Taxation and the middle class

[ijmorlan]

Re: your last paragraph, this is exactly the kind of complicated nonsense that we should be moving away from. It’s easy to say “higher taxes on large vehicles”, but now you have to define “large”. Then somebody says “but I need it for my farming” so you put in an exemption. Then somebody else points out that there is obviously no way to move their large family so you put in an exemption for families with at least 4 kids. Then somebody else says they only have 3 kids but one of them is in a wheelchair. And so on and so on forever. Pretty soon your carbon strategy is as simple as, and works about as well as, municipal land use zoning.

Right, I should have worded it differently than saying tax on 'large vehicles'. What I really meant was higher tax on certain types of vehicles, such as sports cars (like a Corvette), some imports (like Porche, BMW, Mercedes), Hummers, Land Rovers, etc. Simply have a list of cars that are not fuel efficient and are purchased simply because they're either really fast or clearly a status symbol type of car. Soccer moms Caravan gets a pass, jock's Rubicon Jeep doesn't. This way, farmer Bill can still buy his John Deere and not have to pay extra, Leanne and her 7 children can get into a minivan without paying extra, but some spoiled lead-footed 18 year-old with his BMW speedster has to pay more.

I think government works best if it stays away from the judgemental moralizing. This version of the proposal is worse than having different rules for “large” vehicles. Now instead of defining “large” you have to define “objectionable”.

I already addressed the farm case — if Farmer Bill’s farm can only remain viable if he gets a break on the carbon emissions from his John Deere, it’s not really viable, only apparently viable because it’s free-riding on the atmosphere shared by all of us.

Similarly, if somebody is well-off enough to afford a minivan, they should not be free-riding on the atmosphere. Note too that they have choices to make about how far and how often they drive it, which will not be made in an economic manner if they don’t have to pay the full cost themselves (including the cost to everybody of increasing the CO₂ content of the atmosphere).

We’ve already been through this with SUVs, which aren’t subject to the same fuel efficiency regulations as cars, because they are officially trucks, being built on a truck frame. As soon as a descriptive category is used in law to make a distinction, it becomes subject to gaming in this way. It’s similar to a manager trying to manage computer programmers by measuring, and rewarding, the number of lines of code written or bugs fixed — it simply does not work.