Over the next 12 months, we’ll have more polls on pricing carbon than we can poke a stick at – some more valuable than others – so it’s probably worth taking a squiz at where public views of carbon pricing sit at the starting gates of what will probably be a bit of a rollercoaster that most of the country will get sick to death of before it ever gets implemented.
The last Nielsen poll taken back on the 12th February is as good a place as any to start. They asked the basic question:
Do you support or oppose the introduction of a price on Carbon?
Breaking the answers down by age, region, gender and voting intentions we get:
Even though the Nielsen polls run a sample of 1400 (MoE ~2.6%), some of the breakdowns will have quite small subsamples (gender ~4%, age groups ~5%) so treat them as indicative rather than exact.
We see the usual suspects turn up in the demographics – where support starts out high with the young and weakens as we move through into the older cohorts, and where men are both more oppositionalist and more certain in their beliefs than women, by a significant margin. We’ve consistently seen these same patterns before with climate change questions generally (things like do you believe global warming is happening? Do you believe it is man made? etc), as well as polls on the old proposed CPRS .
What’s also interesting is how Labor and Coalition voters are mirror images of each other (around 60/30), as too are capital city and non-capital city respondents (around 40/50).
Another issue worth mentioning is how the strength of opinion plays out across age cohorts. If we compare those with generic positions (simple support and oppose) against those with strong positions (strongly support and strongly oppose), what we see is that position strength increases significantly with age, and a much larger proportion of men than women hold strong positions on carbon pricing.
As we saw with the ETS when it was merely an abstract proposition – something that could happen in the future – support for the policy was always somewhere between a large plurality to a large majority. But once the ETS changed from being a generic concept to a specific one, once the ETS changed from being “Oh yeah, that ETS thing that will help climate change” to “This thing with details and will cost me money”, support for the ETS dropped significantly.
While the public supported the idea of any given ETS, that support collapsed when that ‘any given’ ETS changed into a (and probably any) specific ETS.
We should expect to see the exact same thing happen here with this ETS as well, particularly since the brains trust at ALP Central thought it would be a smashing idea to cede ground on Day 1 and effectively admit that over the first three to five years it will be a carbon tax rather than an ETS with a fixed price, letting the meme get away from them. Nice work guys – really missing the obvious about the political connotations the word “tax” carries in the real world.
Another issue where we should expect to see some significant change in public opinion is on the broad notion of willingness to pay for any action on climate change. Last year (as well as in 2008), the Lowy Institute included willingness to pay questions as part of their annual Lowy Poll, specifically in regard to electricity prices. The question asked was:
One suggested way of tackling climate change is to increase the price of electricity. If it helped solve climate change how much extra would you be willing to pay each month on your electricity bill? Please say an amount, rounded off to the nearest ten dollars.
If we look at the 2008 and 2010 results, as well as the change over that 2 year period, this is what we get:
Back in 2008 when the idea was – again- more abstract than real, only 21% of the population was not prepared to pay anything while 71% was prepared to pay at least 1 to 10 dollars per month.
In 2010, as the reality of action approached and the partisan politics became strongly polarised, the number of people prepared to pay something dropped 12 points to 59%, boosting the not prepared to pay anything response to 1/3rd of the population. It’s worth noting that the big demographic mover here was the over 60’s, increasing the proportion not willing to pay anything from 23 to 43 points.
Expect to see the willingness to pay – which goes to the very core of public support for a carbon price – to contract even further now that it’s crunch time.
The problem that Labor has here comes down to a number of groups, two of which are worth mentioning – the first being older people, particularly fixed income older people. The second being middle income families with 1.5+ earners (blue collar workers are another group – but that’s worth another post all to itself).
The first group is nearly always a right off for Labor in the broadest sense of the phrase, so it doesn’t really matter what either major party does or say with that mob since it has the smallest swinging voter proportion of any age cohort, the most strongly held views of any age cohort as Policy Day approaches and, if history is anything to go by, a profound ability to dismiss what they don’t want to hear should it ever interrupt their preconceptions. They’ll bitch and moan and carry on even if the compensation outweighed their additional costs by 6 to 1.
The latter poses a delicate political problem for Labor, primarily because of the reality of their socioeconomic situation. If you are a middle income family in Australia today with 1.5 incomes and you are actually struggling with the cost of living without having some genuinely rare set of extenuating circumstances – it’s entirely your own fault.
