Taxation DOES work for energy conservation

Yes - I hear your point, but the title of the thread is "Taxation DOES work for energy conservation", a bad title all around. Of course taxing a limited resource will lead to using less of it - I think that just about everyone who has the most basic understanding understanding of the issues on all sides of it would agree on this point.

Agreed that tiered pricing does work in those instances where it is possible, but in order to do it properly and on a large scale would involve a pretty significant upgrading of our country's infrastructure. I have spent most of my life in the North East where infrastructure is old. For example in my folks house in Cambridge, MA the water, gas and electric meters are in the basement and have not been upgraded since they have been there. A utility employee must read the meter in person which happens only every few months at most. In order to have tiered pricing the utility would need to upgrade the meters. I can not imagine that my parents are the exception to the rule so the companies would need to replace thousands of meters just in Cambridge alone - to do the Boston metro area would be hundreds of thousands of new meters.

I agree with you about gas - I believe that we have prices that are silly low and should really be paying more along the lines of what European consumers do. But as you say, there is not a way to actually implicant this in a non regressive way. For anyone out there thinking it would be easy just try and think of a way to do this keeping in mind that it needs to be something that could be implemented fairly, securely and he managed on a nationwide scale. To me the easiest and fairest way would be to pass legislation to increase gas taxes slowly - over a decade or longer - which would not be completely fair, but would allow consumers and then markets to plan and adjust slowly. However this would take a Congress with the sense to get together on something and the stones to take on the political heat - something that would be hard to find in the best of times, and these are far from the best of times.

 

Exactly...and they have a VAT too.
How's their economy?
What's their debt load?
One thing that the tax-the-everything crowd here overlooks is that there's no bottom.
You'll never reach a level of taxation where government says "OK...That's enough. We have all we need!"

Another thing people often overlook is the fact the the EU is a pretty compact place. Yeah, we could place a $10 tax on gas here and institute a ____-percent VAT and live the happy, Joy-Joy EU-topian life.
Just remember....the poorest of us usually drive less efficient vehicles.

I have no heartburn with tiered electricity prices...but that's because I'm middle class. I can afford it.
When the eco-chic run out and buy super efficient washers....the less well-to-do have to buy the lesser efficient units. Same with refrigerators....home insulation....fancy $80 water-saver shower heads.....tank less water heaters....and the list goes on and on and on.

If you want to put a 500-percent energy piggy tax electricity over 1000Kw/h, knock yerself out...just adjust the number high enough so that you don't snare a few poor folks in your rich folk trap, huh?

 

The economy in Europe is pretty terrifying these days - you have had 3 big economies (Greece, Portugal and Ireland) need to receive significant help and you have lots of questions surrounding France and Spain. The only strong and large player is Germany and there are rumblings that they may have to bail out of the Euro. The cause of all of this is has more to do with bad banking and underwriting practices that had their origins in the US than any systematic problem with the economies in Europe.

But when looking at Europe you also need to look at the demographics and culture. They have far less suburban sprawl than the US and have far better public transport - on the local, regional and national scale. They also have far fewer long haul trucks as rail is used much more. There is also far more sense of community and doing what is best for your country - not the flag waving that the US is great at, but rather making hard decisions to do what is best for the citizens - just take a look at both education and health care in most European countries. Buying a Suburban to look cool might work here, but not in Europe.

 

No system will be completely fair. A tiered system actually has the potential to reduce cost per unit on the lowest users.

If we accept that some resources are both limited and necessary it is easy to see that prices will go up as supply goes down. For the rich it will never really matter what the price of a gallon of water (or kwh of electric or gallon of gas) is, but to the poor and lower middle class it could become an issue of survival.

PS: Your comment that there would be a 500% tax over 1,000 kwh tells me you don't understand how TIERED pricing would work.

 

I beg to differ.

Petrol is heavily taxed here in the UK and you don't see as many SUV's as you do in the US (and if you do they'll be diesel).

Petrol is also taxed in Europe and you don't see too many big 6 litre gas guzzlers there either.

Hmmmm why do you think that is?

America has the some of the lowest priced petrol in the world and is home of massive vehicles. Europe has some of the most expensive petrol because of tax and is home of small economical cars and economical diesel cars.

If petrol was as cheap as it is for you guys I'd be driving a 3 litre V6. It isn't and I aren't.

 

Seriously. He's going to be the one with a 40' motorhome in the driveway, running the generator so he can sit inside it and watch TV when the power goes out for 20 minutes.

 

The box is a mac-mini. At the moment it only serves my home music, videos, and WebDav, although I will probably open it up so that I can use my music library away from home, and have screen sharing.

By the way, the max 13 watt power I quoted earlier was while the box was video streaming, measured by a kill-a-watt.

 

Tax fuel at a rate that encourages conservation. Deal with the least amongst us by sending the bulk. Of that tax money to real mass transit solutions, including, but not limited to subsidizing transit passes, most especially for the poor.

Pays off in any number of ways!

Icarus

 

My word - I guess that we will just need to disagree. The poor do not need to worry about powering their home server network, rather they need to worry about getting by day to day and week to week. They need to worry about things like feeding their kids which has a direct impact to energy prices. You do realize that higher energy prices mean higher food costs?

I also do not understand how you have such disdain for so many people but seem to think that someone absolutely, positively has to have a home network that has a significant power drain - why must they be powered - if these things are so very crucial why can they not be done at a data center? I do not see a huge difference between this and some of the behaviors that you claim the "stupid poor" are guilty of. If it is not something that provides a basic level of habitability or something critical like medical equipment is more of a luxury than a necessity - something that we all have in our lives to various degrees.

As for your comments on Texas - I just have no clue what you are trying to get at. I'm sure that it sounded fine to you as you typed, but after reading it a couple of times it does not make a whole lot of sense. I also think that you threw in a bunch of figures with very little context - for example you mention that Texas has a lower than average median wage than the country as a whole - a good sound bite, but when you put in in context - that Texas also has one of the lowest cost of living in the country- it looses its impact.

 

I'm so tired of this BS "concern" of the rich for the poor. Anybody notice none of them want to pay taxes to distribute their wealth ?

 

Warren Buffet, Bill Gates Sr. Come to mind,,,,

 

The cost of energy should be based upon:

1. How much is used
2. The financial resources of the user

For a given amount of energy, the cost should be a percentage of a person's income. Otherwise, not only will wealthy people waste more because they can afford it, but what they pay for what they waste will be negligible.

Then, all the extra money wealthy people pay for energy would be used to create more effective mass transit (which, of course, wealthy people don't use).

Or maybe they would...?

In either case, it's a win-win.

 

Sage was suggesting that he didn't hear any rich people asking for their taxes to be raised. I merely pointed to two that have. I make no comment on whether or not they are typical of any households.

Icarus

 

I'd say WB and BG are the exceptions that prove the rule. Just words, not backed by any sort of substantive action.

 

So proprietary that it can not go out to a secure data center but you host a number of public domains - oh my!

You may want to take a look back at earlier posts (see the 3rd paragraph of post 21 for example) - I believe that energy prices are way too low here in the US. It is a problem that is decades in the making and thinking that you can just fix it in one fell swoop with a tax is just asinine. On top of it not being feasible there is no way that you would ever be able to pass that sort of legislation - like it or not that is the way that our society functions. The only way that this can be addressed is with a national energy policy that will take years to implement.