Obama May Levy Carbon Tax to Cut the U.S. Deficit, HSBC Says
By Mathew Carr – Bloomberg News
Barack Obama may consider introducing a tax on carbon emissions to help cut the U.S. budget deficit after winning a second term as president, according to HSBC Holdings Plc.
A carbon tax starting at $20 a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates.
“Applied to the Congressional Budget Office’s 2012 baseline, this would halve the fiscal deficit by 2022,” Robins said.
h/t to WUWT reader “dp”
IT’S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY !!!!!
And yes, Obama can do this WITHOUT the House.
It’s called the EPA and a mandate !!
You dolts that reelected this fool, thanks a lot
Remember, this is the man that claimed that the reason gas prices are averaging near $4.00 a gallon in the US is because our economy is so much stronger than it was when he took office.
Well, as they say, you get what you voted for!! It’s a pity the US MSM didn;t bother to look at Australia and see the destructive effect the carbon tax is having there, with, as has been mentioned, price rises affecting every corner of the economy.
If anyone thinks a carbon tax won;t have a knock-on effect, they are, well, there’s no adequate word for it, but it appears that it can now be applied to Obama.
This is an international issue that needs to be put on the table one again, this time for a real national discussion and debate. That is part of a president’s job. The make-up of the Senate guarantees that the catastrophic elitist technocracy will have to present an exceptionally strong case in order to prevail. Obama has always said he will “follow the science”. Perhaps we’ll see. And perhaps he’ll end up with a reason to make changes in his top level science advisors.
ericgrimsrud says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:51 am
See how easy it is force people to pay taxes for a non-existent problem? Ignorant/misinformed people like ericgrimrud are why the U.S. will be bankrupt in just a few short years. Prepare yourselves now, folks. Look how the stock market is reacting to the “good news” or Obama’s reelection…
Those of you who worry revenue from a carbon tax will be used for additional spending don’t seem to understand how bad the situation is. Debt servicing plus mandatory government spending (e.g. social security and medicare) already consumes all revenue and then some. The more visible functions of government including the military, FBI, EPA, TSA, NASA, etc. are classed as discretionary spending and those are the only ones that can be cut. You could defund them all, entirely, and still not balance the budget.
A carbon tax is the least of your worries. The only way to balance the budget now is to flat-out confiscate personal wealth. Just be grateful that isn’t being proposed. Yet.
The House of Representatives, which is part of Congress that controls the budget, is further entrenched by the opposite party of President Obama. This proposal is DOA.
Get your family, get your money, get out! to where no one knows. But there are no western country’s to run to.
HHHhhhmmm that sounds awefully like people are being backed into a corner.
Not good!
We have to reduce the deficit at some point. We borrowed the money and it needs to be paid back. And even the DEMs know that taxing the rich cannot do the job. There isn’t enough money there and they have a vague since that if you tax the rich too much most jobs and income go away. (The fall of the soviet block managed to get through some of their heads) Thus they know they will have to get the common folk to pay to cut the deficit.
The classic way to get rid of a deficit is to inflate your way out of it. (It is essentially a tax except you are taking away purchasing power rather than actual dollars.) It is regressive as the rich live on earnings from investments which rise to match inflation. But inflation is seen as a negative by most people and allowing enough inflation to do the job is not politically viable.
A carbon tax, can be sold on “Green” grounds and thus while it is just as regressive as inflation it is more politically viable. In many ways, since as a previous poster said a carbon tax will raise the cost of everything, a carbon tax is just inflation in another guise. Basically unlike just allowing inflation everyone can be told that, “Yes, you are a little poorer but you are there for a good cause.”
They sure work fast at the funny hand shake club and follow the money, it’ll be all traded down good old wall street. Who do taxes always affect the most?
No tax passed under Obama II will go toward reducing the deficit. It would only go toward more spending, undoubtedly on more “green energy” crony capitalism…
Unfortunately it was grumpy rigid Republicans and Libertarians who either sat on their hands or voted a protest vote, rather than vote for a candidate that “could win” against Obama rather than vote for a less than prefect candidate that they wanted. They either did not vote or threw away their vote by voting for someone who had no prayer of winning the election. In my county, a swap of only 944 votes (1888 total vote spread) would have put Romney in the lead.
Short sighted conservative voters gave it away by not being pragmatic and taking what they could get and trying to make a statement.
Add to that the willing fools manipulated by an in the bag press and you have the reason Obama will get another 4 years to screw things up even more.
In one twisted sense, it might be good in the long run. One of the worst things that could have happened to the Republican party and conservative independents, libertarians and Democrats would have been for Romney to win and not be able to fix the mess the Progressives have built over the last few years. It could have been a set up to fail situation.
At least now Obama and the Democratic party will own it (although they will blame any failures on the Republican controlled house as they try to apply the brakes to this run away train.)
Larry
Result of a carbon tax: Energy prices “necessarily skyrocket”, more manufacturing moves to lower cost energy markets (in countries with fewer pollution controls), more information data centers move to lower cost energy markets, more layoffs occur, more people on the dole, higher government expenditures on the dole and “energy support for freezing poor”, higher world pollution, higher government deficits by orders of magnitude. No there isn’t a bit of deficit reduction in this whole thing, in fact it looks like the death of a nation.
