The Lie of Carbon Taxes

by Micheal

Every now and then, the Tax Zealots try floating a carbon tax by the public to see if they can get away with it or not.  The answer is usually: not.  So, being clever taxists, they don't push, but sink back into the shadows to bide their time and try the exact same sales pitch a little later to see if it will work that time.

I just heard the idea floated again on the radio. The sales pitch is that a carbon tax is only fair. Why? Because energy costs (such as the price of a gallon of gasoline) does not include the "cost" of carbon emissions.  So, the Tax Zealots propose that fairness dictates that we all pay for those unseen expenses we've been incurring.

The trouble is, they never point to those supposed carbon costs or how the government is already paying for those. There's never a number. It's never explained why the government should collect these carbon costs funds. How and where has the government been paying for "carbon pollution?"  They haven't, of course. That's part of the lie.

The politician quoted on the radio obliquely admitted that the funds raised from the carbon tax could do all kinds of nice (big government, nanny state) things.  Never, did any of them say they would use the funds collected to correct the supposed carbon pollution damage. They won't fix Global Warming. They won't stop the seas from rising. They won't reverse droughts. They'll let those things go on of their own accord, much as they always are anyhow. No taxes collected on carbon will go towards offsetting anything the carbon is lamented as doing.

The real goal is simply to find another tax revenue cow they can milk. This cow is even more ephemeral than how highway taxes or tobacco taxes are already collected for one (supposed) good work, yet funneled into general fund coffers for use in just about anything but the reason they were collected. Why, on earth, would something as vague as a carbon tax be magically different?

It would be like the Tax Zealots saying that adding a tax to, say, peanuts, is "only fair" to offset the costs of damage done to farmers' fields by elephants. Except, the government is spending no money to help those farmers to fix their fields. No Peanut Tax money would ever go to the farmers. It would simply enable the taxists to buy more of whatever shiny things have caught their eye.

The lie keeps being trotted out and tested on the public. The tactic is probably to wear the public down, or keep repeating the lie long enough that enough people are fooled into believing it.

When someone suggests that a carbon tax is "fair", ask them where the carbon tax money will go -- specifically. Their evasive non-answer should prove entertaining.