Eat the rich, Chapter 17

Hey kids! Here’s yet another fun new socialist tax to nail the rich with!

All carbon tax proposals currently in circulation among policy wonks focus on the consumption side of the money chain. Carbon taxes are envisioned for purchases of excessive greenhouse gas emitting goods like SUVs and air conditioners.

But the act of generating an income usually also generates greenhouse gases. Certainly someone who makes minimum wage can be seen to be generating very low levels of carbon in their work day activities, by and large. The restaurant server and retail clerk, aside from generating little carbon in their spending after work, also generate little carbon in the activities they engage with at work while making their money.

The same cannot be said for the high-income phone jockey on Howe Street or the busy little beaver of a property developer directing the hucking up of condos along Coal Harbour. In the processes they engage with in order to generate the million-dollar incomes they enjoy, they have personally caused a great deal of greenhouse gases to be released into the atmosphere.

In fact so much is greenhouse gas-emitting energy central to every activity in the modern industrial economy we live in, that it is safe to say in a general way that the more income one personally generates, the more greenhouse gases one has personally caused to be released in making that income. This is quite side from the greenhouse gases one causes to be released in the spending choices one engages with in the deployment of the income one has generated.

Capturing a carbon tax based on spending only presents difficulties. There is no international authority in place to collect such a tax, so all spending tax proposals are restricted to the reach of national governments. Yet the richest among us—those who are both most able to absorb a tax and most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions—do a significant proportion of their spending outside their home nation. There is no way for a Canadian tax authority to collect a carbon tax on a Canadian buying a flight from Phuket, Thailand to Maui, Hawaii.

But income is a different matter. We already have well-established and effective-enough monitoring of Canadians’ income-generating activities through the already highly-developed income tax system. And we already have in place at least the notion of progressive application of taxes on the income side, but not so much on the consumption side. All current carbon tax proposals based on consumption run the risk of producing regressive effects. But a carbon tax proposal based on income can be more safely constructed as a progressive tax.

We can measure how effective an income-based carbon tax system would be by monitoring how vociferous the reaction to the idea becomes among the rich. I predict the rich would squeal like the stuck pigs they are. That’s because an income-based carbon tax system would be very effective at curbing greenhouse-gas generating activities beginning at their source—what people actually do at their work.

Oops, he did it again

By way of explanation, Bruce Allen, CKNW commentator, said his broadcast comment that caused outrage across Vancouver “was not a personal attack on anyone.” His comment included the following: [Immigrants to Canada should] shut up and fit in or leave the country. There’s the door. If you don’t like the rules, hit it. We don’t need you here. You have another place to go: it’s called home. See ya!” The word “you” occurs four times in that short passage, but it’s not a personal attack on you. Allen is also in charge of arranging big-name entertainment acts for the 2010 Olympics based on his experience as manager for some of Canada’s biggest music stars.

Vancouver 2010 Organizing Committee spokesperson Renée Smith-Valade said VANOC chair John Furlong decided to keep Allen on staff and that he was “satisfied we made the right choice and we go forward. . . . Mr Allen was quite clear that he regrets the controversy caused by his comments.” CKNW has also endorsed Allen’s continued employment at the radio station.

Allen has regularly used his commentary spot on CKNW to attack the poor, the homeless, panhandlers and other marginalized citizens of Vancouver. He has suggested jail for addicts, work barracks for those on welfare and has repeatedly called for severe restrictions of rights for immigrants. Controversy over his comments this week is only the latest outrage in a long string of offensive comments the music industry boss routinely utters on the air.

The horror is not found in what Allen said. The horror is in the passé treatment his bosses at both VANOC and CKNW have indulged him with. In the corporate offices of CKNW and at VANOC, his offensive and racist remarks are not shocking or offensive enough. They come close to the edge for sure, but they push that edge out just a little bit further. It is now established that in Canada, it is now fair to broadcast commentary calling for the expulsion of immigrants whose only crime is to exercise their right of expression and to attempt to engage in the normal political processes available to all other citizens. By these small increments we go down the road to fascism.

Protests for what?

The nuclear power debate, the defining controversy of the later 20th Century, is over. For the first time in 31 years, a company in the US has officially applied to build two new nuclear generators to be located in New Jersey. Analysts in the industry expect applications for at least 29 new power-generating reactors to be made in the next 15 months. The total value of investment the expected applications represent is between $60 and $90 billion. There are currently 104 operating reactors in the US, all of them started prior to 1976. What has changed is new “streamlined" regulations governing the construction and operations of nuclear power plants recently introduced by the Bush administration.

The applications are being developed and presented (all are expected to pass) despite there still being no plan of how to dispose of waste even for existing reactors, nor any clear idea of where all the extra uranium might be found, or mined and transported safely, when it is found.

Changes in US regulations will more than likely inspire changes in Canadian regulations to open the door to massive investment in new nuclear power plants in Alberta necessary to meet the needs of tar sands oil producers whose hopes for quintupling production have already been identified as paramount to US energy policy. The state-owned Abu Dhabi energy company this week invested a further $20 billion into Alberta energy income trusts in anticipation of severely ramped up energy production in Alberta. And so the carbon emissions debate, not to mention the environmental destruction debate, like the nuclear debate before them, appear to be over. We shall indeed go gentle into that good night after all.