Posted by zog
on June 27, 2009, 10:27 pm, in reply to "Re: You've been capped, now try to trade that"
But give it a few days and a lot of guys will be writing analysis on it. What I have seen so far with cap and trade I distilled down in me pea brane to one thing-a trillion a year new "fee" put on everything, turned over to the commodities traders eventually. And it doesn't really cut pollution (much), they just make them pay for the privilege of pollution, and other places can get "credits" for being green, and sell them. All just poof created new kinda money and new kinda taxes. But you get to pay for it.
It's like we have these alleged CAFE standards for cars..but wait..they don't apply to the REAL gas guzzlers, they just need to pay an extra fee. So guys who are paying for a half a million dollar sportscar that gets worse mileage than a hummer just pay another 10 grand or whatever..chump change to them on such a purchase. While everyone else has to abide by the standards.
Cap and trade is the stick approach to government, and they really only have two ways to do government, and given my druthers, I would always believe the carrot approach works better.
Want cleaner energy? Give 100% tax credits for it. whammo, things would change *fast*. Not partial creidts, full credits. 10 million solar panels would be up shortly, thousands of new windchargers, millions of electric cars, etc.
No need to cap carbon smokestack emissions then, everyone and their cuzzin leroy would be going renewable voluntarily, because it would be a much better deal for them. That's the government carrot approach. But see, that would REALLY reduce carbon emissions and spur alternative energy..but it would lessen the tax income a little at first and also a few big investment banks wouldn't be getting their cut. So they need the stick approach, works better for them, plus rewards their controllers, which is the important part and why this was rushed through, same as all the other economic shenanigans that have gone down lately, there's always a hidden reason:
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/taibbi-guess-whos-getting-rich-cap-an
Don't get me wrong, I love clean energy and more conservation and clean air and water, etc..I just think there are way better ways-and cheaper ways-to go about it.
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