The politics of personal responsibility with middle income earners is difficult not only because they make up a significant proportion of true swing voters that happen to live in generally marginal seats, but also because their self-perceived problems are often much larger than the reality of those problems and they simply don’t want to hear about being told otherwise. It works this way for both parties though – for instance, in the lead up to the 2007 election, the fear of Workchoices among this group was often much larger than the actual situation they’d likely ever face under Workchoices, because they believed their household financial circumstances were much more problematic and delicate than they, in fact, were.
Convincing this group that (a) compensation will mostly match expenditure and that (b) they can afford to pay any residual however small, is a hiding looking for a bare arse to happen on.
So we shouldn’t be surprised to see some hit on the Labor vote, particularly over the short term but perhaps significantly longer – that will depend on Gillard and her ability to organise some relatively authoritative coalition of business and community interests to back the policy loudly and act as a counterweight to the forces that will be rallied against it, while making the Coalition look shrill and nonsensical.
Also worth noting is that NSW has been the state that has been most hostile to carbon pricing and global warming over the last 12 months. NSW has generally been the state most against any given policy over the last 12 months, so there may well be some generic grumpiness at play in the state that might be partially cleansed from the system when they get to take it out on the NSW state government in a few weeks time. It will be interesting to see if/how the dynamics of NSW voters changes after the State election.
127 Comments
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 » Show All
Possum #42. Sorry I forgot to put a winking smiley face at the end of my post #40 O_o
Well said kdkh@50
My initial thoughts were does bluepill know the difference between long and short term carbon cycles? That given however we should embrace these types of ideas not as a panacea for our ills but as a part of the solution. I also believe that biochar holds great possibilities. It is time that we started to get serious about getting some of that excess atmospheric carbon back into longer term cycles.
I would like to see the break down of people who want a carbon tax but also expect to get compensation from the government – ie… they won’t have to pay anyway ….
I am a lib voter and am in favor of a carbon tax but with NO compensation – that way everybody shares the pain
Dude – exactly. The entire Labor/Greens message to voters is “Don’t worry, this won’t hurt a bit, not for you anyway.” The only ones actually willing to pay for it are on the liberal side.
freecountry #54 Clearly not, haven’t you been watching the news?
twobob #52
Biochar certainly does look interesting. The main limitation from my understanding is that as practices it seems to be only suitable for use in certain climatic zones.
More lame and pathetic ‘gotcha’ posts from JamesK and the rightard cheer squad.
FC: that’s Liberal, not liberal, and, as Black Cocky says, pull the other one. I see no indication that the Greedy Party are willing to do anything but shift the cost of doing anything about CO2-e onto the consumer. From Grog:
On Tuesday the PM rather nicely explain the whole way a carbon price works:
Ms GILLARD–Let me explain in detail our mechanism for pricing carbon. The first proposition is an incredibly simple one. At the moment carbon pollution can be released into the atmosphere for free. There is no disincentive for doing that. We will put a price on carbon, a price on every unit of carbon pollution. It will be paid for by businesses and as a result, because our business community is smart and adaptable and innovative, they will work out ways of pursuing their business and generating less carbon pollution. They will work out ways of making sure they pay less of a price when carbon is priced.
Then they will enter into contracts, they will make investments on the basis of understanding the rules and understanding that carbon will be priced. And as they go about making those transitions, innovating, making the new investments of the future, we will work with those businesses in transition to a clean economy.
Having priced carbon and seen that innovation, yes, there will be pricing impacts; that is absolutely right. That is the whole point: to make goods that are generated with more carbon pollution relatively more expensive than goods that are generated with less carbon pollution. But because we are a Labor government this will be done in a fair way. We will assist households as we transition with this new carbon price.
What that means is that people will walk into a shop with money in their pocket, the government having provided them with assistance. They will see the price signals on the shelves in front of them—things with less pollution, less expensive; things with more pollution, more expensive—and they too will adapt and change. They will choose the lower pollution products, which is exactly what we want them to do. Between the business investment and innovation, between households who have been assisted in a fair way by a Labor government responding to price signals, we will see a transition to a cleaner economy, to a low-pollution economy.
When Rudd was PM there was a lot of criticism because he didn’t outline how an ETS worked – mostly because he was very reticent to talk price rises. Here Gillard has pretty nicely explained it all – including the fact that compensation does not make it a mere transfer of money from us to the Govt and back. To suggest it is so is like saying when you get a pay rise you stop worrying about the price of things. The key is at the moment “clean energy” is more expensive because burning coal is comparably cheap because they don’t have to pay for the carbon emissions. After a carbon price is in place they will.
