So you’d assume. That’s a change in your argument, however; before you were simply assuming he was a net “taker” with no evidence to support it. You’re also not addressing the issue of the relative level of services taken by someone in an area with fewer municipal services, or the positive vs. negative effects of densification versus suburban development. The simple fact is that you haven’t a clue what his impact is in total.
If this is the approach people are going to take in advocating “green” policies, we’ll never get anywhere.
But he also claims to receive fewer municipal services. Logically, why would be NOT pay lower property tax if he’s getting less for it? Property tax supports municipal service; isn’t it simply fair to pay roughly proportionately to what you receive? There’s no connection between that and carbon emissions.
At this point we’re just dealing in silliness. Fossil fuels are actually very useful; if you’re unwilling to accept their positives, you can’t possibly gauge the effects of policies designed to discourage their use.
These are not the same thing. In isolation, yes, a carbon tax improves economic efficiency, in the sense that the participants in the transaction are forced to account for the true costs when setting their prices. This does not translate into increased economic efficiency. It may, or it may not. It may in fact be that once the externalities are compensated for, the transaction simply won’t take place, or the market will compensate by doing less.
But in any event, the minute you get away from the purity of the economic model, the devil rapidly shows up in the form of the details. A big one being, “What happens to the money?” A pure carbon tax would distribute the revenue back to the people who are paying for the externality. If the Liberals proposed a carbon tax that guaranteed that the money would stay in the community it was taxed from (say, in the form of a ‘carbon cheque’ paid to each citizen every year, which was the result of the total amount of tax collected in the region divided by the population), you’d have a pretty efficient tax that might actually lead to more economic activity, because the the energy market would be more efficient but the same amount of money would be available.
But that’s not the Green Shift. Like all Liberal plans, it’s a combination of taxes and big new spending programs. It will disproportionally hurt some areas and help others. Government will get bigger.
Finally, a huge problem with a local carbon tax is that it becomes punitive to the company implementing it. Canadian goods wind up at a disadvantage on world markets. Tourism suffers because it’s more expensive to stay in the country. Manufacturing leaves for regions where energy costs are lower. In the end, it winds up being Canada picking the a part of the tab for everyone else.
And here’s the worst thing - Carbon taxes will not keep one drop of oil in the ground. There is a global, fungible market for oil. Anything we do to limit our consumption will have the effect of driving the price of oil down, which will stimulate even more consumption of it elsewhere. In the end, Canada will have a non-competitive energy environment, and everyone else will continue on their merry way.
BTW, you might want to tone down your snide generalizations about Conservatives who don’t understand economics, or I’ll start listing free market economists who have won Nobel prizes.
I ask this because I look at the past elections and see that NDP/Green will never get their own government. At best they can help influence minority governments but I have seen little of this actually occurring in the past.
Harper’s stoke of genius is uniting the Canadian Alliance and PC’s. In 2000 they combined formed 37.7% of the vote and there was a Liberal majority. In 2006 the Conservatives had 36.3% and were given a minority. By not splitting their vote in each riding they win so many more seats.
2000 Election
Liberal 40.8%
Canadian Alliance 25.5%
Bloc Québécois 10.7%
New Democratic Party 8.5%
Progressive Conservative 12.2%
Green Party of Canada 0.8%
2004 Election
Liberal 36.7%
Conservative 29.6%
Bloc Québécois 12.4%
New Democratic Party 15.7%
Green Party of Canada 4.3%
2006 Election
Conservative 36.27%
Liberal 30.23%
Bloc Québécois 10.48%
New Democratic Party 17.48%
Green Party of Canada 4.48%
Of Canada’s 5 main parties I believe 4 of them are left of center. Can’t do much about the Bloc but what about the other 3. In the past I remember there being only PC’s, Lib’s and NDP’s. Canada was left enough to make Liberal governments possible even by splitting the left vote once. But now we split it between 4 parties? How can they ever win against a united right.
Sure, I might like the policies of the NDP or Greens more, but how does it help to get things I want done (as a leftie kind of guy) by voting for them. All splitting the vote does is keep the conservatives in power. If the lib’s were elected they would represent my views better.
