Why Axe It?
Because if people don’t want it, democracy could give us something worse than no carbon tax - politicians that would kill it and increase emissions.
The carbon tax may be “most efficient” from free-market economist point of view but that view itself disregards the political externalities which could upend the whole equation over the long term.
If the carbon tax is felt unfairly by the majority then a different scheme should be implemented that doesn’t feel this way. For example, if most people are getting what they paid in carbon tax and some even more, then instead of insisting on a broad market approach, exclude individuals from the scheme. Tax only firms, perhaps over certain size or over certain emissions. When it comes to individuals, perhaps invest public money in creating cheap alternatives for individuals. Like I don’t know, massively expand public transit. Build high speed rail. We can’t build a single fucking LRT line in Canada’s biggest city for 15 years now and the TTC has been running on a shoestring for at least that long. You’re trying to achieve these things with the carbon tax anyway (shifting behaviour to lower carbon options) but it matters how people feel about the means to the end. If they feel punished and especially if they feel punished with no alternative then they’ll give you Polinever and the whole scheme goes down the trash chute.
Speaking of majorities, given FPTP “a majority” here could be as little as 39% so a plurality is more accurate.
Also I’m not trying to absolve the reformacons from responsibility of their fuckery in all regards discussed in this thread. They’re objecitvely making all of these problems worse.
I completely understand, but don’t you see that the lack of self-evidence is an inherent weakness of the scheme which allows the cons to easily weaponize it? Unless we enact some form of censorship on what certain actors can say (factuality, etc), which I’m not opposed to, I don’t see how you fix that. Perhaps the current carbon scheme is not sustainable, even if it works economically. If replacing this policy with something more self-evident is the magic bullet to curb Polinever’s enthusiasm, I’d be 100% for it, because he’ll also get rid of it and do worse in other fronts. “Axe The Tax” is leading by 19% and 27% points at the moment. Clearly this shit resonates. I’d be curious to see what would happen if we took away the axe. Perhaps you believe the knowledge gap can be filled instead. I’m skeptical.