Dude: I hope you mean NO compensation for CO2-e producers, ’cause if you mean no compensation for low-income consumers, you can go whistle. No Labor/Green/sane Independent coalition (ie the Feds for at least the next 2 years) is going to push a regressive tax.
Sorry, I should have included the punchline para from Grog:
Will it change behaviour of consumers and producers overnight. No of course not, but it will happen (to quote Pantene) – it will happen because there will finally be a financial driver in place. Under a “direct action” (what a load of focus driven bollocks that term is) you have to pay producers to be cleaner. It’s akin to trying to reduce smoking by paying tobacco manufacturers to make less harmful cigarettes. They’ll go through the motions, but in the end the financial imperative of the profit motive will be for them to get as many people to smoke as possible, just as it is with energy suppliers to get as many people as possible using their energy that they produce for the cheapest possible price.
rhwombat – Here’s the key point: “It will be paid for by businesses …”
And compensated to businesses, or to individuals who use those businesses. Who will say next year, look at all the renewable R&D we’re doing, look at all the low-emission projects we’ve got in the pipeline, these are costing us even more than the carbon price for now, we need even more compensation than last year, over and above any delta in carbon price. Or, we don’t want to be greedy, but look at our poor customers, if you don’t trust us with further compensation, at least have mercy on them.
And the government will say: Increase the pro-rata compensation for you? Pull the other one. You think I fell off the back of a truck yesterday. The compensation will remain at its current pro-rata level and not one cent higher. See, I’m tough.
The businesses will scream blue murder to cover up the fact that that was the most they were hoping for in the first place. And the same charade will repeat year after year.
I take responsibility for my own pollution. Like many people, I’ve been paying my own voluntary premium for renewable energy in my power bill for years. I even invested (and lost) a substantial amount of money in a wind power company because I never anticipated that governments would pull the rug out from under it, and I was less than amused to find that my own wind power investments were not even on the approved list of renewable sources I was paying a voluntary premium for. But I went on paying it anyway. I don’t shake my fist at the energy industry when it does my dirty work for me, I pay it to do clean work.
Only the make-someone-else-pay brigade wants to avoid taking any responsibility for their own consumption of pollution.
FC: and your point is? It seems to me that the make-someone-else-pay-brigade consists of the CO2-e producers who worship the Koch Brothers. In two words: PhonyTone’s Liberals. Or are you, too, arguing for another regressive taxation regime?
kdkd #48
Yes. I can. If it is going to be worth it in terms of debate.. I will see first what the level of the discussion will be. Not that I’m lazy but I have put a lot of work into this and some information has been prepared for.. political organisations.
1. Your concern about re-emergence is as common as it is nearly irrelevant. If bamboo is used to replace materials currently used for building/flooring/furniture in particular, there is no reason to suspect it won’t last for scores or even hundreds of years before CO2 release if not burnt. In any case sequestration of ANY CO2 is always going to be a more realistic option than reducing emitters to Zero emissions. You get China and India to do that, you can have my house!
2. Your concern about nutrients and water is an issue, though regeneration of Bamboo plantations is a 5-6 year cycle not 15-20 for native hardwoods. Thus if you got true replacement, you will achieve a 3:1 replacement for hardwoods (they can remain in the ground and the bamboo replaces it). In tropical regions, there is no argument for water need and little for nutrient depletion. Chinese have cultivated some stands for thousands of years with careful horticulture.
Cheers
Responsibility.
@Blue Pill. Thanks for the spell check. I wish I was Gen-Y but the truth is my age is somewhere in between the Gen-Ys and yourself, we can play a guessing game of assumptions if you like and see who gets the closest?
Nice try by the way dismissing those statistics but I think those stats tell a story, you seem to be making the case that as people grow older they become poorer (and yet they still manage to pay for those damn gen-y phone bills)?
If that’s not what your implying and you believe baby boomers are just as concerned about fixing the problem then perhaps you can enlighten us on what is the real reason for this apparent unwillingness to spend?
Interesting idea with the Bamboo by the way just a quick question though, according to the Coal Association Australia consumed 138.5 million tonnes of coal in 2006 alone so if Bamboo has a life cycle of 5 years you would need to plant enough bamboo to absorb the equivalent carbon content of 692 million tonnes of coal per crop just to offset coal consumption?
Add to that every other source of CO2 in Australia and that sounds like one hell of a lot of bamboo?
@JamesK. Sorry ol’ chap if we don’t take our climate change (or any other) advice from a rugby player with a pass in commerce.
