Yes, punish the polluters not the ordinary people.
The ordinary people are the polluters, if there wasnt demand for those types of products, businesses wouldnt make the products in the first place.
The ordinary people are also those harmed by pollution. Hence, the idea of a tax on externalities like pollution.
All a carbon tax will do is make driving regular cars higher but it wont make the tesla affordable or improve the millage for the leaf .
Which means people will drive less, so less people will be harmed by pollution. Raising costs on pollution also provides a greater incentive for alternatives.
No it doenst , people still have to get to work every day and the fact is most people in the nation lives in the Suburbs not Urban areas and you need a car to commute. Many people have to commute 30-45 miles a day to work(and another 30-45 miles to come back home) .
The fact is raising the costs of say driving a Honda will not incentivizing buying either a Tesla or Leaf because a Tesla is still way more expensive and the mileage on a Leaf is terrible.
The proper solution to promote alternative energy is giving tax credits to alternative energy companies, and let the free market continue to innovate.
Well, it would incentivize some people to change. Now people who live 100 miles away and don't have other options will obviously still keep driving, their demand for ''driving'' is very inelastic. But there are people who have other options (perhaps they're rich and they could afford a tesla, perhaps there is public transit but they just prefer not to use it, etc). If driving becomes more expensive for these people they might just go for the option they considered inferior earlier on. If you ignore externalities this would reduce welfare as people change their behaviour and pick the option they considered inferior when taking all costs and benefits into account. But not all costs of polluting are paid by the individual, the costs of polluting often are borne by society. Now if driving my car to my city pollutes the air and costs society as a whole a couple of dollars I won't give a crap since I'm just one of the millions of people who'll end up paying the price of my decision (the direct impact of the decision on my personal situation is negligible, divide a couple of dollars by 1 million lmao). But if millions of people make this decision we're screwed and society gets a suboptimal result despite everyone rationally picking their optimal choice.
This doesn't say I'm a big fan of the carbon tax. I used to be a big supporter, but the whole yellow vests drama made me a little less enthusiastic. The last thing I want is movements like that becoming stronger. God that'd be so annoying. I guess we'll have to find a solution that would somewhat compensate the people who lose out directly.
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