Not so savage when you look at the actual numbers and realize that the reason the "middle class is disappearing" is not wide-spread pauperisation, but a larger and larger fraction of the population has become "rich."

There is nothing quite so American as seeing at 4% more of the poulation in the lowest income bracket than in 1971, but pretending it's okay because 7% more of the population moved up to upper-middle or upper income brackets. Meanwhile, the alt text remains savage. http://www.seattletimes.com/business/economy/the-incredible-shrinking-middle-class/

I'd say it's because of doctrinare belief that the only way to stop climate change is to stop emitting carbon. I believe you'd make far more headway if you said that instead of a carbon tax, you had to transfer money to those who design and maintain carbon sinks. That would give people more incentive to create the technology to remove CO2 from the air, and to not cut down forests, etc.

@kazriko Your proposal is about as sensible as letting everybody take your stuff and then hiring people to look for it after a week. It will create costs and employment for looking. But you won't end up with much stuff. Not using the 100x more expensive technology isn't doctrinaire.

You're not going to make any headway with the idea that everyone must immediately stop all of the things that make them healthy, prosperous, and happy though. The technology is only expensive because nobody has put money into the research and development of it. Even the drastic step of stopping emissions does nothing whatsoever for the problem because you have to do something about what is already in the air. If you want to actually solve the problem, then funding this research is the only way to actually do it.

Ahm, it's a carbon tax, like a sales tax, it won't 'stop all of the things that make [people] healthy, prosperous, and happy' any more than current sales taxes do. You might as well suggest people not be allow to take all the stuff they see that makes them happy. It's only expensive since property is theft. And if people could take what makes them happy, companies would do research on how to make more cheaply. Maybe the gov should fund research on that instead of wasting it on police. On a less sarcastic note, your view just does't work if you try to write out any basic cost functions based on any input-output technologies. There may be an escape if we get really cheap non-carbon energy, but that's about it. Paying people to put carbon back in the ground if you don't tax others as least as much to take it back out is about as reasonable as say Venezuela buying gasoline on the open market to sell it to 'users' at 10 cents/gallon (who then sell it right back). It may be how the politics play out (see your first sentence), but it doesn't end well (or it needs to be sustained by rationing -- which is where any implementation of your proposal is going).

Also, on 2nd thought, If you want to discuss cost functions and physical constraints on them, I'd be happy to do so non-sarcastically. Writing a good and realistically model of this might help clarify why we disagree and who is right/wrong, under which kinds kinds of assumptions. For instance, sometimes other costs (transportation costs?) do function as the near equivalent of Pigouvian taxes, so things can work out at times for other reasons. I don't see that here.

Real issue is that the climate change 'cost' part is still pretty much all in the future, due to the very very high heat capacity of the ocean and the ocean's slow turnover. Lots of future warming is already fully baked in and many people aren't willing the see it as real yet. And I do expect that using taxes to control carbon emissions is going to look very gentle compared to methods that at least some groups are going to try 50 years from now (say, biological methods to control energy demand by reducing the customer base). So concern about taxes making people unhappy is going to look very pre-crisis quaint.

That's quite the wall of text there. I'm not talking about the carbon tax. I'm talking about all of the environmentalists who say that the only solution is the complete ceasing of all emissions, and won't take "nuclear" for an answer. You know, the ones you're referring to as "some groups are going to try." You would be taxing others through this scheme, but you would be then shifting that money to putting carbon back in the ground, instead of shifting it to governments to do... whatever... with. I just don't trust anyone who says that taxes only are a viable answer because it will neither decrease emissions enough, nor will it actually decrease concentrations whatsoever. It alone is not a solution. It is only an intermediate step towards banning all emissions.

You write: "I'm not talking about the carbon tax." I was responding to your 2nd initial sentense: " I believe you'd make far more headway if you said that instead of a carbon tax". And your arguement that carbon can't be in the tax base since taxes are bad is...well, we already have a tax base, just a economically and ecology less good one. Can't follow your other claims, but they strike me as incoherent as articulated (i.e. using word with different coverage in different parts of the argument as if they referred to the same thing, that is 'carbon tax' = 'crazy enviromenatlist", so lets discuss "crazy enviromentalists". You've not shown that carbon taxes are crazy or associated only with crazy enviromentalists. ).

The main thing I don't want is for how all of the current taxation schemes seem to be doing it. Emitters are grandfathered in to a certain amount, and if they cut emissions they can sell those credits to others. This basically entrenches all of the existing interests and makes it impossible for new companies to make any headway. Any solution shouldn't give exemptions to the entrenched, only allow those who find ways of mitigating the issue to sell exemptions to others.

*sigh* Yes, that sentence doesn't parse the way I was intending. I was meaning instead of ONLY a carbon tax. I didn't also mean "crazy environmentalist" = "carbon tax" but "crazy environmentalist" = "100% end of all carbon emissions" As I said just before, the problem with the tax schemes are that they just go to do whatever, and don't solve the problem, just slightly discourage things rather than solving them. Only a carbon tax will lead to the 100% end of emissions because it won't work, and if it doesn't work, by your own admission people will be doing less gentle methods.

You can see what I intended to say by the "transfer money to" thing in the same sentence. That meant transfer money from those who emit carbon to those who remove it.

Ah, mostly a misunderstanging then...:-). We still disagree, but I can dial back to a much more manageable debate...need to run now. I do take the technocratic basline view that Pigouvian taxes are a good starting point, but there are political issues that are serious and hard to model. More later...

And since the most common sizes you find 2x4s in is 6' and 8' long and you wouldn't want to truncate the graph, that means you've got more than an extra foot to extrapolate the data further. Or wrap it with a shirt and tape so you don't get calluses.