Tyler Cowen:
“We have done extensive polling on a carbon tax,” Podesta apparently told Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan back in January 2015. “It all sucks.”
There is further detail at that link. A quite remarkable David Roberts piece at Vox, worth reading in its entirety, lays out why much of “the left” opposes the carbon tax on the ballot in Washington state. It is revenue-neutral, doesn’t produce enough social justice, and as I would say it doesn’t have the right mood affiliation, among other factors. Economist Yoram Bauman plays a key role in the article, and here is a quotation from him:
I am increasingly convinced that the path to climate action is through the Republican Party. Yes, there are challenges on the right — skepticism about climate science and about tax reform — but those are surmountable with time and effort. The same cannot be said of the challenges on the left: an unyielding desire to tie everything to bigger government, and a willingness to use race and class as political weapons in order to pursue that desire.
I’m not so sure about that portrayal of the Republicans, but still that is a perspective you don’t hear enough. (Scott Sumner comments on the piece.) You may recall my earlier post on Republicans and Democrats:
At some level the Republicans might know the Democrats have valid substantive points, but they sooner think “Let’s first put status relations in line, then our debates might get somewhere. In the meantime, I’m not going to cotton well to a debate designed to lower the status of the really important groups and their values.” And so the dialogue doesn’t get very far.
To return more directly to the title of this post, why don’t we have a carbon tax? I would put it this way: for better or worse, the American people expect their government to solve this problem without raising the price of energy. Funny that.
Following the links, Scott Sumner enjoys some political gamesmanship and being "right":
I seem to be one of the relatively few right-of-center intellectuals that worry about global warming. In previous posts I've argued that if the GOP were smart (no jokes please) they would propose the following policy ... [insert revenue-neutral carbon tax].
I've suggested that this is a win-win for the GOP. First, it's possible (indeed likely) that the concerns over global warming are valid. In that case a revenue neutral carbon tax is clearly beneficial. And second, even if scientists are wrong about global warming, our current tax system is so grotesquely inefficient that it would be easy to find taxes far more distortionary than the carbon tax, which could then be reduced to offset its impact. Thus it's probably a sound public policy, even if global warming is not a problem at all.
But for GOP climate skeptics it gets even better. I've argued that the Democrats might well reject this proposal, as they actually care more about taxes than global warming, even though they pay lip service to Al Gore's claim that global warming is the great challenge of the 21st century. They would reject the GOP proposal, and this would expose their hypocrisy. Then the GOP could gain the moral high ground, by constantly reminding voters that they favored the policy that was advocated by global warming experts and the Democrats shot it down because they cared more about imposing ever-higher taxes on the public than they did about actually solving global warming. So it's a pure win for the GOP, with no downside at all. The tax never even gets implemented. Well-educated suburban women move back to the GOP.
Do I have any evidence for this outrageous charge? Are the Democrats really that cynical? I'm not certain, but consider the following:
ASK an economist how best to reduce pollution, and the chances are that they will recommend taxing carbon emissions. And with good reason: doing so should encourage markets to find the least costly way to reduce pollution, something governments will struggle to discover themselves. In November Washington state's voters will decide whether their state should mimic neighbouring British Columbia's carbon tax, after a grass-roots campaign put the proposal on the ballot. It would be the first such policy in America. You might think environmentalists would unite behind such a pathbreaking effort. Instead, many oppose it.
Initiative 732, as it is known, would tax carbon emissions at a rate reaching $25-a-ton in 2018 and then rising by 3.5% plus inflation every year, to a maximum of $100 in 2016 dollars. Today's levy in British Columbia is C$30 ($23) a ton. As in the Canadian province, the proceeds would be recycled into tax cuts elsewhere. The sales tax would fall from 6.5% to 5.5%. Low-income workers would get a tax rebate. And, to help placate affected businesses, manufacturing taxes would fall.
Yoram Bauman, who heads the Yes campaign (and who somehow makes his living by performing economics-themed stand-up comedy) proudly notes that three Republican state legislators support the initiative, and that it has not attracted the well-funded opposition from the oil lobby that a revenue-raising proposal might. Unfortunately, the price of that has been to alienate left-wing environmentalists, who are loth to give up the opportunity to use a carbon tax to fund new spending.
So it appears that I was right all along. At least if you assume that the left wing environmentalists reflect the views of the Democratic Party. Do they? I'm not sure, but Hillary Clinton opposes a carbon tax. (As does Trump.)
The "the following" link is from The Economist and here is an interesting excerpt:
The debate is ill-tempered. Mr Bauman did not get things off to a good start in 2015 when he complained about the left’s “unyielding desire to tie everything to bigger government” and “willingness to use race and class as political weapons in order to pursue that desire”.
As far as I can tell, that line was from a private email sent from Yoram Bauman to Greg Mankiw which Mankiw posted in his Upshot blog post concluding his "conservatives heart climate policy" argument. So, much of the problem with the left vs right over the revenue neutral carbon tax vote in Washington state is because Mankiw outed Bauman's left bashing (these folks who are against I-732 called it "an interview with the NY Times")?
Update here.
