at 6:53 pm)pocaracas Wrote:
(March 8, 2019 at 12:45 pm)Drich Wrote: Do you think paying a bigger tax is going to fix it then you just go ahead and pay al gore his money and see what happens.
Paying taxes on pollution is a way to discourage pollution.
But there is another way: regulation.
Some cities in Europe are now no-go zones for highly polluting cars.
Until 2030, diesel cars will be all but banned, while internal combustion engine (ICE) cars will be prohibited from entering the cities.
At the same time, France has decreed that, after 2030, no new cars with an ICE can be sold, while the UK has postponed it to 2040. Most of Europe will come along shortly.
Will the US come on the tail?... it shouldn't. You guys have Tesla and a bunch of other manufacturers working on EVs and on advancing battery and charging technologies. You guys have everything, but the willpower to do what's right.
omg..
Where does electricity come from sport?
Hint it is not sourced from the plug in the wall at your house.
Do you know How energy is produced?
Do you know how taxed the electrical grid is durning very hot summer months?
Do you know what they have to do to make more electricity to cover demand?
(they fire up another coal or natural gas generator durning the peak hours of the day and then back off at night/creates alots of heat)
Do you know what happenes when all generators are running and it can not meet demand?
(rolling black outs)
They are not common in this country but are fairly common in other countries to the point WHOLE countries (Italy spain greece ect) populations take vacation in the same month of august to as to take the majority of industry and commercial use off the grid so they can run power for the extra ac use in the summer.
Meaning your earth (electrical cars) saving idea put every single wheeled vehicle on the planet plugged from about 6 pm to 6 am.. now that super demand that was a summer time only deal becomes a daily or nightly problem, as plugging in a 300 range mile car is not like plugging in a cell phone. it will need between 230 to 460 volts @ 30 to 50 amps. Or if you cant afford a tesla you plug in at night and while you are at work now adding to the energy drain durning the day..
Meaning at the small end of the global impact scale we are running our electrical grids at peek power 24/7 what really is needed is more coal and natural gas plants which will quickly off set any planetary carbon costs that cars put out, as these plants put out tons of exhaust an hour 24 hours aday, then to run them at max effort or add 20% more plants that inturn also have to run max out put.. Do you understand the implication of that last fact? We can not sustain current power needs without shutting down a portion of the planet now.. what happenes when you plug in 10 billion cars and industrial trucks into the grid?
The truth to all of this is a simple one. it is to walk away from middle east oil. the problem with that? will be a humanitarian one. something the west will be blamed for and perhaps be held accountable to fix. in that if e go electric the only produce the middle east would be able to produce are burkas and war. meaning billions starve with out the world wide addiction to their oil. No one wants to look at this move as a way of starving and killing off millions of people rather you want to see yourselves as heros saving the planet from a sky that is falling unless we buy electric cars.
(March 11, 2019 at 6:53 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Paying taxes on pollution is a way to discourage pollution.
But there is another way: regulation.
Some cities in Europe are now no-go zones for highly polluting cars.
Until 2030, diesel cars will be all but banned, while internal combustion engine (ICE) cars will be prohibited from entering the cities.
At the same time, France has decreed that, after 2030, no new cars with an ICE can be sold, while the UK has postponed it to 2040. Most of Europe will come along shortly.
Will the US come on the tail?... it shouldn't. You guys have Tesla and a bunch of other manufacturers working on EVs and on advancing battery and charging technologies. You guys have everything, but the willpower to do what's right.
omg..
Where does electricity come from sport?
Hint it is not sourced from the plug in the wall at your house.
Do you know How energy is produced?
Do you know how taxed the electrical grid is durning very hot summer months?
Do you know what they have to do to make more electricity to cover demand?
(they fire up another coal or natural gas generator durning the peak hours of the day and then back off at night/creates alots of heat)
Do you know what happenes when all generators are running and it can not meet demand?
(rolling black outs)
They are not common in this country but are fairly common in other countries to the point WHOLE countries (Italy spain greece ect) populations take vacation in the same month of august to as to take the majority of industry and commercial use off the grid so they can run power for the extra ac use in the summer.
Meaning your earth (electrical cars) saving idea put every single wheeled vehicle on the planet plugged from about 6 pm to 6 am.. now that super demand that was a summer time only deal becomes a daily or nightly problem, as plugging in a 300 range mile car is not like plugging in a cell phone. it will need between 230 to 460 volts @ 30 to 50 amps. Or if you cant afford a tesla you plug in at night and while you are at work now adding to the energy drain durning the day..
