thebrowze’s Recent Comments

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  the proper way to rally voters

  Now that's going to rally American voters!

  I suppose the proper way to rally voters would be to lie and tell them that they won't have to do anything, just vote for the right people and the government will do it for you.

  After all, isn't that how the war in Iraq was sold?On Dingell gets off a zinger in a testy interview posted 2 years, 1 month ago 7 Responses

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  not necessarily contradictory

  As I have not read the book myself I can only go off the passages you have quoted.

  Dr. Greenspans arguements about technology, higher carbon prices, and lower output aren't necessarily contradictory.  Raising the price of energy without finding new technologies to increase efficiency and counteract the higher prices will lower output and cost jobs and GDP growth.  But higher prices will spur the innovation to find new technologies, just like you mentioned (in part I) happened in the late 70's with gasoline prices and fuel efficiency.  These aren't mutually exclusive, in fact it is likely that both will happen if we raise the price of emissions.

  Any development period longer than one election cycle will be "too protracted for political comfort", so that is irrelevant.  It doesn't seem to me in these passages that Greenspan is arguing that we shouldn't raise the prices of emission simply because it would cost jobs, he is pointing it out to show why we lack the political will to do so.  Many of Greenspan's interest rate increases earlier this decade cost jobs because of slowed growth, but he was obviously alright with those.  It doesn't seem to me that Greenspan pointing out that something will hurt the economy in the short term is the same thing as him arguing we shouldn't do it, as evidenced by many of his actions as Federal Reserve Chairman.On Greenspan on climate change posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

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  It wasn't regulations...

  Quote:
  "If Greenspan were right that market forces were the most important thing, then when oil prices collapsed in the 1980s and then again in the 1990s, fuel economy would have collapsed too. Thankfully, fuel economy regulations stopped such a collapse from happening."

  Regulations didn't stop fuel economy from collapsing, the fact that we'd figured out new technologies did.  Why would manufacturers go back to using older, less efficient technologies just because the reasons for developing the new ones went away?  Wouldn't we continue to use the new and better technologies?

  And incidentally, fuel consumption (fuel economy is only an intermediate statistic) did increase faster when the prices dropped in the 80's and 90's.  That's why we had such a surge in the number of SUVs and such an increase in the number of people living farther and farther from their jobs.  When the price went down we used more petroleum.  When the prices go up we find ways to use less, and increased efficiency is only one of the ways we do it.On Greenspan on energy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 8 Responses

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  careful with buses

  I agree that mass transit funding needs to be increase dramatically and there needs to be a halt on highway expansion, especially here in seattle.  But be careful about recommending more buses.  A bus route that has a sparse ridership uses more gas (and therefore has higher emissions) than those riders driving themselves.  A bus with 3 people on it that gets 4 miles to the gallon is essentially only getting 12 passenger miles per gallon.  It would be better if those three people each drove SUVs.

  I'm not saying that mass transit isn't the answer, but it isn't a panacea either, and could do more harm than good if not planned carefully.On Tar sands are the enemy of the planet posted 2 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

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  Instead?

  Thanks for responding Gar.  The most obvious scenario to me that would make a carbon tax redistribute income upwards would be one in which carbon tax revenues were in fact used to fund energy research, since the money would go towards paying highly educated researchers and white-collar administrators.  

  I just don't see how this is necessarily a bad thing.  If we use revenue from carbon taxes to fund research it will most likely make the efficiency gains come more quickly, which will lower the carbon footprints for people in all income brackets, and therefore the taxes.  Also doing this means we would not have to find funding elsewhere for the research, and could instead cut income taxes for the poor, or provide money for other underfunded social programs.

  I am a little confused about your definitions of regressive and progressive.  A carbon tax, like a sales tax, will necessarily be a regressive tax because on the whole poor people spend a larger proportion of their income on energy than rich people do.  A tax does not change from being regressive to progressive simply because of what you do with the revenue.

  Instead of simply cutting everyone a check for the same amount (which would indeed result in the poorest people getting back more than they paid), why not use the money for a subsidy to pay for energy efficient technology for the poor in the same manner we provide the poor with health insurance through medicaid?  Not only would this help to alleviate the tax burden but would also help to poor reduce carbon emissions in a way that was not previously possible to them (not to mention giving them additional incentives to reduce emissions in a way that giving them their money back would not).

  I'd love to hear your thoughts.On The time to focus on policy is now posted 2 years, 7 months ago 6 Responses