Another day and another piece of social engineering by climate “researchers”.
The intersection of environmental policy and economic fairness is the latest battleground in the quest for sustainable futures. Recently, a study published in the One Earth journal has reignited the debate. Its proposition? Luxury carbon taxes. The STATED goal is apparently clear:
“Taxing luxury carbon emissions at a higher rate,”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994783
so that we can achieve a purported
“75% of the emissions reduction needed to reach the Paris Agreement’s goal.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994783
However, a close examination of this proposal reveals that this might not be about carbon emissions or environmental sustainability at all, but about wealth redistribution masked as climate action.
Luxury Carbon Taxes: A New Face of Wealth Redistribution?
The researchers, led by Oswald, propose a novel idea: to tax ‘luxury’ carbon emissions at a higher rate than ‘basic’ emissions. But if we dig a little deeper, the picture becomes clearer: “a uniform carbon tax is already targeting high-income groups by design. In contrast, the luxury carbon tax is most beneficial in terms of fairness when applied to high-income countries”. Essentially, it seems we are being sold a climate policy, which might just be an elaborate scheme to siphon more money from higher-income households. Could this be yet another embodiment of marxist wealth redistribution where high earners are painted as the villains of the climate crisis?
https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(23)00261-0?
CREDIT One Earth / Oswald et al. USAGE RESTRICTIONS Credit must be given to the creator. Adaptations must be shared under the same terms. LICENSE CC BY-SA
Questionable Fairness in ‘Luxury’ Carbon Tax
The study promises that a luxury carbon tax will be ‘fairer.’ It will supposedly “affect low-income households less and high-income households more”. However, this proposition does more than raise eyebrows. Is it fair to place a heavier burden on high-income households simply because they have more? As the study admits,
“Luxury-focused carbon taxation also targets high-income groups, which may be the most equipped to lobby against such a policy going into effect.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994783
Indeed, such a policy seems more about wealth redistribution than genuine environmental concerns.
Turning Environmental Policy into a Social Experiment
While the study wraps itself in the noble cause of climate change mitigation, the undercurrents of socio-economic engineering are hard to ignore. Oswald says,
“When designing climate policies, it is possible to pay attention to the different nature of consumption purposes, and this would improve the fairness of climate policy almost by default.”
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/994783
However, should environmental policy be used as a vehicle for economic redistribution or to fuel the fire of the victim narrative?
In conclusion, this new luxury carbon tax proposal under the banner of environmental policy seems more like a trojan horse for wealth redistribution and a manifestation of victim culture. The goal of environmental policy should be to protect the environment, not to manipulate economic structures under the guise of combating climate change. Let’s focus on formulating environmental policies that truly address environmental issues, rather than twisting them into socio-economic experiments.
Taxes never solved a damn thing. How can these predators even mention such a thing when western countries have severely crippled themselves for no apparent gain and global CO2 emissions have marched upward with no end in sight. This is stupid.
It is stupid but not a tax – this is standard Socialist groupthink, ‘levelling the wealth’ by, basically, lowering everyone to a lowest common denominator – a ‘levelling down’. It has been attempted by every Socialist state so far and has failed in every Socialist state so far, which doesn’t mean they don’t stop trying – “this time, it’s got to work.” If they get this through, it will mean poverty and misery for millions of people; less food, little or no healthcare, rampant black market economy and corruption on a vast scale.
“lowering everyone to a lowest common denominator”
Almost everyone- there will be a Ruling Elite who will be more equal than the rest of us. Like those living in the new Billionaires Row in NYC. Skyscrapers that have a very small footprint but which are very tall. Each floor is an apartment- though some apartments have 2 floors. These cost tens of millions of dollars. Some as much as 100 million or more.
https://propertyclub.nyc/article/billionaires-row
If Carbon Taxation is anything like California Gas Taxation, carbon taxes are merely a means of redistributing wealth from those who make purchases to Government coffers.
CA Gas Taxes were instituted to pay for road maintenance… however they’re paid into the General Fund and so can be used for ANYTHING the state wants to use them for. California has Poor Roads so that money definitely doesn’t benefit the poor
All of which will inevitably lead to lowered life expectancy and decreased populations. All according to plan.
Carbon taxes are not supposed to “solve” anything. They are payments to the Church of Global Catastrophic Anthropogenic Warming. The payments are collected to Save the Earth.
This is a replacement of 10% payments believers would pay to Church for saving their souls. Those who would not pay, ran a high risk of being accused of heresy (+ possibly burned, property confiscated). However, carbon tax is collected from everybody, regardless if you believer or not.
I guess their next step will be figuring a carbon tax similar to muslem jizyah, collected from non-believers only. Here is another idea for a Nobel prize in economics.
Socialism is the theory that by taking money from people who have worked for it, and giving it to people who would rather not work, you can perfect society.
A 500% carbon tax on fuel for all private jets and mega yachts going to COP or Davos. !
Would only work if the fuel cost wasn’t Tax Deductible as an operating expense for business travel…green business
Can we tax anyone who utters ‘the Anthropocene’??
