In re - #reply-18402670 - [which is what got me over here catching up, it's been a while, don't know why, what a great thread] -
The US should slap a fifty cent per litre tax on petroleum products ... all of them, across the board, one flat tax ... then, make that move revenue neutral by reducing other more regressive taxes, like income tax, let's say no one making less than 50k pays tax at all, and higher brackets reduced in percentage paid ... perhaps other reductions in stupidities, like tariffs on british columbian lumber ... meantime, a guarantee of no tax penalties at all for ten years or more on energy from renewable sources, on innovations in energy conservation, other related aids [admittedly, lots of judgment calls here]
This would make a tech boom, very quickly ... hydrogen might become a principal medium, well then ways need to be found to store and transport it safely and efficiently ... perhaps some other medium, i dunno, but the point is to make a declaration of energy independence and then put it into practise ... to those who say it would be 'social engineering', well sure it is, so is any kind of taxation, and taxation is considered somewhat basic to civilised society ... it's a matter of how you tax, what activities you tax ... surely, taxing consumption is better than taxing the earning of income, as a generality[?] ... if so, then even better to tax consumption of a good that finances evil in so many ways |