Real wisdom is admitting you don’t have all the answers only a fool thinks they do.
Hypocrisy and dishonesty are the sine qua non of leftists.
The politics of the left are of personal smear, so-called identity politics and the politics of narcissism (look-at-me being righteously indignant/caring).
The irony of the typically self-aggrandising, self-important leftists accusing others of arrogance is not lost on anybody but themselves.
Some eventually see error of their ways… perhaps even a damascene conversion so-to-speak.
I just read a good example:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/03/if_youre_not_outraged_youre_no.html
Among other things the author says:
“The left’s legendary compassion is politically expedient, though elaborately disguised……………. Not only is the left’s outrage ego-based, but it is rooted in greed.”
Indeed it is.
It’s never to late shane…… tho’ you may need the professional help of a clinical psychologist in order that well known narcissistic fragility in the process of…. shall we say…. befriending the truth……. is supported. Darth Vader eventually returned to the Light Side….. but it killed him.
If your religion wasn’t climate change, of course, you might then have your first redemptive transpersonal spiritual experience……
Do pigs fly?.
Can we make a silk purse out a sow’s ear?
Or does shane like rollin’ in the proverbial a tad too much?
Can we all just agree to totally ignore deniers? Seriously the true climate debate ended about a decade ago in the rest of the educated world, it’s getting down right embarrasing and serves only as a distraction.
Stepping off a plane in an Australian airport feels like getting out of a time machine somewhere in the 1980′s and the self importance of Australians who believe that their opinion on the science actually matters is ridiculous.
They all love to have these blogosphere “debates” so they can feel important where one innumerate cuts and paste a quote from wikipedia then another innumerate retaliates with a quote from a newspaper journalist, then someone else chimes in with their own “idea” on how to save the world as though thousands of scientists with PHD’s couldn’t work it out and this is what you call progress.
The fact Australia has the worst pollution record in the developed world speaks volumes about your progress so just man up, pay the carbon tax and stop whinging you weak human beings.
Who’s the denier, Shane? You shout about pollution, but you deny you’re even responsible for cleaning it up and you want someone else to pay for it. People like you always want someone else to pay.
FC. Your right theres no deniers
It’s working already.
Dunno why JamesK, freecountry et al come here at all with their great long windy posts.
Always getting shafted, always coming back for more.
http://thefailedestate.blogspot.com/2011/03/hitting-them-where-it-hurts.html
calyptorhyncus – I don’t know what you mean by “getting shafted”, but this thread went very quiet after my post #60 giving my reasons why trying to deny responsibility is both morally and practically a hollow policy. I think it went quiet because most people are intelligent enough to stop and think about that.
FC: We went quiet because there is no gain (and little entertainment) in debating right-wing prats, whose justification for having a “bugger you I’m alright Jack” is either the good old Tory “But I deserve my privilege, unlike those ghastly socialist oafs” (vide FC), or the sneering adolescent Randianism “If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll get Daddy to fire you…you…you…socialist!” (a la JamesKKK). Both of you keep bleating about we dreadful socialists who are hypocrites and liars, and who keep saying dreadful things about that nice Mr Abbott’s policy of denying that any of this climate change stuff needs anything to change. Yeah, FC, responsibility…as practiced by the Cheney Republicans and Teabaggers. As opposed to the coalition of the sane, lead by Gillard & Brown, who do actually recognise that the tissue of Rupertarian lies that have shielded you and your plutocratic, anti-socialist mates is shredding, and we can now all see the greedy self interest that motivates the poison. Responsibility is accepting that our kids are more important than your profits. Your side do not take any responsibility, personal or otherwise. Stop bleating.
FC. With regards to post 60 I’m not sure how you think Carbon Tax supporters aren’t taking reponsibility, given the scare campaign they are clearly prepared to spend a lot?
The reality is that if the tax is designer properly then neither consumers, government or 99% of businesses will have to pay much if anything.
The real result will be a shift in income/wealth from those companies, shareholders and consumers who foolishly refused to manage their political risk given the obvious ground swell of climate change support over the last decade to those who were prudent enough to take the right steps.
As a keen liberal party supporter you should applaud this, this is free markets at work, good management is rewarded and bad management punished.
The true price distortions in the market were in the pre-carbon tax years when pollution was just treated as an externality.
Also FC with regards to post 60 are you referring to Infigen energy that cost you so much? If that’s the case then it was the increase in the A$ that cost you not the government.
Interesting to see Newspoll’s figures on support http://www.newspoll.com.au/image_uploads/100204%20Climate%20Change%20+%20CPRS.pdf
(page 2).