So Dion is dull and his green plan is dubious. Why would a green party follower vote for him? Is it better to vote Green and get Conservative, or vote Liberal and get something, anything that might represent your views better?
Those who say that emission taxes will have no effect on pollution are basically saying that demand curves don’t slope downwards. This stuff is from introductory economics.
I’d still want to see the details though, and I haven’t seen any links.
Sam: I don’t get your argument.
If you set the tax equal to marginal damages, transactions that should not take place will not take place. (More likely though, the mix of inputs will shift.) This is, by definition, an increase in Pareto efficiency.
Use the money to build pyramids. It’s would still be more economically efficient to set the price of a scarce resource at a level above zero. In this case, once consumers and producers have to pay for damage they do to the environment, they will make adjustments or cut back.
No. The distributive issues are separate. And actually, we’d want the revenue distributed back in a “lump-sum”, if we don’t want to undo the effects of the original plan. But regardless, a carbon tax is a carbon tax.
I would have to read the proposal. But if it’s a carbon tax, this is misleading. A carbon tax places an enhanced burden on coal, not oil.
And the long run supply curve for oil is not vertical, so reduced demand from Canada (a shift in the demand curve, along the supply curve) should reduce world oil consumption (though there will be a partial offset via the price mechanism).
You might start with the free market economist Gregory Mankiew. He’s the founder of the Pigou Club, which advocates a shift to higher taxes on emissions. He was also head of GWBush’s Council of Economic Advisors, before he was shown the door. I see that Gary Becker, David Frum, Michael Bloomberg, Alan Greenspan, Charles Krauthammer (ack!), William Nordhaus, George Schultz and Paul Volker are also members. The Economist Magazine also supports this particular application of Economics 101.
I agree with you. I said that an increase in economic efficiency does not necessarily translate into an increase in economic activity.
The reason is that in the case of a pollution externality, transactions which pollute are effectively being subsidized by the public. Take away the subsidy, and the transaction may not take place. In essence, a carbon tax is the public’s way of choosing to pay cash instead of paying through pollution. You get less pollution, but you are paying for it. Since pollution is a true cost, the overall transaction is actually more efficient (if the carbon tax is priced right). But the number of transactions in goods and services that use energy can go down, because the people stop subsidizing the market and start investing in cleaner air.
No, they really are not. If the net result of a carbon tax was an income of $500 billion dollars, and I used that money to hire tens of thousands of people to make the world’s biggest remake of “Ishtar”, think we’d be a little worse off than if we didn’t tax the transactions at all. Yes, the transaction is more efficient. But the net wealth of society declines because the gain in efficient is squandered. In essence, what the government is doing is taking the subsidy the people were making to energy transactions and spending it on itself.
Not at all. You wouldn’t be giving back the money to individuals in proportion to their own pollution, so individuals would still have every bit as much incentive to conserve (if there’s a million people in the province and you spend a dollar in energy tax, you’re only getting one millionth of it back). What happens is that the money stays local, but becomes disconnected from energy. Energy still remains priced efficiently with the tax, but collectively the people involved in the transactions get the money back so they can spend it on other things.
Now, if the entire region uses more energy than another region, and you give them their money back, that’s a different matter - then you still have one region subsidizing another through an externality (and that’s the case in Canada, which makes it a tough problem - see below)
No, you’re right about that. I sometimes get sloppy and start using ‘oil’ as a shortcut term where I shouldn’t. The Liberals do not propose a gas tax. What they want to do is to put a carbon tax or primarily coal and natural gas, and use the money to provide tax cuts to families and low income and middle class people. They want to give bigger tax breaks to rural and northern people, because they use more energy (thus defeating one of the benefits of a carbon tax). In addition, they want to use some of the money to target tax breaks to various types of businesses and promote ‘green’ technology.
This is true. A new equilibrium will be reached, at some slightly lower rate of consumption. But it won’t match your own restrictions. And in the end, all the oil will be burned, until is ceases to be cost effective to burn it. The only way to really prevent that CO2 from being released is to develop a cheaper alternative energy, since you will never get a workable global carbon tax in place.
