Our bow-tie loving, get to know thy neighbor-preaching friend Bill Nye ’77 is at it again. Except this time, it isn’t about baking soda volcanoes or foreign policy, as I most recently covered.
At a speaking event at the University of Albany this past week, science guy Nye exercised his wealth of knowledge on tax policy and economic theory in comments regarding the efficacy of carbon taxes on the hindrance of both production and private consumption of gasoline-powered cars.
Someone might want to tell Mr. Nye the difference between a carbon tax and a gasoline tax, as it is unclear, by the various analogeies he uses, which one of the two progressive reforms he is speaking to.
Nye stated, “We need, dare I say it, a tax – or should I say a fee.” He then went on to note that such a fee would not only cause reduced consumption of fossil fuels and force wide-spread private investment in cleaner energy, but there would be vital, redistributive properties to take advantage of.
In a later comment, the god-send son of the eco-left asserts his dominance as the voice of fiscal-progressivism in saying, “[The tax] is not just to be mean, it’s to redistribute the wealth.”
Assuming he is referring to what is a true “carbon tax” on the unit output of carbon compounds, the major short-coming of Nye’s quintessential academic-optimistim, is that firms will simply charge more at the checkout counter in response.
He is right in the theory that firms will invest in more sustainable means of manufacturing, however, they must incur great fixed cost of capital to do so, and certain industries (such as food) might be able to get away charging higher prices, and passing along the tax burden to the innocent consumer.
Perhaps Nye is keener on the matter than we think. Because after America’s lower/lower-middle class is either taxed into submission, or receives the butt-end of tax incidence from the manufacturers, they are going to require some mean of compensation to purchase a car or still have enough disposable income to feed their families.
It’s amazing how those redistributive programs allow for such great income mobility! Only problem is, Econ 101. Nye, like many of his boy who cried tax contemporaries, must have dozed off when his prof lectured on regressive taxes.