When you call it a Carbon “scheme” and not a tax it became less popular as people learned more. Oct 08 72% support……Sept 09 67%…….Feb 10 57%
rhwombat, Show me the point where you take any responsibility. Actually, show me the point where you do anything except gratifying yourself through name-calling.
Can’t help thinking that they should have aimed at electicity only. Tax production and give the money to the wholesale purchasers eg $20 per ton on power stations, total distributed/shared to origin energy and others on the amount of energy they purchase regardless of source. Makes non-carbon electricity relatively cheaper and involves virtually no administration.
I don’t actually mind the name calling, I expect it from those at the far left end of the IQ bell curve who have no other way of arguing. It’s the constant misrepresentation of what’s written right in front of you, when a person says A and you insist he said B because that’s what you think some stereotype you’re fixated on should say, that pisses me off.
And Shane, what are you, suddenly an equities analyst? The rise of the AUD is good for Australian energy assets but bad for Infigen’s overseas assets when cashflows are converted back to AUD. Don’t believe everything the Treasurer tells you. Anyway, it wasn’t Infigen where I lost money but its original parent company, and I discussed two of the factors which contributed to its demise here. There were other factors but those were the two that really got my goat: the anti-jobs housing speculation subsidy that crowded out business finance during the GFC, with fatal results for some, and the discriminatory GreenPower advantage that kicked its Infigen assets for having been ahead of its time on wind power.
I see rhdingbat is smearing everyone who doesn’t share his sick worldview again.
He very apparently never gets tired of shoutin’ down “kochsuckers” and “teabaggers” etc. after nausea-inducing etc……
Talk of equities reminds me that the only difference between climate alarmists and Bernie Madoff, is that Madoff didn’t have any good intentions to begin with…….
Astonishingly many of the left do actually mean well.
But the ensuing inevitable ponzi scheme and its effects are similar.
Mind you, calyx, shane and rhdingbat very obviously couldn’t even have ‘meaning well’ as an excuse’.
How is it possible to nurture ‘good intentions’ whilst being so thoroughly unpleasant?
The perennial mouth-foaming-indignant types know only some variant of the political left’s essential core message:
‘The rest of the world owes us a living’ .
The rage is fully expressed at those perceived to be between the leftist and his ‘human rights’ . Presumably ‘the world’ after she balks throwing good money after bad.
Of course this inexorably, gradually, but sometimes quite quickly, erodes human dignity rather than the supposed well-meaning antithesis.
Whilst the meaning, rather than the message of the political left could be translated as:
‘Much….much more poverty and misery for all’ ….. equally distributed.
Well…. except for the Orwellian ACT and North Fitzroy-like major city enclaved kalutura who are much more ‘equal’ than the ignorant callow peasants in the ‘burbs’……
And what’s with the sudden supposed deep concern for “children”?
Leftists don’t have any children…or very few…… isn’t that so? I mean is’s hardly encouraged is it?
And if you ‘make a mistake’….. we all know what we’re supposed to do……. right?
It’s hardly worse than a visit to the dentist……
And best of all…. (and unlike the dentist)…. it’s free!……… no questions asked.
100,000/yr in a pop. of 22 million………..
Best of all it’s a ‘right’ paid for by taxes taken from the rubes in the ‘burbs……… Whether they’re ethically and morally opposed to abortion-on-demand or not……
The trouble is we need even more children to feed the ponzi scheme to keep it going. Stealing from the future is yet another consequence of leftism….. The federal government owes $190 billion and growing and plans on borrowing a further $30 to $60 billion more (it won’t be counted as debt….. it’s an ‘investment’) to connect the hyenas to superhighway speed internet porn…
And now despite the fact that, of all the truly great thinkers recorded in civilisational history, none ever thought marriage was anything other than union of a man and woman, the political left now have this new bright idea……
Come to think of it……none of history’s great minds thought that it was a woman’s sole ‘right’ to terminate the life gestating in her womb either……
Neither did any think that interfering with private property rights could not but impinge on the natural or unalienable rights of life and individual liberty.
And after these ‘great ideas’ are finally realised, human misery of greater magnitude always ensues. Always……
Well…. the thinking behind the ‘great ideas’ is hardly rigorous.
It’s essentially emotive stage one thinking.
And that emotion behind the ‘thinking’ is ……. rage.
That’s the self same uncontrolled juvenile emotion then projected on to “the greedy self interest that motivates the poison” that is a conservative.