Meaning at the small end of the global impact scale we are running our electrical grids at peek power 24/7 what really is needed is more coal and natural gas plants which will quickly off set any planetary carbon costs that cars put out, as these plants put out tons of exhaust an hour 24 hours aday, then to run them at max effort or add 20% more plants that inturn also have to run max out put.. Do you understand the implication of that last fact? We can not sustain current power needs without shutting down a portion of the planet now.. what happenes when you plug in 10 billion cars and industrial trucks into the grid?
The truth to all of this is a simple one. it is to walk away from middle east oil. the problem with that? will be a humanitarian one. something the west will be blamed for and perhaps be held accountable to fix. in that if e go electric the only produce the middle east would be able to produce are burkas and war. meaning billions starve with out the world wide addiction to their oil. No one wants to look at this move as a way of starving and killing off millions of people rather you want to see yourselves as heros saving the planet from a sky that is falling unless we buy electric cars.
(March 13, 2019 at 9:00 am)tackattack Wrote: To your point about gas, that is laughably illogical. Let me break down what you highlighted.
1. We want people to stop using gas so let's tax it.
2. We don't want to upset people so let's do it gradually so it's normative
If one is a goal, then you do want to upset people. If the goal of one is to get people to accept a tax to make a pile of money from their crimes against the planet then proceed.
It doesn't work, as was proven by the yellow vests.
Taxes must be increased slowly so as to discourage people when they decide to buy a new vehicle.
The problem of this is that vehicles have a lifetime that is usually more than one decade, so you can't penalize (too much) those who didn't know about these price increases when they purchased their cars.
Really protests and lighting things on fire don't work to change policy? I wouldn't have ever guessed that. </sarcasm> It's exactly my point. Lining companies pockets by taxation slowly doesn't work, and neither does rioting, burning things and hurting people because of a steep increase in price.
Taxes must be increased slowly to prevent riots is your actual point. The fact is taxes don't HAVE to be increased at all. It's not proven that throwing more money at something stops people from getting that thing, much less it's effect on where that money goes. What has been shown repeatedly is that taxing commodities benefits the rich. Benefits to the rich increase the likelihood of lobbyists for policies that continue to make them rich. By taxing gas, slowly or steeply, it just hurts the less wealthy and benefits the wealthy, and probably exacerbates the initial problem. Taxes on commodities hurt the populous, fines and regulation hinder companies. Not that there isn't some bleed over but generally doesn't that hold true?
(March 13, 2019 at 9:48 am)Drich Wrote:
(March 11, 2019 at 3:11 pm)tackattack Wrote: I don't think climate change matters nearly as much as 2 dozen other things that would bring people together for a common good and better society as a whole (and even move us closer to a climate solution). I've reviewed the video and I'm not an expert in climate and it's not a particular interesting field for me either. To think that Humans have no detrimental cumulative affect on their environment though is easily dismissed by modern simple observation of human behavior. They may have mis-categorized some influences and numbers, it doesn't help with a solution. BTW @Drich , could you please stop quoting entire walls of text withoout hiding them, especially if you're going to follow with an all caps "you're stupid" rant, it gets really tiresome on the eyes.
The whole weather change issue based on human activity is based on one flawed and poorly understood foundation. In that all models are based on a constant heat source. meaning the sun always stay with in a predictable range meaning we receive the same units of energy from the sun from the end of the last ice age to where we are now. This is the only way to properly say that human activity is only variable that spawned climate change.
The problem with that is the sun is on a solar cycle where out put ranged from like 20 units of solar energy to 130 units then the sun is not stationary it has a small orbit and out earth's orbit is not true/cicular it is more like a hula hoop going around the sun. so when the sun is at max out put and out orbits bring us closer together we have a blazing hot year not only that the earth is in a slow north to south tumble meaning the north and south poles stay the same but on the surface they migrate meaning our magnetic shield there is a thinning or bald spot and that weakness in our planetary hair line is also migrating south allowing more of the sun's energy in.
So why the rapid up tick? because the ice is melting and the faster it melts the more energy is retained on earth rather than reflected. why does the ice melt? because again the sun can 'bring the heat' when we are in alignment.
Again my point here is not to say which is correct but point to the faith that it takes to follow the 25 year old al gore the sky is falling climate change, verse what i posted above that has 500 years of man's meteorological knowledge and solar observation coming together to explain everything we know. This is the same amount of faith God requires to establish and maintain a presence or relationship.
