IYHO. As I’ve pointed out, the courts have disagreed with you.
I mean, I could say all sorts of shit violates the Constitution, but until the courts concur, that and $2 will get me a cup of coffee.
Your sympathy or lack of it is irrelevant. Now that we agree they had a sacred cow and gave it up, we concur about the point I was actually making.
Oh, absolutely. But the fact remains that the Republicans haven’t really made this sort of argument. They’re just calling it “cap-and-tax” and dismissing the need for argument altogether.
Yes, I do. Mitt’s plan was perfectly acceptable in GOP circles five years ago, but even by late 2007, that had changed. The GOP is radicalizing with impressive velocity.
Y’know, the people who fall into society’s more backbreaking jobs are also those least likely to have the ability to plan ahead like that.
Let’s unpack this, as they say.
There are physically difficult jobs that wear people’s bodies out faster than other jobs do.
The reason they’re jobs is that they need doing.
They also tend to pay a good bit less than average.
But the people who are doing the difficult work for crappy pay, rather than their employers or society as a whole, are the ones who should pay for the negative externality of their retirement needs.
This would give those people an incentive to find something else to do.
But the jobs still need to be done.
So someone else has to do them if the people doing them now don’t.
So what does this incentive accomplish, and what does it tell you about (4)?
I thought I remembered that CFCs had been managed with a cap-and-trade program, but that was totally off the top of my head. I’m sure your understanding is the correct one.
Its transition is that the carbon emissions credits would have started off with a more-than-adequate supply, so that their price at auction (or in subsequent trades) would have been extremely low, and would have had little initial effect on energy prices. Then over time the quantity of carbon allowed would have decreased, and the cost of a permit to emit a constant amount of carbon would have increased.
The estimates I’ve seen indicate that there would have been little effect on energy prices for most of this decade. But having the structure in place would have provided that predictability that everyone’s going on about these days: it would have given power companies and end users a reason to plan ahead, knowing that 8-10 years out, the price of carbon emissions would start going up significantly.
At any rate, (a) the ACES bill that passed the House gave away a lot of credits to specific industries anyway, and (b) it’s dead anyway, and neither cap-and-trade nor a meaningful carbon tax will be resurrected until at least 2017. In the words of Marvin the Paranoid Android, “I think you ought to know I’m feeling very depressed.”
OK. I know there was a provision to allow CFCs to continue to be produced in “critical” industries; I was wondering if those operated on such a system.
So, if I understand you correctly. Lets say American industry emits 100 units of carbon every year. Instead of allocating the carbon credits based on historical emissions, we put more than 100 carbon units on the market and because the supply is greater than current demand, the price will be very low. I suspect taht the number of carbon credits made abvailable would have to be at least 200 and perhaps more to make it really cheap enough not to make a difference in the early years. Companies will buy more credits than they need (especially if they are cheap) and people like you and me will buy up some credits because lower carbon emissions have enough value to me that I am willing to spend money on carbon credits.
The estimates I have seen indicate a 30% increase in the price of coal generated electricity.
The cost estimates are between $100 and $1500 and a fairly objective estimate at $800/year
As a side note… China recently announced they would reduce carbon emissions by over 40% by 2020. Cap and trade will only reduce carbon emissions by about 15-20% by 2020.
China is at the forefront of a lot of technology these days, especially clean energy technology. They hate being dependent on other countries for their energy.
Ah, but China only announced they would reduce emissions by 40% per unit of GDP. This is the same unit of measure which the US is lambasted over in the World (and by liberals on the SDMB).
Given that I’m swamped with GW Chinese coal power plant projects and proposals right now, with long-term plans from most utilities showing steady coal plant construction until the 2030’s, I cannot possibly see their CO2 emissions doing anything but climbing steadily on an absolute basis.
This statement doesn’t really address the reality of China’s future CO2 emissions situation. China can have momentary surges in wind and solar installation, but to what end, and is it enough? Their growth will be fueled by coal and oil. For example, I was horrified to learn when some of our Engineers returned from a “green energy” tour of China that scads of their new wind turbines they’re putting up are sitting there idle, because there’s no transmission lines. In some cases, as in none, zero, no lines period. I know of one 300MW park which has been disconnected for nearly 2 years, yet is put on the balance sheets as “installed wind capacity” (they wanted our help for PM on the turbines, since they aren’t meant to sit there idle on the main bearings for so long, and their OEM won’t talk to them since they haven’t paid for the turbines, oops.)
If you have evidence to the contrary please post it. You make a valid point but, as federal income taxes have increased, we have not had a decrease in medicare and SS that would offset the supposed rising tax revenue. There is something striking about that supposed 19% of GDP figure.
I would also argue that the economy is not like the government. The economy consists of millions of individuals making individual decisions every moment of every day. Unlike the government, the economy can react very quickly to events. Regardless, tax increases or decreases are never overnight events…most are planned months or years in advace. I would say that a great deal of responsiveness and elasticity are not necessary to adjust accordingly over these time frames.
Probably two main places; non-uniformed military (.mil civilian employees) and transitioning some jobs back from contractors to federal positions. The below link addresses both a bit. I can’t find numbers for how many jobs have actually moved from contractor to federal, but I bet civilian .mil has increased even without taking that into account. An actively deployed and aggressively recruiting military tends to require more support from both contractors and federal employees.
I was not referring to just the top bracket here. I don’t have any evidence that and increase or a decrease in the top bracket has any effect on the size of GDP. I would assume any relationship would be too small to see.
I think we’re starting to talk past each other here. The numbers at your link all seem to be 2020 numbers, and like I said, under the Obama plan, power companies would have been able “to plan ahead, knowing that 8-10 years out, the price of carbon emissions would start going up significantly.” I could be wrong , but my recollection is that if we’d passed Obama’s climate plan last year (or if the Senate had passed ACES, for that matter) we’d be looking at much more modest increases in mid-decade.
That’s a significant qualifier, but it would still be a significant achievement.
Just to throw some hypothetical numbers around: if China’s GDP increased 8% a year in real terms from 2010 to 2020, its economy would be 2.16 times as big then as it is now. (For the past several years, China’s GDP has been averaging somewhere between 9.5% and 10% annual growth. That’s gotta slow down sometime, so I figure 8% is as good a number as any.) But their emissions would have ‘only’ increased by 30%. To hold their increase to that level, while expanding at that rate, would indeed be impressive. I hope they can pull it off.
FWIW, if I’m using the log function correctly, for the Chinese to break even on total emissions while reducing emissions by 40% per unit of GDP, their growth would have to slow to 5.25% per year, which is still pretty damned fast by most nations’ standards, but way slower than China’s current growth rate.
By comparison, if the U.S. economy grew at a relatively robust 3% over the next decade, and we were able to reduce CO2 emissions by 40% per unit of GDP, we’d reduce our total emissions by just shy of 20% over the decade.
I’d not only be satisfied with such a result; I’d be delirious with joy.
Sure. When they’ve got good unions that ensure they can make enough money in 40 hours a week so that they don’t need to work OT to support a family, so they can tend to this sort of thing evenings and weekends.
Unless the population decreases, the environment doesn’t give a damn about better GDP-GHG efficiency if the net result is more emissions. I thought this was one of the most damnning criticisms of the Bush Administration position, in fact - that so long as GDP/CO2 increased, things were improving. So let’s not be giving the Chinese - or the Americans, or even Lichtenstein a break on this. The US has a lot to do, no sugar-coating that one, but so does China.
How the hell did we get here from Obama freezing Federal pay?