Don’t get me wrong - I’ve said many times that if you must limit energy, a carbon tax is the best way to go. It’s a much better solution than cap and trade. The problem is in the implementation given the reality of a global oil market shared by countries with their own interests and which can be hostile to each other.
Here in Canada, there’s a big structural problem that will prevent the Green Shift from happening - Carbon output is not uniform. Ontario gets a big chunk of its power from nuclear. Alberta gets a huge source of revenue from the oil sands, which use natural gas to extract the oil. Therefore, the net result of the ‘Green Shift’ would be a wealth transfer from Alberta to the East, and Albertans will never stand for that.
Taxes are the stupidest ways to change people’s habits. You end up taking money out of the economy, skimming a bunch off the top for people who would be more productive in other pursuits, and then arbitrarily putting the money back into the economy in what may not be the most efficient or effective areas. Rarely does the money go into actually stopping the detrimental habit.
If you want to stop people polluting then you have to see what they are doing to pollute and, if it is cars, then you do something like force the manufacturers to make cars that are more efficient and pollute less. Penalize them if they don’t. You want the oil sands to stop using so much carbon? Make a law that after a certain point in time they start paying fines until they meet certain targets. It gives them incentive to do something about the problem of their product. Yes, they can pass the cost along to consumers (effectively your carbon tax), but they could also find a way to become more efficient and avoid the penalty in the first place. Plus any company would want to avoid the bad optics of the situation. The first one that does would probably see its stock price rise.
But this is really pointless. The problem with pollution starts and ends with ‘People’. People are what produce it. In the last ten years or so, Canada has had a net immigration of over 8%. You want to stop Canadians from making pollution? Have less Canadians. Develop a society that keeps people in the work force longer and you wouldn’t continually need more and more people to support the ones that get older. Instead of taxing people we should be handing out condoms to them.
It is just the NEP in another form. It would be interesting to see the political fallout from such a plan if implemented.
I think it would be kind of like cooking the goose that is laying the golden eggs myself. I doubt if the goose would stand for it and then refuse to share its eggs any longer.
Sam
— And I never said that.
(No, but others did.)
— The Green Shift
Thanks. I see that we’re talking about a $40/ton tax on carbon, while taking away the equivalent of a $42/ton tax on gasoline. So the net effect on oil demand seems to be a wash except that you have to factor in home heating oil.
---- I agree with you. I said that an increase in economic efficiency does not necessarily translate into an increase in economic activity.
(No, you made a typo, which is why I was confused. No biggie --I’ve done worse-- and thanks for clearing that up.)
I’d have to think harder about that contention, but offhand I’d tentatively agree. If you want to translate a carbon tax into greater Canadian output, you would have to increase the capital stock (by lowering interest rates or perhaps expanding college attendance) or technology in some way. (Alternatively in the case of Canada or Russia you could advance growth by increasing the resource base via, er, an expansion of the quantity of temperate land available. I didn’t say that.)
I’m not sure how fast CO2 leaves the atmosphere. Presumably slower release of fossil fuels into the air would have some advantage, but I don’t know this aspect of the science. I find it plausible that the OECD could get on board and that the large third world countries could end their coal subsidies. That in itself could make a large difference.
Yeah and in the US, the carbon tax deal fell apart because midwesterners were heavily dependent upon coal and couldn’t work out a compensating transfer arrangement with the rest of the country. Cap and trade is a smoke and mirrors scheme to blur some of these regional issues.
Now imagine how hard it would be to get any meaningful global carbon tax regime in place. It just can’t be done.
I’m sure slowing down the rate of carbon emission would lower the overall percentage of carbon in the air. It is constantly being consumed and replenished, so emitting carbon at a lower rate should result in a lower equilibrium level. Unless there’s something we don’t know about carbon sourcing in the atmosphere. Even if it looks lke humans are contributing (and it does), there are still a lot of error bars around how much, and what the other mechanisms are. But it is true that it would probably have some effect. Miniscule when it’s only one country.
