[SK] CBC - Baloney Meter: Will Carbon Tax Really 'Siphon' $2.5 Billion from Saskatchewan?

There is no such thing as a revenue neutral tax, or at least nothing that exists that gives the warm feeling that "revenue neutral" implies.

I always figured that a per capita rebate would be a good way to do it. You tax the thing you want to discourage and then give people the money back as an incentive to lower their footprint to below the mean average.

It would punish people who for whatever reason live in areas where they need to rely more on high energy living, be they in remote areas or otherwise, but it would also serve as a relatively low impact pressure on individual and market choices away from that where possible and thus towards living with a reduced footprint.

Obviously it would have an impact and would impact some communities more than others, but a good part of that would be offset with the per capita rebate. A carbon tax would actually be very close to what Milton Friedman had intended in terms of paying for his Negative Income Tax proposal, in that you have a broad tax on everyone in order to help out the poor rather than simply soaking the rich for the benefit of the majority.

/r/CanadaPolitics Thread Parent Link - cbc.ca