Fairness
Claire McCaskill, for instance, twittered, "I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri." The point of cap-and-trade, as I understand it, is that it fairly disadvantages people and businesses who are dependent on cheap coal and are harming the atmosphere. ~ Ezra Klein
And fairly advantages those lucky enough with sufficient inborn virtue to live and work in regions dependent on something else? I don’t want to belabor this point – I’ve already belabored it at great length here, here, here, here, here, here, and probably also elsewhere, though I’m not going to stand even 80% behind all of that – but it’s simply true that there is something at least prima facie unfair about raising the cost of a range of technologies that are relied on most heavily by those from the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, and who often don’t have at their disposal an especially wide range of alternatives. People like me, Ezra, and Claire McCaskill likely won’t bear a heavy burden if a serious tax on carbon is passed, both because we’ve got a fair amount of financial flexibility and also because we live in regions that provide the resources that make a low-emissions lifestyle possible. But many of the people who live in low-density, coal-dependent parts of the country where serious mass transit options aren’t available don’t live in those places because they chose to; and if they did so choose, then the choice almost certainly had nothing to do with a deep desire to destroy the planet by burning their way through a whole lotta coal. Isn’t designing a tax specifically to single out an externality associated with their lifestyle, even if it’s a lifestyle they have very little choice about, at least a little bit unfair?
Put differently, suppose it turned out that you were considerably more likely to do things that harm the atmosphere if you were a woman, or a minority, or a homosexual, or an obese person, or someone with a medical condition that sort of snuck up on you but you really could have avoided. (Hell, suppose it turned out that there were significant externalities associated with the sport of cheerleading.) In those situations, would it be fair to impose a tax on those activities, notwithstanding the fact that such a tax would be, in at least some sense, discriminatory? Which of these situations are ones in which such a tax would be fair? In which cases wouldn’t it be? And what’s the principled reason to put a tax on the lifestyles of poor Missourians in the “fair” column rather than the “unfair” one?
I don’t raise these as devastating objections to the very idea of a tax on carbon; coupled with a sharp reduction of the payroll tax and significant investment in low-carbon infrastructure development for the most affected regions, it seems to me that such a tax is the best emissions-reducing tool we’ve got, even if it’s a bit of a clumsy one. But just as it’s surely necessary to consider the possible effects of global warming on people living south of Key West, it seems to me that we well-to-do urbanite bloggers would do well to show a bit more sympathy for the lives and livelihoods of the people on whom our favored policy ideas are likely to put a significant strain.
Filed under: energy, environment, taxation
Fair, in politics, is a meaningless word. People say it’s unfair to take tax dollars to support social programs in poverty-stricken communities, but fail to ask if it’s fair for people to be born into poverty-stricken communities in the first place. Is it unfair for people in coal dependent rural areas to pay for carbon? I don’t know. Is it more unfair than Bangladesh being swallowed by the sea?
As your final paragraph indicates, it’s got to take serious cost-benefit analysis, which is difficult, when everyone contributes to the problem but not everyone is burdened to the same degree. It’s a muddle. I just don’t know that “fair” has enough meaning to bother worrying about.
As far as well-to-do urbanite bloggers and their lack of sympathy, I think that that is neither dispositive of everything, nor irrelevant– it can’t mean everything, but it must mean something. But such things have to be evenly applied, so that well-to-do DC area libertarians working for think tanks and magazines should also demonstrate greater sympathy to those who, unlike themselves, lack health insurance. And yet you’ve scolded me, angrily, for suggesting that very thing.
But we needn’t take that as a given, right? Clearly the word can be given meaning, and that’s what I’m trying to do here.
That’s because I don’t think there really was a lack of “sympathy” at all in that instance, but whatever – fairness, right? So when should I expect left-leaning bloggers to start citing stats about the coal-dependence of the rural poor as often as they throw around (often exaggerated) numbers about the uninsured?
That’s because I don’t think there really was a lack of “sympathy” at all in that instance
But reasonable people can disagree about that. Can’t they?
Sure, and I never implied otherwise.
John, you have a point. On the other hand, “polluter pays” does seem like like a justifiable principle, at least prima facie. So, I can see moral principles clashing and moral intuitions pulling in different directions here. But as you rightly point out, this doesn’t have to be an either-or since well-designed policy should combine limiting emissions with “green” development. Plus, we effete urban types shouldn’t get too complacent, since even our lifestyles are likely to be wildly overconsumptive vis-a-vis the rest of the world.
This is certainly right; the problem is that many of the heaviest polluters are polluters by accident rather than any real fault of their own, and that’s what complicates things.
Okay. But the first problem is that, at least when it comes to carbon, we emit much less per capita than poor rural folks. And then the other is that much of “the rest of the world” consumes so little because they’re far below what we regard as the poverty line.