Another Look
jan/072
Here is a statement that got me thinking:
- The problem with "sin taxes," whether the sin is smoking, or not recycling, or driving to see Mom, is giving government the power to decide what sin is, what the wages of sin are, and who will pay.
Now hasn’t the government always been doing that? They decided that murder, theft and slander should be punished. In some countries sinning even includes flag burning, not wearing a seat belt or denying the holocaust. In USA sinning includes exposing minors to inapropriate images, while in other countries such incidents would be laughed off. So in essence:
- Pigovian taxation is paying a sum of X for your sins.
- Other sins are taxed by the formula Y*Z
Where Y is the chance of getting caught and Z is the punishment. It seems to me that every punishment (like getting a speeding ticket) is a form of Pigovian taxation. The difference is only in the chance of evading the tax. I wonder what Mr. Mankiw would say about this little theory.
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7:08 popoldne on januar 29th, 2007
The problem with taxes in generally is that the revenue they produce is as easily poured down a rat hole as anything else by our inefficient political process.
Advocates of increased taxes on fossil fuel consumption should consider new taxation and legal structures whereby additional revenue is kept entirely out of the political process. For example, a trust fund could be established which sources investment capital and grants to new technologies and processes on the basis of deterministic formulae that compute the expected resultant reduction in consumption.
We have, in the U.S., the Social Security trust fund. This troubled economic structure serves as an excellent example of how not to organize the finances of such a scheme, but, at the same, provides a compelling precedent for how our economy can be improved with properly applied, socailly responsible taxation.
7:32 popoldne on februar 11th, 2007
It would be a good idea to offset the new taxes by lowering the existing taxes.