There’s one other problem with the carbon tax in Canada - Canada is actually one of the countries that would most benefit from global warming. Unless the warming was extremely high, Canada will benefit from the opening up of more arable land that is now permafrost and from lower energy costs. No one’s talking about that right now, but such issues are bound to come up if and when worldwide negotiations start and get to the point where tax levels are discussed. You already saw a whole lot of vote gerrymandering in the Kyoto treaty, with tons of targeted exceptions being made to get countries onboard.
Since the Balfour Declaration of 1926, the U.K. has recognized that Canada and the other Commonwealth countries are independent.
With the achievement of Indian independence in 1947, the U.K. recognized that countries could remain in the Commonwealth as republics.
In 1982, the British Parliament formally relinquished any power to apply its laws to Canada (Canada Act 1982, s. 2).
So, if Canada were to go republican, I can’t see the U.K. doing much of anything in response, other than to write a polite welcoming letter to the new head of state.
In addition to appointing the Gov Gen, the Queen is the only one who can appoint extra Senators under s. 26 of Constitution Act, 1867. The Gov Gen cannot do this on her own. Of course, Her Majesty would only do so on the advice of her Canadian Prime Minister.
One is that since the election period is so short, it doesn’t cost anything like what it does in the U.S. That makes it a lot easier for average citizens to run for office. For example, I saw one comment that almost all of the US senators are millionaires (possible exception, apparently, is Joe Biden). That’s not the case in Canada. I would argue that our House of Commons is more representative of the average financial status of Canadians than is the case in the U.S.
Also, in a parliamentary system, the leaders of the parties are selected well in advance of the general election, and then appear in Parliament, day in and day out, in the full glare of publicity. We get to see them in action - the PM and the Ministers defending their government’s policies, the Opposition leaders and their shadow Cabinet members challenging the government and arguing what they would do instead. By the time of the general election, we have a very good feel for what the different parties and their leaders stand for, because they’ve been forced to make their positions relatively clear through the daily work in Parliament. So there’s no need to have an election cycle that lasts 18 months.
And this system doesn’t prevent lesser known candidates from coming forward. Case in point: Stéphane Dion, the leader of the Liberals. He had a good track record as a Cabinet minister under PM Chrétien, but when he threw his hat in the ring for the Liberal leadership, I thought “huh - he must be doing it to increase his profile in the party. He won’t win, not with guys like Rae and Kennedy and Ignatieff running.” Except he did win at the Liberal convention, by doing a better job of building alliances than the front-runners did, so that he eventually was elected. Within our system, that was pretty much as big an upset as a certain Mr. Obama over Ms. Clinton.
Now, whether that was a good thing for the Liberal party is debatable - as you’ll see from other posts on this thread, many Canadians take the view that Mr. Dion has a charisma issue, and he is seen by some as a weak leader, because of the approach the Liberals have taken to confidence measures in the current Parliament.
But note that much of that opinion has developed because once he won the leadership, Mr. Dion has been on clear public display in the Commons. Canadians have had two years to get to know him on the job as Leader of the Opposition, which puts them in a good position to judge whether to entrust him with the Prime Ministership. That seems to me to be a clear advantage of the system.
Absolutely. whether we stay as we are or become a republic I for one would not want to see the Parliamentary system go because it keeps the executive and legislative branch together where they have to be held to account on a daily basis.
The Prime minister has to be a person with some metal to be able to stand before parliament day in and out defending their position or else they get the boot. They can not completely hide away from the press or opposition and merely speechify without question.
Today, he called for a moratorium on oil sands development.
Is he trying to lose every vote in the prairie provinces? To reignite western alienation?
The Premiers of Alberta and Saskatchewan issued a joint statement today, essentially calling Layton an idiot. Alberta is currently investing 20 billion dollars in oil sands development, which is more than all other major industrial investment in Canada combined. Shutting down the sands would devastate the economy of not just Alberta, but of the entire country. Plus, it will never happen. And constant threats to shut it down from federal politicians will scare away investment capital. To counteract that, Alberta and Saskatchewan will be forced to start moves to distance themselves from Ottawa control - a move that’s already starting.
