26
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The unexpected climate policy that could tackle both national debt and China: Carbon pricing has the potential to become a bipartisan policy
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- Title
- Opinion | The Unexpected Climate Policy That Could Tackle Both National Debt and China
- Published
- Oct 26 2023
- Word count
- 917 words
Given the recent House Speaker kerfuffle and the anti-climate extremist who got picked, I feel Rooney is being optimistic about the prospects, but I suppose he has a background as a Republican that makes this a bit more credible.
That said, I've always seen this proposal as one that would rebate the collected money back to people to make the tax more progressive (and avoid unduly burdening poor people), so I'm not sure about using it as a revenue device. And if it works, the revenue collection goes to zero, but I guess that'll take a while to happen.
Views on climate among conservatives have moderated in recent years as things have become increasingly undeniable, so I think there's some room for optimism. That being said, I would still prefer spending cuts and something like a VAT tax + taxes on wealth to tackle the national debt.
The bltant colonialism/racism of sentences like this always shocks me. They might as well say "we can't let risk letting African countries prosper because it would mean we make less".
I have two questions.
What is racist about that statement? How are the USA attempts to counter China based on racial discrimination?
What is colonialist about that statement? The USA isn't attempting to colonize China, nor replace its government or population.
I would go further and say that some Chinese might take offense at the implication that China isn’t an economic and military equal capable of competition with the US, and are instead the weaker nation in a colonial relationship.
I think I answered this in the post, but colonialism isn't just about having bases somewhere. We did and still do try to hamper the growth of other industrial nations so that we can essentially have cheap access to their natural resources and to their populations as cheap labor. I don't see how that changes a lot just because we move a few people over there to over see it.
...what? The stated goal of a carbon price is to move manufacturing to the US, where production processes are cleaner, if more expensive. That's the opposite of trying to maintain cheap access to labor.
China isn't a struggling nation desperate for American investment to maintain a living, the PRC is a global power that is fully capable of challenging and competing with the US economically. There's plenty of criticisms you could leverage against US foreign policy, but this doesn't seem like a particularly well-founded line of thought to pursue.
Ok, and the claim of racism? I'd like to address both at once.
Well China is an authoritarian country that has been committing genocide for the past several years and has been waging a cold war (constant cyber attacks, industrial espionage, etc) against the West for over a decade. Frankly, your comment reeks of either a lack of knowledge or a willful attempt to frame China as not actively adversarial against the West at large and especially the US.
Regardless of what you think of America, a strong CCP directly opposes American interests.
The USA is plenty culpable in genocide. Stuxnet didn't come out of China. We're waging the cyberwar as much as (if not more than) anybody else.
We have our own modern concentration camps full of innocents. We have more citizens in prison than China.
We have half the population frothing at the mouth calling you an enemy of the state if you think minimum wage should be increased and we shouldn't ban gay people from stuff. Authoritarianism is alive and well here.
And this isn't to let China off the hook, rather to say: We are not morally superior. Never have been.
Most of your examples aren't really comparable to what China is doing. Like, US is doing nothing to its own citizens comparable to what China is doing with Uyghurs or what it did during the Cultural revolution, US has needlessly high incarceration rates, but the due process is incomparable to China, significant partisanship is a different thing from authoritarianism etc.
The US is far from perfect (though there's also the effect of knowing much more about US wrongdoing because it's more democratic and makes its issues more public, plus it's easier for us to know a lot about, being culturally closer), but I think you could easily argue that it is morally superior and it unquestionably is the least harmful superpower by far.
I don't really care if its their own citizens or not. I don't hold that arbitrary lines on a map determine whether or not killing is more or less bad. The USA flagrantly ignores human rights laws (both internally and externally). Democracy only matters to the USA if said democracy only remains aligned with the US interests, otherwise we're happy to help overthrow one. Human rights violations of China matters because China is being positioned as the new USSR, but Saudia Arabia's don't because they are a Great Ally.