Leftists follow authority slavishly over the cliff, lemming-like, in the name of their latest-bestest-newest ‘great idea’.
No need to fear drowning in The Last Great Bob Brown Coal-Mining Flood as our formerly enlightened civilisation is already in the throes of a self-inflicted death spiral……
The jihadis, too, should take off those heavy vests, stay at home, put their feet up and watch our decadent culture suicide on CNN or the BBC without the need to stress their collective vocal cords with pre-suicide-bomb screams of “Allahu Akbar”.
Ahmadinejad et al know who their ‘friends’ are……..
JamesK #80 When an elderly male conservative gets on to abortion… stand by with the anti-seizure medicine.
rhwombat, in an extraordinary 180° reversal of what I’m saying, claims that my message is “bugger you I’m alright Jack”. In fact that’s your message, rhwombat, not mine. Or as JamesK puts it, “The rest of the world owes us a living.” And by extension: “The people I’ve been paying to do my dirty work for me now owe me the cost of cleaning up that dirty work.”
My message is that this policy is based on moral cowardice, and it won’t work. If the carbon tax is designed on this principle, then the cost of it to consumers will be much higher than the amount of revenue it raises, which means the “compensation” you’re counting on will be as ineffective as the emission reduction.
On the other hand, if it’s done the way I suggest, then emission reduction will be effective, and the cost to Australian consumers will be lower, perhaps even insignificant. That way is:
1. The consumer, not the producer, bears the responsibility for emissions;
2. The consumer, not the producer, is compensated through a commensurate reduction in the company tax rate for all businesses;
3. The consumer, not the producer, pays for emissions estimated to go into imports, and pays nothing for emissions that go into exports (because he’s not the one consuming those exports).
@FreeCountry. I’m not a professional share analyst but it’s not hard to see problems with Infigen when only 35% of their revenues come from Australia and the rest comes from the US$ and Euro but most of their funding is AU$. I haven’t looked into them extensively although when they took a hit last week I had a brief look then decided that they were to much of a risk because of those reasons and their level of gearing.
Given that fact it’s hard to see how Australian fiscal policy would have much to do with their troubles, my impression is that they tried to expand too quickly and got caught out by the GFC.
I don’t recall the treasurer saying anything relating to the issue though.
JamesKKK: Project much?
FC: OK, so you speculated and got burnt. To quote a well known humanitarian “Shit happens”. From your vehemence, I suspect you hedged your environmental sainthood by investing in coal, so hold the accusations of taking no responsibilty until you know that I’m not. As you know from past pub arguments here at Poss’s place, I’m not at the left end of your precious bell curve (trust you to raise that spectre) for IQ, income or social responsibility. Your entire schtick seems to be that you matter, and those dreadful socialists keep saying that you don’t. I’m not accusing you of being a rabid wingnut (like JamesKKK, vide spluttering incoherence of @80) but arguing that the “producer” should not have to pay for the CO2-e that they make profit from is like saying that the big miners should be able to flog the stuff they dig up without paying anything other than the cost of digging it up. Do you really think that? I don’t. I take my responsibility to pay for the privilege of living in this society seriously. Do you?
It’s not so much that the producer should not have to pay; it’s that they won’t. Attempting to shift the burden which rightfully belongs to the consumer, does not work. The nature of capital is that it reallocates itself to avoid costs. Just like Shane avoiding Infigen to avoid the cost of a low Euro value, other investors like the managers of your superannuation account will downgrade shares that face a tax hike. You can spray sarcasm and abuse until you’re blue in the face, but trying to shift your responsibility onto someone you consider richer than you (but actually, a lot of that capital is mums-and-dads superannuation) simply doesn’t work. That’s the problem with cowardice.
Ar least rhdingbat is is consistent.
Nary an intelligent rebuttal raised…. just more sneer and slime.
Typical leftist that he is.
The only projection going on here rh is of the psychological variety and all of it from you.
No FC, cowardice is trying to get others to make money for you, by “investing” in gambling schemes with sharks (like JamesKKK’s string-pullers), then bleating on blogs that it’s all those bloody socialist’s fault when it goes bottoms up in the GFC. You got shafted by the invisible hand: Madoff was one of your lot, not ours. Most of us do something called a job, for which we are paid things called wages, on which we are taxed to provide basics like hospitals, schools, transport and other infrastructure, and the people who run them (who are us). Most of us are resigned to pay a price for trying to ameliorate the damage done by economic “growth”, including CO2-e, with the potential to affect planetary equilibrium in unprecedented ways. Of course we consumers will pay: your “producers” (“owners” in the old class vernacular) will pass on the cost. But for all your blustering of cowardice and responsibility, you are still desperately trying to convince the gathered punters in Poss’s virtual pub that we must not stop the flow of that sweet, sweet shareholder profit on which your membership of the investor class depends. We tried that with 11 years of Little Johnny, and 8 years of Cheney’s glove puppet. You lost. Good luck with PhoneyTones and his band of JamesKKK clones.