Laffer curve comes to mind. And I’m definitely not an economist. Taxing energy raises production costs and all sorts of things come from it, such as recession. I’m living it.
Bring it on! There are still some local offices to be won over in every state.
MrE,
No, the carbon tax must affect everyone so that the daily habits of everyone is changed? ANd this must includes all people in all countries, of course. And this can be accomplished via import duties on all goods for which a carbon tax was not paid in the country of origin. Thus all countries will have a carbon tax so that the fees thereby collected will stay in their countries.
But in order to help the more needy among us, the revenue collected via that C tax would be returned to the public on a capita basis via our IRS. Thus, citizens could decide whether they wanted to spend their portion of the fee on the then more expensive gas and oil or pocket that money and seek other more efficient ways of living by which their carbon footprint would be reduced.
All of this is called the Carbon Fee and 100% Dividend plan – look it up.
Well, they need to spin some new money trick to bail out Illinois.
He’d make far more money taxing Wall street speculation rather than penalizing things of value.
Somebody says Obama MAY……. doesn’t hold water until it spews from Obama’s mouth.
When it does, we can all get overly excited. (It’s a ridiculous idea that only benefits the people in power who make a little every time the money changes hands.. which is why I’m fully expecting it)
@ur momisugly ericgrimsrud
Who’s Andrew Watts?
If you can’t even get that one fact right, why are you so confident in your assessment?
BTW: @ur momisugly $20 bucks a ton CO2, every person in the USA would owe about $6.67 per year just for exhalling given about 0.037 g of CO2 per exhale, 15 breaths per minute, and 311,591,917 people that comes to about $2,077,000,000 per year. (If applied to individuals.)
aBTW: DHMO kills more people from over-exposure than any other chemical, do you support banning it?
Larry Ledwick (hotrod) says:
November 7, 2012 at 9:38 am
“Short sighted conservative voters gave it away by not being pragmatic and taking what they could get and trying to make a statement.”
“In one twisted sense, it might be good in the long run.”
It has the chance of being good… romeny was obama lite… as mccain was obama lite.
The only people being short sighted are the people that believe romney would have even if he could have changed the government for the better. He wouldn’t be able too nor would he want to. Until the republicans run at the very least centrist people instead of leftwing/center leftwing people most of the tea party people on other will sit out.
The reality of when dealing with any voting process is anyone who votes accepts the results… if you voted for romney then you MUST support obama and everything he does. Thats democracy and why the government has a huge vested interest in getting people to vote. If only 30% of the country voted then the government whoever was elected would at best has 30% of the public. If they can get 70% to vote even if its 36/34% then they can use the standard propaganda statement of “we must support the process and outcome and blah blah blah”.
Obama is going to get us into communism as fast as he can now that his leash is off. Better to jump off the cliff when your well feed and armed… then to do it after decades of slowly starving and being disarmed. Big picture end result is either we hit rock bottom… and climb out. Or we hit rock bottom and stay there.
No matter whats happens though we will never recover until we hit the bottom and people are willing to take a real hard look at themselves and reality… and the drug induced stupid that is far to much of the US voter has no interest in reality.
The tax bill has to originate in the House, which retained its Republican majority (reduced by 10 members.) In the coal-using and coal-producing states that went for Obama, I doubt that the representatives will help to pass a tax that raises their electricity rates or reduces their income from mining coal.
I expect Obama to have about as much clout on this issue, which he avoided throughout the campaign, as Bush II had on Social Security reform in his second term. You don’t have political power in a Democracy to achieve a goal that you avoided mentioning in order to get elected. Doubly so if your opponents, Republican House member in this case, successfully campaigned in opposition.
ericgrimsrud says:
‘This, of course, explains why the Fossil Fuel industries deny the science behind AGW.’
No it absolutely doesn’t. Instead, it defies rational and scientific thought, embodying a fanatical political agenda that leads no where except the further impoverishment of those least able to cope.
ShrNfr says:
November 7, 2012 at 8:38 am
The availability of cheap energy is one of the primary movers of any economy. Make it expensive and the economy will not move, it is really about all that simple. Perhaps it is time to get busy with the thorium reactors.
_______________________________
AMEN to that!
I am about to go down and congratulate my NC state house rep and put that bug in his ear. He is pro-fracking. NC is slated to close down four coal plants. We have twelve. EPA: “North Carolina is a leader in the energy-intensive chemical manufacturing industry…. North Carolina’s electricity production is high. Coal-fired power plants typically account for about three-fifths of the State’s electricity generation, and nuclear power typically accounts for about one-third. …In August 2007, North Carolina adopted a renewable energy and energy efficiency portfolio standard requiring electric utilities to meet 12.5 percent of retail electricity demand through renewable energy or energy efficiency measures by 2021. Electric membership corporations and municipalities that sell electric power within the State must meet a 10-percent standard by 2018.”
In looking into all that I found this “ACTION ALERT” from those who want to close down all non’green’ power.
Funny how this new tax idea wasn’t floated during the campaign.