We might not currently be rounding up Muslims and Jews into concentration camps, but if Trump or DeSantis were to clinch 2024 I wouldn't rule out the possibility. I recall the 2016 Republican primary debate which devolved to an hour of a bunch of assholes arguing about who wanted to bomb Iran more.
We also suppress political dissidents, and almost all tangible protests start getting infiltrated by intelligence networks and neutralized. I mentioned the partisanship, but the thing is one of those sides knows it's in a minority position and relies on widespread voter suppression and gerrymandering to rule.
The USA leverages propaganda to an unprecedented degree to shape narratives. Being aware of this helps neutralize the effectiveness of it. So it is especially important to raise these points when an article is brought up that hones in this "China is the enemy, we are superior" narrative. If this was a deep dive about concentration camps, bringing up "Remember the US's violations" would be less relevant.
"Carbon policy to combat China's economic power" while "No carbon policy in the US because politically touchy" is this kind of otherizing double-standard which fuels American Exceptionalism.
What is the relevance to any of that in if it's racist or colonialist for the US to do what it can to counter its biggest geopolitical rival?
From one other post I made today:
And as far as being the biggest geopolitical rival, I grabbed a bunch of random consumer goods in arm's reach and checked where they were made:
Midland weather radio: Made in China
Shacke Pak luggage bag: Made in China
Motorola cable modem: Made in Vietnam
Logitech G610 keyboard: Made in China
Ikea surge strip: Made in China
Linksys dumb switch: Made in China
Honewell air purifier: Made in China
And a fair bit of this stuff was acquired long before there was any talking-head chatter about China being our geopolitical rival. It sure seems to me that from a tiny, tiny, tiny sample that a lot of America's carbon footprint is labeled under China's and that we then blame them for gaining economic status and for using so much energy to manufacture all our goods for us.
This is the argument for why a carbon tax should have a carbon tariff - a tariff that offsets the price difference of imports from economies with a lighter/no carbon tax. The idea being that it 1) avoids damaging the competitiveness of domestic production, and 2) it encourages other countries to implement a carbon tax, because they're taking the price hit either way.
I guess I just assume everyone is constantly doing espionage against everyone in the world. We have satellites staring at.... everyone I assume for instance, and Snowden showed we have teams of people at the nsa assigned to try and break into whatever servers they can. Is that a cold war? It just seems like china is acting like everyone else afaict.
No, that's not all that China is doing. Yes, everybody is hacking everybody. China is doing more of the attacks that don't quite qualify as hacking.
But even if the US is doing what China is doing, China is still doing it and it is in American interests to try to stop China, just as it is in Chinese interests to try to hinder the US.
This is admirably optimistic, I think it has the potential to become bipartisan in that like 5 senators from each party support it and everybody else votes it down.
We have carbon tax in Canada on all fossil fuels and its widely despised. I highly doubt its going to work in the US either.
Its largely because it was sold to Canadians as a way to put a price on carbon 'pollution' but that the majority of households would get most of that tax back as quarterly rebates. Which made no real sense from the beginning - why take our money away just to give it back?
Turns out even that was a lie as its played out that we end up paying more than we get back (shock!) It also doesnt seem to be making much difference in our emissions.
But lastly its become clear, just this week, that the gov has admitted by its actions that its a financial burden to Canadians over and above inflation, interest rates and our burgeoning debt load. In eastern Canada, where our current Liberal gov has been losing traction, the gov has decided to "pause" the carbon tax for people who use home heating oil and then give those people free electric mini split units for their homes instead plus a cash bonus plus double the tax rebate for those who live rurally. Its VERY blatant and disgusting vote buying.
Want to know how to really piss off a population that already despises a fake tax? Give a tax break to one small segment of the population but ignore the rest of Canada. If the US thinks a carbon tax will help it better be a lot better managed than Canada's version - and it better be applied equally.