Ugh… can anybody bear rhdimwit’s hypocrisy?
The grand plan he supports is the example par excellence of the nexus of big government and big business.
Lawyers, banks and trading houses are licking their lips with barely concealed avarice.
Leftists and big-business love each other. The state can guarantee big business’ position and customers whilst hobbling competition from smaller players.
A life of black tie dinners, the opera, a grand social existence for the state and management class in sinecures positions of power and wealth. Thsese are the people called in the soviet communist era the kalutura.
The people who essentially replace the old aristocracies of wealth and rank, secure and walled off from the drone-masses in the burbs, who dutifully work making their own lives bearable, hoping some day that they or their children will be tapped out to join the elite state class as a manager.
Leftists and big business are cosy because both are driven by greed and a lust for power, along with a sense of entitlement.
Their spokesman are clowns like Mike Carlton and Ross Gittins who love nothing better than to admire themselves in the mirror.
Rhdimwit doesn’t belong in their class (NOC).
He’s the pig ugly henchman hired help and who sycophantically serves his betters for scraps believing in their superiority.
He’s a total dolt of course but his usefulness doesn’t require an intellect……..
rhwombat – Do you have a superannuation account? The Australian superannuation pool is now $1.23 trillion. About 30 per cent of that is in Australian share funds. That’s $370 billion. The total market capitalization of ASX listed stocks is $1.3 trillion. $1 in every $3.50 of Australian share capitalization is Australian superannuation funds being moved around by our fund managers to minimize costs and maximise revenue. The easiest way for them to avoid the cost of dealing in coal and the cost of not dealing in coal is simply to allocate less of that money to Australian shares and more to international shares – on our behalf. These capitalists you hate so much are us, you and me, you schmuck.
FC: Oy vey! So I’m a schmuck already! Who knew?
Yes I have a superannuation account which I fund from the job that I expect to keep doing well for the next 2-3 decades. Neither you, nor I, nor the vast majority of Australians have any control of where those funds are invested. I don’t “hate” the money managers, but neither do I admire them with such dog-like devotion in the wake of the GFC. What I don’t admire from you (hate is much too strong a term) is the accusation of cowardice and dereliction of responsibility (and much worse from the spittle-flecked keyboard of JamesKKK), in the face of your special pleading for exemption from the cost of CO2-e because you are of the investor class, and depend on others to make your money for you. Perhaps you are motivated by fear, not greed, but to claim identity with the super funds confirms my impression of your hypocrisy. You have to pay for the future too.
We’ve come full circle back to the source of your denial. Capital can always avoid a tax, and if it can, it will, and all your invective will not change that. Consumers cannot avoid a tax if it’s designed correctly. That’s why GST raises revenue so efficiently while taxes like company tax and capital gains tax do not. If you don’t accept that, take it up with Ken Henry, not with me. This is all explained in the Henry Tax Review documents online.
This aligns with the fact that consumers have been the biggest beneficiaries of the coal burned on their behalf. It also aligns with the fact that consumers are already paying a burden for the 30% company tax rate far in excess of the revenue it raises. This “excess burden” can be quantified and that’s what they did for the Henry Review: the marginal cost to consumers (not to investors) of every $1.00 raised in company tax at the current rate is $1.40, compared to $1.08 for every $1.00 raised in GST.
The solution to this is simplicity itself: by making the carbon tax a tax on the consumption of carbon emissions, instead of on production of emissions, and by offsetting the tax with a reduction in the company tax rate, and if we assume the “excess burden” of carbon tax is roughly comparable with that of company tax, the net cost to consumers would be approximately zero, as would the net cost to investors.
But if you want to be a coward about this, deny your own responsibility and try to shift it to investors, they will take the easy way out by moving their (and your and my) capital elsewhere. There will be no net reduction of emissions; the emissions will simply be done somewhere else, and all the compensation you think they owe you will not be enough to avoid making poor families a lot poorer.
