The Case Against Further Green Taxes

Link: The TaxPayers' Alliance - Economics 101: The Case Against Further Green Taxes - Report and Poll.

The TaxPayers' Alliance is potentially the most important pressure group in British politics. We are on the cusp of losing our democracy. The State's employees, "benefits" recipients and employees of private sector companies dependent on Government contracts are already a large enough group to swing elections. They have a clear conflict of interest with taxpayers and, in a properly ordered democracy, would have no vote at all. In ours they often have the decisive one.

However, a small majority of the population still comprises productive taxpayers. The members of that majority still have some chance to seize the initiative. The TPA is therefore an organisation I would recommend every reader to support. It produces excellent research and is doing an important - and long-neglected - job. Both Parliament and Press are quicker to condemn the Government for failure to "act" on any given problem (however ineffectually) than to hold it accountable for the way it spends taxpayers' money.

The linked article will take you to a TPA report entitled "The Case Against Further Green Taxes." The report shows that every family in Britain pays £400 more in such taxes than is required to offset their "carbon footprint." More that twice the amount of tax "justified" by the claims of the climate change faithful is being raised.

Interestingly, a YouGov opinion poll commissioned by the TPA shows that the public understands this perfectly well. I think it is time we stopped taking the British electorate for fools. Many of them are, of course, but enough are not to make it worth soliciting their votes.

What a shame no major political party is doing so. To listen to the propaganda of all three of them, you would think the average British voter was a moron on the make. Say it ain't so.

Comments

[Welshcakes Limoncello]

If I were in Britain I would join this organisation. I got so fed up with being told climate change and so on are all my fault.

Already a member, posted on much the same this morning

[Guthrum]

My name did not appear on the last comment ?? Bizarre

[fake consultant]

two quick points:

--the commenter bruno (at the tpa site) raised an excellent point in noting that the distribution of the fees and taxes collected are as important as their amount.

--a scenario could exist where upfront investment is required to begin the process of greenhouse gas reduction, and as a result you would end up paying more in the first years of a reduction program than would seem proportional; and the amount you're spending might well go down in that scenario in the out years of the model, as the investments begin to go online.

i have no way to know if this is the case in our discussion today, and i'm not trying to suggest it is; i'm merely pointing out that such a scenario could exist.