Date published: 2006/09/02
The Financial Times (FT) has a weekend edition. Today's version has three main stories on the front page, one about whether Blair will announce when he will go (yawn), one about City of London "professionals" allegedly turning to drink because of the pressure of work (the poor dears), and one about West Ham football club (not the greatest football club in the world). So the front page is all gossip, and no news. This does not bode well. But most weekend newspapers are more full of gossip than news.
Fortunately the FT makes up for this poor start with an unusually balanced editorial (leader), "Greener than thou" (subscription service) about carbon taxes. They point out, for example, that if green taxes really make consumers change behaviour (which is what they allegedly are for), then the amount of tax will soon enough drop as consumption decreases. This is one of the stupidities (but by no means the only one) behind the recent Lib Dem proposal (which the Tories seem destined to copy) to charge extortionate road fund taxes for allegedly un-green cars. If people start buying smaller cars (as the Lib Dems allegedly want) then this leaves a black hole in the government's finances.
Unfortunately the best part of the editorial is the last paragraph, in particular the last sentence (this is unfortunate because not many people read editorials through to the end):
More generally, green taxes need to move beyond targeting the motorist. In the UK, fuel duties and vehicle excise duties have together brought in nearly £30bn; the climate change levy and the air passenger duty collectively bring in less than £2bn. Domestic fuel even enjoys a relative subsidy, with a lower rate of value-added tax than most products. It is a polluting, badly aimed way to help poorer households. Carbon is carbon, and should be taxed similarly whether it is from the kitchen, an SUV or Drax power station.
The ruling elite of the UK generally just want to extort more and more tax from motorists (recently allegedly for "green" reasons). But motorists are currently the only people who pay a carbon tax, nobody else does. As the FT says, "carbon is carbon, and should be taxed similarly whether it is from the kitchen, an SUV or Drax power station".
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