On the right track, but it might be even better to do a carbon tax rather than a tax targeting one product that is wasteful: it's CO2 that is associated with negative externalities, so the most direct approach is to internalize those externalities by levying a tax on carbon, rather than attacking wasteful users of electricity piecemeal through taxes or bans.
Or cap the amount of carbon production and allow companies to trade it. Taxes give governments more money when they produce more carbon, which isn't a great thing. We don't have a good way to use that tax money to mitigate the effects of carbon - so it's not effectively internalizing that externality.
There are reasonably good ways of spending that money though.
- Reducing taxes elsewhere: a carbon tax is likely to be somewhat regressive, since the poor are the least able to quickly go out and buy a Prius.
- Basic research such as alternate energy.
As far as internalization goes, it does have that effect if you are able to calculate what the costs of the externalities are and thus up the price to that level. That, of course, is the tricky part, but cap and trade also involves determining a level to cap at.
The best use for U.S. carbon tax money might be to eliminate the payroll tax. Then companies could redirect their creative energies. The payroll tax motivates creative ways to hire fewer Americans. They could instead expend that creative energy on ways to burn less carbon.
It would certainly be a disruptive change, but I think a good public policy hacker could find ways to offset the regressiveness. What we lack is good political leadership.
OH MY GOD! I am amazed at the level to which liberals talk about science while rejecting the very foundations of science. (Carbon is not bad. The payroll tax doesn't influence employers, it influences employees-- employees are the ones who pay the tax.)
What we lack is people who understand economics, or have any sense of history-- the "progressive" tax system is what is keeping people poor. A flat tax and no social security would have eliminated poverty in the US 50 years ago, and probably we'd have most of our manufacturing jobs still too...though environmentalist inspired regulation and rampant union violence might have been enough alone to drive it overseas.
The amazing thing to me is how much liberals talk about helping the poor (And conservatives talk about "freedom") while advocating policies that do the opposite, and attacking anyone who actually advocates what they claim to support....
I've long wondered if this was simply because these people have been so deluded that they thinkg up is down and left is right... or if they really actually have another agenda and these causes (poverty and freedom) are just excuses to advocate policies that they know make the problems worse.
The 19th century should have taught you all that socialism and communism will not decrease poverty and will ultimately result in the slaughter of millions of people... and yet you can't turn around without hearing some liberal talk about "global warming" and "externalities" without understanding the first bit of economics... and advocating totalitarian laws to bring about their "dictatorship of the proletariat".
You do not seem to have discussed any of the issues yourself, it might be pointed out. I think most everyone here would agree that the ban on light bulbs is a bad idea, but given some level of consensus that CO2 emissions are a problem, what to do about them?
Doubtless your answer would focus on the fact that there is no problem at all because the existence of an externality of some kind disagrees with your ideology.
You might even be right that there is no problem, because it's not an easy subject, but on the other hand, a number of scientists appear to indicate that there is a problem of some kind.
In any case, you started going off about communists and (in another thread) Nazis, so maybe we can call Godwin's law and leave it at that.
Speaking of voting people down, someone seems to have had a go at everything of mine they could get ahold of, including those completely unrelated to this discussion:
Why do so many people talk about "negative externalities" when they don't even understand basic economics? Its like some liberal ideological center picked up a phrase, told people some vague idea of what it meant, and then got people to advocate it as a justification for ideas whose economic underpinnings having nothing to do with what they think they do.
The bottom line is, your attempt to internalize externalities is proof that you don't know what you're talking about because externalities by definition cannot be internalized.
All this liberal economics is just like that last wave of liberal economics that resulted in 100 million deaths over the period from 1900-2000, only it isn't united under a common term like "socialism" or "communism" but it amounts to the same-- totalitarianism sold as being "good for you".
I understand the economics just fine, thanks, and one of the big proponents of the carbon tax is republican economist Greg Mankiw (see Pigou Club link).
If I were to respond in kind, I would say that libertarianism seems to be a willful ignorance of the very concept of a market externality, as understood by mainstream economics. Certainly, reasonable people can agree to disagree on what specific things constitute externalities in which cases, how bad they are, and what measures, if any, should be taken to correct them - and indeed if those corrective measures are worse than the problem they cure.
However, denying the very existence of factors that are not taken into consideration by a free market seems to be letting your beliefs get the better of reason. And comparing any government intervention with communism is a bit beyond the pale, really.
No, you don't understand economics, and you concede this point when you use the phrase "mainstream economics"... this is a common tactic of socialists to try and cover the fact that they are substituting political ideology for economics.
Economics is a science. ITs not uncommon for those who will not make a scientific argument to instead knock down strawmen, as you just have.
Of course, you threw out enough buzzwords that those who don't look too close will believe you made a counter argument.
What you might consider doing, if you don't agree with the economics, is point out the errors in my logic rather than continue to attack my understanding of economics (which is an awfully broad conclusion to reach from a few comments in any case, I might add). And included in that, for the sake of discussing the economics, is that CO2 emissions are in some way harmful, even if you don't happen to believe that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigou_Club