Concerning MY wall of text.. it was a little short sighted of you to summarize my response as calling someone a name to answer a wall of text.. Why? because the wall of text was my own words. My opponent took hours worth of research and effort seemingly did not read any of it, and then tried to create a strawman from it and take the discussion in a different direction. if scrolling down on your mouse wheel is truly so much bother to you, imagine how much more bother you would be if that were your wall of research and writing and it be summed us by you calling someone stupid.
(March 11, 2019 at 6:53 pm)pocaracas Wrote: Paying taxes on pollution is a way to discourage pollution.
But there is another way: regulation.
Some cities in Europe are now no-go zones for highly polluting cars.
Until 2030, diesel cars will be all but banned, while internal combustion engine (ICE) cars will be prohibited from entering the cities.
At the same time, France has decreed that, after 2030, no new cars with an ICE can be sold, while the UK has postponed it to 2040. Most of Europe will come along shortly.
Will the US come on the tail?... it shouldn't. You guys have Tesla and a bunch of other manufacturers working on EVs and on advancing battery and charging technologies. You guys have everything, but the willpower to do what's right.
omg..
Where does electricity come from sport?
Hint it is not sourced from the plug in the wall at your house.
Do you know How energy is produced?
Do you know how taxed the electrical grid is durning very hot summer months?
Do you know what they have to do to make more electricity to cover demand?
(they fire up another coal or natural gas generator durning the peak hours of the day and then back off at night/creates alots of heat)
Do you know what happenes when all generators are running and it can not meet demand?
(rolling black outs)
They are not common in this country but are fairly common in other countries to the point WHOLE countries (Italy spain greece ect) populations take vacation in the same month of august to as to take the majority of industry and commercial use off the grid so they can run power for the extra ac use in the summer.
Meaning your earth (electrical cars) saving idea put every single wheeled vehicle on the planet plugged from about 6 pm to 6 am.. now that super demand that was a summer time only deal becomes a daily or nightly problem, as plugging in a 300 range mile car is not like plugging in a cell phone. it will need between 230 to 460 volts @ 30 to 50 amps. Or if you cant afford a tesla you plug in at night and while you are at work now adding to the energy drain durning the day..
Meaning at the small end of the global impact scale we are running our electrical grids at peek power 24/7 what really is needed is more coal and natural gas plants which will quickly off set any planetary carbon costs that cars put out, as these plants put out tons of exhaust an hour 24 hours aday, then to run them at max effort or add 20% more plants that inturn also have to run max out put.. Do you understand the implication of that last fact? We can not sustain current power needs without shutting down a portion of the planet now.. what happenes when you plug in 10 billion cars and industrial trucks into the grid?
The truth to all of this is a simple one. it is to walk away from middle east oil. the problem with that? will be a humanitarian one. something the west will be blamed for and perhaps be held accountable to fix. in that if e go electric the only produce the middle east would be able to produce are burkas and war. meaning billions starve with out the world wide addiction to their oil. No one wants to look at this move as a way of starving and killing off millions of people rather you want to see yourselves as heros saving the planet from a sky that is falling unless we buy electric cars.
I wasn't calling you stupid. To deny that humans have had historically no negative impact impact on their environment is a stupid stance to take. That has been the overall flavor of your posts. If you are arguing that the numbers are not accurately representative and there are better solutions when those are factored in, then make that point. I also commented on your wall of text because there is a forum rule on quoting large posts as well as it's improper netiquette to quote large posts or re quote videos, etc as per the forum netiquette guide located here : https://atheistforums.org/thread-3469.html . Just making you aware because it seems to be a habit of yours. I'm sure the effort to respond to the opponents every point is appreciated in your discourse, it's simply your delivery that might make people prone to not read it. See my quote of you for an example.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
Hint it is not sourced from the plug in the wall at your house.
Do you know How energy is produced?
Do you know how taxed the electrical grid is durning very hot summer months?
Do you know what they have to do to make more electricity to cover demand?
(they fire up another coal or natural gas generator durning the peak hours of the day and then back off at night/creates alots of heat)
Do you know what happenes when all generators are running and it can not meet demand?
(rolling black outs)
They are not common in this country but are fairly common in other countries to the point WHOLE countries (Italy spain greece ect) populations take vacation in the same month of august to as to take the majority of industry and commercial use off the grid so they can run power for the extra ac use in the summer.
