The Carbon Tax Shell Game

The carbon tax is a shell game. The range of designs, prices, rationales, and claimed benefits varies so widely — even within many individual arguments for the tax — that assessing the actual validity of most proposals becomes nearly impossible. The fact that any carbon taxes effect on emissions is insubstantial is ignored in the promotion of its purported benefits and its negative fiscal effects are claimed to be offset by efficiency improvements and by promising the revenues will be spent to offset the costs. Yet, the same revenues are promised to achieve multiple ends, to different constituencies each of who would reject spending on the others.