Earth Day Update: Cap and Trade’s $3,900 per Family per Year Price Tag
Posted April 22nd, 2009 at 3.12pm in Energy and Environment.
The Weekly Standard has done yeoman’s work exposing the insane logic of an MIT professor, the St. Petersburg Times, and the Center for American Progress.
The controversy centers around a study by MIT professor John Reilly that shows a carbon cap and trade would cost the average American household $3,9000 a year. $800 of that figure comes from, according to Reilly, “the cost to the economy [that] involves all those actions people have to take to reduce their use of fossil fuels or find ways to use them without releasing [Green House Gases].” No one disputes that $800 a year cost. It’s the other $3,100 that Reilly, the St.Pete Times, and CAP want to disappear.
Reilly admits that cap and trade policies would cause energy prices for the average American family to rise by $3,128 a year. Reilly also admits that “Those costs do get passed to consumers and income earners in one way or another.”
But here is where Reilly gets creative. Reilly believes that since those extra energy taxes will be collected and then spent by the government in some way, they should not count as costs to the American family. He told the Weekly Standard:
It is not really a matter of returning it or not, no matter what happens this revenue gets recycled into the economy some way. In that regard, whether the money is specifically returned to households with a check that says “your share of GHG auction revenue”, used to cut someone’s taxes, used to pay for some government services that provide benefit to the public, or simply used to offset the deficit (therefore meaning lower Government debt and lower taxes sometime in the future when that debt comes due) is largely irrelevant in the calculation of the “average” household.
Got that? Anytime the government takes your money, whether it be in the form of an income tax, or payroll tax, or capital gains tax, according to Reilly and CAP, this actually does not cost American taxpayers anything because eventually the government will spend your money on something anyway.
Without this assumption, Reilly admitted to the Standard, “the cost would then be the Republican estimate [$3,128] plus the cost I estimate [$800].“
- Author: Conn Carroll
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April 22, 2009 David Venner, Soquel, Kalifornia writes:
GOVERNOR SCHWARGENEGGER AND THE CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARD:
READ THIS HERITAGE ARTICLE IN ” THE FOUNDRY” DATED APRIL 22, 2009 ————–
“CAP AND TRADE’S $3900.00 PER FAMILY PER
YEAR PRICE TAG”
DEAR ARNOLD; HOW DOES THE PRICE TAG ABOVE,FOR THE FEDERAL CAP AND TRADE TAX COMPARE TO CALIFORNIAS’ CAP AND TRADE TAX ESTIMATE????? DON’T YOU THINK THAT THE TWO TAXES, WHEN ADDED TOGETHER, WILL BANKRUPT MOST CALIFORNIANS??????????????????
CALIFORNIA STATE OFFICALS–YOU MUST READ THIS!!
DO YOU WANT ANOTHER “TEA-PARTY” IN SACRAMENTO??
David Venner, a worried Soquel California resident