Meaning your earth (electrical cars) saving idea put every single wheeled vehicle on the planet plugged from about 6 pm to 6 am.. now that super demand that was a summer time only deal becomes a daily or nightly problem, as plugging in a 300 range mile car is not like plugging in a cell phone. it will need between 230 to 460 volts @ 30 to 50 amps. Or if you cant afford a tesla you plug in at night and while you are at work now adding to the energy drain durning the day..
Meaning at the small end of the global impact scale we are running our electrical grids at peek power 24/7 what really is needed is more coal and natural gas plants which will quickly off set any planetary carbon costs that cars put out, as these plants put out tons of exhaust an hour 24 hours aday, then to run them at max effort or add 20% more plants that inturn also have to run max out put.. Do you understand the implication of that last fact? We can not sustain current power needs without shutting down a portion of the planet now.. what happenes when you plug in 10 billion cars and industrial trucks into the grid?
The truth to all of this is a simple one. it is to walk away from middle east oil. the problem with that? will be a humanitarian one. something the west will be blamed for and perhaps be held accountable to fix. in that if e go electric the only produce the middle east would be able to produce are burkas and war. meaning billions starve with out the world wide addiction to their oil. No one wants to look at this move as a way of starving and killing off millions of people rather you want to see yourselves as heros saving the planet from a sky that is falling unless we buy electric cars.
Bah... I already addressed that detail. Fusion.
so... science fiction that to you is plausible to the point where you demand great societal change based on what you think science will be able to provide on a mass scale.. how is this not your version of God did it?
March 13, 2019 at 12:03 pm (This post was last modified: March 13, 2019 at 12:16 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(March 13, 2019 at 11:21 am)tackattack Wrote: Really protests and lighting things on fire don't work to change policy? I wouldn't have ever guessed that. </sarcasm> It's exactly my point. Lining companies pockets by taxation slowly doesn't work, and neither does rioting, burning things and hurting people because of a steep increase in price.
Taxes must be increased slowly to prevent riots is your actual point. The fact is taxes don't HAVE to be increased at all. It's not proven that throwing more money at something stops people from getting that thing, much less it's effect on where that money goes. What has been shown repeatedly is that taxing commodities benefits the rich. Benefits to the rich increase the likelihood of lobbyists for policies that continue to make them rich. By taxing gas, slowly or steeply, it just hurts the less wealthy and benefits the wealthy, and probably exacerbates the initial problem. Taxes on commodities hurt the populous, fines and regulation hinder companies. Not that there isn't some bleed over but generally doesn't that hold true?
With respect to the specific taxes in question, carbon taxes, it actually has proven to work, and the fears that this would tank an economy or hurt the poor appear to have been unfounded.
Poor implementation certainly could make it unworkable, or hurt the poor. That's the case with just about anything, ofc. The difference between instances in which it does what it's supposed to do and those when it doesn't (or causes some other issue) appear to revolve around implementation and educating the public. Mostly because a well implemented but poorly communicated plan can work and still cause social unrest. Gotta hand-hold some people all the way to their own better interests.
Public dialogue being a determining factor, competent doubt merchants seek to undermine confidence as this is the most effective route to sabotaging any effort at a change that would not benefit their employers. It's also, honestly, the only way they -can- accomplish their goals, as they're incapable of altering reality in the way that they can manage perception.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
March 13, 2019 at 12:18 pm (This post was last modified: March 13, 2019 at 12:32 pm by pocaracas.)
(March 13, 2019 at 11:21 am)tackattack Wrote:
(March 13, 2019 at 9:12 am)pocaracas Wrote: It doesn't work, as was proven by the yellow vests.
Taxes must be increased slowly so as to discourage people when they decide to buy a new vehicle.
The problem of this is that vehicles have a lifetime that is usually more than one decade, so you can't penalize (too much) those who didn't know about these price increases when they purchased their cars.
Really protests and lighting things on fire don't work to change policy? I wouldn't have ever guessed that. </sarcasm> It's exactly my point. Lining companies pockets by taxation slowly doesn't work, and neither does rioting, burning things and hurting people because of a steep increase in price.
Taxes must be increased slowly to prevent riots is your actual point. The fact is taxes don't HAVE to be increased at all. It's not proven that throwing more money at something stops people from getting that thing, much less it's effect on where that money goes. What has been shown repeatedly is that taxing commodities benefits the rich. Benefits to the rich increase the likelihood of lobbyists for policies that continue to make them rich. By taxing gas, slowly or steeply, it just hurts the less wealthy and benefits the wealthy, and probably exacerbates the initial problem. Taxes on commodities hurt the populous, fines and regulation hinder companies. Not that there isn't some bleed over but generally doesn't that hold true?