Whether he’s an idiot or a genius depends on what you think he’s trying to accomplish.
The NDP is struggling a bit for relevance with the Green party eating away at the environmentalist left. With the Liberals playing the Green Shift hard as their main plank, it’s getting crowded over there, and the NDP runs the risk of getting squished. Layton needs to strike fast and hard to make a name for the NDP in this regard.
The NDP won exactly zero seats in Alberta and Saskatchewan in 2006. Every reasonable projection is that they would have won zero this year, or maybe one. They have nothing to lose by pissing off Alberta, which will probably go all Conservative, or Saskatchewan, which will go mostly Conservative and what doesn’t will go Liberal. Layton isn’t pretending he’s going to win; he is a man currently charged with keeping his party alive and relevant at the federal level, and trading one Prairie seat for three Ontario seats is a good trade. What he’s proposing will never become reality; it’s designed to take votes away from the Liberals in winnable ridings in Ontario and BC.
Yep, this is a move to squeeze Elizabeth May out of the picture in the 905. Whether anyone thinks it’ll actually work is anyone’s guess.
The NDP seem to be in an interesting place. Their core support in labour has been eroding yet they’ve managed to miss the obvious opportunity the environmental movement would allow them. So instead of poaching Green platforms and staking a claim as the only environmental party they’ve lost ground to the Greens.
They’ve lost a lot of support to the Greens over the debate issue as well, if this internet backlash is any indication. I doubt it’ll make much difference overall, but there’s a lot of noise made about the barring of the Green Party from the debates.
Yeah, but Alberta and Saskatchewan wouldn’t be the only provinces hurt. Not only does the rest of the country get huge transfer payments from us, but a lot of disadvantaged people in the Maritimes and elsewhere are finding employment out here (and sending money home). In addition, we’re providing a lot of work for Ontario manufacturing and various trades across Canada.
If you want to see what Canada would look like without the oil sands, go look at the current unemployment rates in the rest of Canada and the GDP growth in areas outside Alberta - then subtract all the economic activity they get as a part of Alberta’s oil sands development, and remove that as well.
Finally, Alberta is using a lot of our wealth to do the kind of research greens really want - for example, we’re spending 2 billion dollars on carbon sequestration development, which is a hell of a lot of money for a country with the GDP of Canada. For comparison, it’s almost 10 times as much as the U.S. is spending.
But Sam, none of that matters. They are not going to win. Nothing Layton is saying is actually going to happen. Analyzing it as a real policy is missing the point; it’s NOT a real policy. It’s theatrics.
You can’t interpret Layton’s comments, or the NDP’s platform, the same was you do the Tory or Grit platforms. In the case of what Harper and Dion say, they might actually implement those things, because come October they might actually be Prime Minister. In the case of what Layton says, there is no chance at all any of it will come to pass. (And if by some counting error he were actually elected Prime Minister he’d probably break the promise anyway.) Where Harper and Dion must balance actual planned policies with what will play well to the right voters, Layton doesn’t have to worry about the impact of his proposals because it doesn’t matter. ALL that matters to him is winning a few seats and keeping the NDP alive.
Layton himself probably knows what he’s suggesting is absurd. It doesn’t matter. His position is that of politician as actor; what he needs to do is peel away votes in Ontario, BC, and maybe the Maritimes. He’s in a position where he can - and has to - say anything that will get the NDP some battleground ridings, and he can go as far as he wants as long as it doesn’t become comical to the target audience.
This is true. But you would think that a statement like this which is so obviously batshit crazy would turn off even his followers, who would recognize pandering when they see it. But I suppose you could argue that the extreme statement helps draw attention to the problem or something.
I actually sympathize with him a bit. The oil sands development is pretty damned unfriendly to the environment up there, and the oil has a very large per-barrel carbon footprint. But the reality is that there’s just far too much money involved, and the need for our oil is far too great, for this project to be stopped or even slowed down. It’s full steam ahead - pun intended.