Tuesday, January 13, 2015

The great carbon tax grab and BC's bogus green claims

Terence Corcoran:
Just as consumers start getting used to the idea of lower gasoline prices, putting billions of dollars in their pockets for spending on other things, politicians are conspiring to grab it back ... a long list of economists and celebrity policy wonks eager to provide support... Preston “Don’t call it a tax” Manning, The Globe and Mail’s editorial board, assorted think tanks ... Obama advisor Lawrence Summers ... Glen Hodgson, chief economist at the Conference Board of Canada ...
... The carbon tax issue is no small policy shift. This is big statism in a green cloak, filled with policy inconsistencies, economic nonsense and out-of-control rationalizations.

... Carbon taxes are piled on green taxes piled on congestion taxes on top of regulations and other direct interventions. ... Worse, none of these taxes will do anything to improve the environment or curb carbon emissions...
Far left radical Saul Alinsky once wrote "never let a good crisis go to waste". Obama's far left fixer, Rahm Emanuel famously repeated it.   So, now, with a "crisis" in falling oil prices, opportunistic political weasels and wonks of all stripes are rationalizing a tax they hope can be imposed with minimal objection.  And once imposed it'll stay there after oil prices rise again. It's time for tax payers to show up en-mass on all their doorsteps carrying tar, feathers, torches and pitch-forks.

The B.C. carbon tax: Gordon Campbell's Liberals imposed a carbon tax in 2008 and have long held it up as a glowing success in  lowering BC's carbon footprint.  Terence Corcoran puts the lie to that load of junk economics:
... B.C. gasoline consumption is actually higher today than it was in 2008, both in absolute and per capita numbers. B.C. is therefore today producing more carbon emissions than it was the day the carbon tax was introduced.... Economics 101 is still the law, and the B.C. case for a carbon tax does not exist.

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