“Most of us are resigned to pay a price for trying to ameliorate the damage done by economic “growth”, including CO2-e, with the potential to affect planetary equilibrium in unprecedented ways.” says rhdingbat in case we hadn’t understood him in his many previous sickeningly similar oft repeated ‘thoughts’. And that’s just in this thread……
The only “affect (sic)”, in disequilibrium, is his rapid and repeated alternating between righteous indignation and rage.
He’s quite incapable of argument.
rh-Igor’s only weapons are filthy smear and endless repetition of his Masters’ talking points.
rhdingbat is dense as a Tasmanian old-growth hardwood eucalypt.
More to the point, he is utterly dishonest.
Presumably like so many leftists lying and bare-faced denying of facts laid out in front of him is somehow okay in the service of what his Masters have said is the higher good.
To paraphrase Tennyson: ‘His is not to reason why, his is but to lie and deny’.
Not that I’m implying he has the necessary apparatus to reason, you understand …….
FC: What “compensation you think they owe you”? I’m already in the top tax bracket, and I’m PAYG. I have invested quite heavily in making my family as low emitting as we can be, including moving to live within walking distance from my work. I’m not going to be compensated in any way. How is that cowardice or lack of personal responsibility? What’s the alternative to Julia Gillard’s politically brave decision to start pricing carbon, now? JamesKKK’s rabid right denialism? Abbott’s “Free Enterprise” we-will-determine-who-emits-efficantly-and-ask-them-nicely-to-lay-off-a-bit-if-we-compensate-them-in-a-manner-to-which-they-are-accustomed? Your “please tax the proles, not those of us who think we own things? You just want to practice your financial parasitism free from any moral calculus. Private investors are still either pirates or gamblers. You included.
Gee, for someone who didn’t even read half of what I said you seem to think you know a lot about how I make my bread. The “proles” as you call them, will be impoverished by the Labor plan you defend so ignorantly. They would be protected under the system I suggest. Even though the system I suggest is counterintuitive, which wouldn’t mean anything to a creature of emotions and intuition like yourself.
“Private investors are still either pirates or gamblers”
That’s radical position to take dingbat.
The Greens polling would go to low single digits overnight if Brown uttered similar poisonous dross.
You’re clearly an old school unreconstructed socialist at least ……if not a communist.
No European social democrat or democratic socialist would think that let alone say it.
Some of the incoming class od senatorial watermelons might think it but they don’t say it….yet
rhlooney asserts I’m guilty of “rabid denialism”, although the nuttier provides no facts, arguments or rebuttals.
Ad hominem slime aplenty……but no rational and most especially no honest debate engagement with freecountry, let alone me.
Hey maybe Stalin murdered only 10 million of his citizenry rather than wildly exaggerated 20 million?
You’re the denialist rh-dingbat.
A denialist of history, truth, facts and commonsense.
You’re actually an affront to decency.
FC: I’ve read your comments. Am I wrong about how you make your bread? How are the proletariat impoverished by the Labor plan, and how are they protected in your scheme – except by the compensatory mechanisms that you and JamesKKK have expended so much rage in decrying? By all means demonstrate cost to the consumer, but why is it fair to extract that cost from the people who have no economic choice but to commute to their jobs (or who can no longer work), while sparing the profit margin of the people who produce the CO2-e – and those who think they are entitled to their “investments”? The raison d’être of the current “Liberal” Party (“because we will scare away the magic invisible hand if we stop believing in it”) is very obviously pure self-serving bullshit in the light of the Labor-lead survival of the GFC. It’s not as if your special pleading will have any effect on the political landscape for the next 2 years anyway, Right-wing triumphalism over the current poll figures notwithstanding. To quote the old ad: “I’m sorry if I offend you”.
JamesK – The funniest part is that rhwombat is probably even now congratulating himself, from the comfort of his fairyland world, for having so incisively and analytically won the debate.
“Labor-lead survival of the GFC…….” says dipsh1t
Presumably China ‘survived’ the GFC ‘cos they’re communists……….
FC: Hilarious. Have fun with your new best friend, but please use a condom, ’cause you know what JamesKKK’s like when he’s excited. Slainte.
Please don’t abuse a toast from a noble culture dingbat
“Where the tongue slips, it speaks the truth” is an Irish saying but with the nefarious dingbat the only truth from him in a long series of offensive tosser rants is both unwittingly delivered and inadvertent.
Presumably the odious marsupial is shameless not only because he’s treacherous but also because he’s ‘as thick as two short planks.
That’s anoder oirish saying as well I tink…..
Pages: « 1 [2] 3 » Show All