The idea is that taxation introduces an extra cost that the populous will find hurtful and, thus, think of how to avoid that pain. Of course, this needs to be done when there are alternatives available.
Isn't that the whole idea of a tax on cigarettes and the like? To discourage a use, without outright banning it.
(March 13, 2019 at 11:27 am)Drich Wrote:
(March 13, 2019 at 11:11 am)pocaracas Wrote: Bah... I already addressed that detail. Fusion.
so... science fiction that to you is plausible to the point where you demand great societal change based on what you think science will be able to provide on a mass scale.. how is this not your version of God did it?
In the 70's, when oil prices peaked, Fusion got a lot of money to solve things.
Then oil prices came down again and Fusion investment fell almost proportionally... that's why it remains "fiction".... but there are people working on it and the plan is still to have a working Power plant by 2050.
In the meantime, Fission can easily take over all the electricity needs, without the greenhouse gases effect, but with the need for proper site safety guidelines to minimize the risk of catastrophe.
Unfortunately, Germany has gone to fossil fuel route, after the risk of Fission became reviewed in the backlash from the Fukushima accident. I thought that was a populist move, possibly as an excuse to provide more to the fossil fuel lobbies. Germany doesn't have the risk of tsunami or earthquake that Japan has.
Conventional renewables should also be exploited. Hydro, Solar, Wind... wherever possible, and in ways that minimally disturb the local environment. These will always be virtually free, with only the cost of assembly and maintenance. No need to find any new wells when one dries up, no need to think about emissions.
March 13, 2019 at 12:36 pm (This post was last modified: March 13, 2019 at 12:46 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
That's actually a pretty good example, because while it's demonstrably the case that a rise in tobacco taxes correlates with a decrease in smoking, it's also the case that public confidence and comfort in the taxes hinge on how that revenue is employed. Which, for reference, is poorly. Those taxes produce millions but very little goes to smoking cessation or prevention, or to a fund for treatment. It mostly goes to the general budget of whatever state levies it. Now, this isn't always bad, swedens carbon axes aren't earmarked either...but whereas people in the one example have confidence that their government is using that revenue well, we realize that ours mostly goes to balancing state budgets in light of their laundry lists of garbage costs.
With the above in mind, it's easy to then see how a tobacco farmer might find such taxes even more onerous. Not only is that revenue poorly employed from the standpoint of cessation, it's poorly employed from the standpoint of industry transition. Burley producing areas have been left destitute, and we can moralize all we want about how the people growing tobacco can't really complain when the country stops doing some shitty thing that their incomes depend on...but we have to remember that they have mortgages as well. There was a great opportunity to earmark some of those tobacco taxes to help producers, and there have been limited cases of it being done, but they;re just that..limited. As it so happens, those regions could have been making more producing other crops all along, and we've recently figured that out and there's a big push to make that happen....but that push comes too late for those put out of business, whose farms became real estate and that real estate became a gated community or suburb and is now locked under concrete.
So, tobacco taxes, poorly implemented from many standpoints and not at all implemented with public confidence (or even by a government that the public has confidence in), and yet they still worked. The thing they had going for them, that got them through the barriers that other reduction through taxation schemes fail on account of, was that it was a sin tax. Understanding these successes and failures is instrumental to any future attempt at taxes like them, carbon taxes being part of the set. Tobacco taxes could have been even more aggressive and it would stand to reason that the correlative reductions would have been more aggressive as well. The money could have been better spent to further maximize the anti-smoking campaign, and it could have been better spent to help tobacco producing regions transition to something even more profitable. Many interested parties could have been more thoroughly and meaningfully included and the outcome, as decent as it is on it's own merits, could have been improved. In light of that, while swedens carbon taxes provide real world demonstration that the fossil fuel industry's propaganda is just that, propaganda....it's also true that their example isn't the final word on the subject. That model can be taken as a lesson and then improved on. Similarly, the failures of our ultimately successful tobacco taxes ought to be taken into account as well so that we don't fail so many americans even as we do the right thing.
That taxes can cause hardship and that tax revenue can be misallocated is a legitimate concern, but it's not a reason not to levy the tax, it's an argument for levying it well.
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