British media has been pushing it hard for the last few days….
Why does it take 5 authors to produce this nonsense? Does this demonstrate the low productivity of greens?
It takes a collective
So, between them, they have Half a Brain
Combimed
An opinion piece under the guise of a paper.
Skimming through this, I caught a whiff of obsessive insanity pervading the whole. 88 countries? My test as always is ‘how will this run on the Peruvian altiplano?’ Then he they mention the Paris Agreement as a target. The PA doesn’t have any numbers that anyone is acheiving. 2 degrees and 1.5? Credibility collapses. The rich and powerful will just flout fix manoeuvre sue around this cardhouse.
Oh and carbon dioxide is not the climate driver
He they clearly have time on their hands and enormous research skills. Why don’t they research the scientific truths behind the 2degrees and the 1.5 degrees arbitrary modification? It would be interesting to know.
I was with you all the way up to “He they “
The limit was set in Cancun – politically.
“If average global temperatures reach 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, we can expect the Arctic ocean to have one ice-free summer every 100 years. But if warming rises to 2C, ice-free summers in the Arctic could happen every 10 years. “
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/2c-global-warming-difference-explained/
The limit is about forcing transition sooner rather than later. It has no scientific merit whatsoever.
We haven’t had an ice free Arctic – despite the predictions for it going back to 2013…
(2007) “Our projection of 2013 for the removal of ice in summer is not accounting for the last two minima, in 2005 and 2007,” the researcher [Professor Maslowski] from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, explained to the BBC.
“So given that fact, you can argue that may be our projection of 2013 is already too conservative.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7139797.stm
The above was frequently cited by one Albert Gore.
“I was with you all the way up to “He they “”
I thought that was a typo, at first, until you focused my attention on it. 🙂
It’s not about scientific truth. Its about redistribution of wealth. Pure communist agenda.
Absolutely!
I see a red herring.
Carbon taxes tend to be highly regressive. Poor people driving old vehicles pay high gas taxes to supplement rich EV drivers who pay no road taxes at all.
Renter pay higher electricity prices to subsidize homeowners with rooftop solar.
Hourly laborers show up to work and are assisted by energy consuming devices to be productive while the laptop class peers into screens from home. The hourly guy may not complain because he’s scared to death his job will be exported to an Asia country more interested in economic development than carbon goals.
I see the luxury carbon tax proposal more as a recognition of eco elitism and pretending to want to do something about it.
We ought to be cutting taxes, not raising them.
Carbon taxes *always* effect low income people the most. Driving a car is on the “luxury” end of the spectrum? Are you kidding me? Poor people spend a much higher portion of their income on fuel than rich people do. Carbon taxes — like all taxes — hit the poorest people the hardest.
And carbon taxes are taxes on *everything*, because I guess these people don’t notice that almost all of our goods and services are delivered via diesel-powered trucks.
This might be worthy of another Nobel prize in economics. After all, they have to award one each year.
Life is not fair. Whenever anyone says they will improve “fairness” for you, they are lying to you.
Somehow, fixing “fairness”, always results in them getting more money.
Socialists are convinced that if they were given enough power, they could perfect society.
Inevitably these perfect policies always manage to divert large sums of Other People’s Money (OPM, pronounced opium) towards the socialists in charge of perfecting society.
(It seems that US Supreme Court injustice, Sotomayer has seen her net worth explode since she joined the court. Surprise, surprise, surprise.)
Yes, of course. Redistribution is one of the movement’s primary goals. Oh sure, they talk about emissions and extreme weather, but one doesn’t have to listen too long before the talk turns to ending capitalism or complaints about the patriarchy.
The way the WEF, Davos Group, American political and wealthy elite operate, I consider it impossible for a supercharged tax system for the wealthy, especially uber wealthy, to be put into practice. The powerful are the ones who create the rules, and they don’t create rules to target themselves. That’s the place for social revolutionaries.
The uber wealthy like Zuckerberg or Bezos don’t need the multi-billion dollar net worth they have. They could give away 90% and still be masters of all they see. But they don’t. They like their places at the pinnacle and will fight like Honey Badgers to stay there. It would take a lower middle class revolt to move them. Even a little.
History.
Net zero can hurt the less than wealthy all its adherents want, but it won’t hurt the wealthy. That apple cart won’t be upset.
Start (and finish) by taxing John Kerry, the UN, WHO, WEF, Bilderbergs, CFR, Trilateral Commission, Bill Gates, George Soros (and sons), Al Gore (aka man-bear-pig), and every other massively hypocritical SOB who flies around the globe on private jets, eats Waygu, filet, and caviar, lives in mansions with security and walls, and is trying to force us into a modern version of Middle Ages serfdom. The owners/operators of >400 million long distance hole punchers (along with billions of “accessories” for said hole punchers) may soon have something (loud) to say about this attempted tyranny and suppression. Stock up on popcorn and keep your powder dry.
There’s a reason they’re called watermelons. A thin green skin concealing a communist red body, all the way down to their corrupted heart.