In a world full of problems the most complaints seem to hover around taxes, unemployment and the poisoned environment. Well, fellow complainers, you can relax. There is a solution out there that will solve all three problems. All we need to do is elect a president and congressmen with the guts to implement it.
Now I’m not smart enough to have figured this out all by myself, but I just came back from a short trip across our northern border ands while I was up there I found out about a brilliant, four year old tax that British Columbia has just raised and that could help with all of the above problems.
How does it work? Well, they charge polluters $30, per metric ton, of carbon dioxide. This makes it more expensive to pollute and over time reduces pollution because the higher cost of the polluting fuels makes those fuels less competitive in the marketplace.
I know, you’re going to say that we already do something like that but the way we do it is to enable one company that pollutes a lot to sell its carbon poundage to another company that doesn’t pollute much. That helps the non-polluting company make money but doesn’t do anything for the environment because the polluting company is still polluting at the same rate. The Canadians don’t do this. You can’t sell off your carbon at a low price, you must pay a government set tax on how much you pollute.
The key to this tax situation is that the money gained by the government is used to reduce personal and business income taxes, thereby making businesses more competitive in general and giving people more money to spend on goods and services, thereby creating demand. Lowering personal taxes makes Democrats happy just as lowering business taxes makes Republicans happy. As you can see this is not a regressive tax but actually a tax swap whereby one tax is used to lower other taxes and as a result we get a cleaner environment. But that’s not the end of it.
As anyone with any business sense will tell you, escalating taxes on fossil fuels will eventually raise their cost to a point where their use will be prohibitive. This will give rise to several situations, some good and some bad, at least at first.
Right now our country is in the midst of the biggest energy boom in years. Despite the naysayers of a few years ago who were predicting a drought in the energy market we are currently out producing our wildest estimates in oil and even our most outrageous fantasies in gas. What does this mean to the above? Well, it means that because of high production, the fuel companies will be able to drop prices and remain competitive but that can only go on for so long. The up side of that is that we can continue to raise the pollution tax to keep on a track with the energy companies ability to cut prices, thereby adding immeasurably to our ability to cut income and business taxes.
Eventually, of course, this raising of taxes and cutting of prices will reach a point of no return. That is the point where the job creation comes into play. With the possible exception of old fashioned underground coal mining no fossil fuel industry extent, creates as much employment as its profit margin or portion of GDP indicates it should. This has nothing to do with evil owners or greedy oil barons. It’s just a fact of life in that industry. It doesn’t take a hell of a lot of workers to create the flow necessary to keep our country moving. The largest need for labor is in the discovery and drilling processes of the oil and gas industries ( I am assuming that coal will be the first driven out of business) but once the oil or gas is discovered and the wells are producing, the need for labor drops off dramatically. It’s when the rising taxes and falling prices arrive at a point of no return, that the job creation steps in, because it’s a this point that replacement industries must take over.
We already have and are developing a number of alternate fuel industries from wind to battery to solar but the energy industries of the future are now only in their micro stages, and it is through them that we will create jobs and a clean environment, especially in the vehicle propulsion field, because it is in that field, that the solution to both employment and 100% pollution free travel, are on the horizon.
No, I’m not speaking of battery or hydrogen fueled cars, mainly because each depends on electricity to produce either the hydrogen gas or the battery power that propels them. This is just transferring the problem from its immediate source, the car, back to it’s original source, whatever, coal, oil or gas, that creates the electricity,
No, I am talking about a completely clean propulsion system, from its creation to its use. One of those possibilities is magnetic propulsion. I have seen a magnetic car and it works. It is the future. So why isn’t the future now? Because there is one huge drawback, if that is, you are only considering a clean environment. If you are also considering employment, that drawback becomes a godsend.
It seems that some very smart guys have designed a car that runs on the principals of magnetic attraction and repulsion. I’ve seen it work. The problem; it needs a whole different kind of road than the one that we have now for it to function. The road will have to contain a magnetic strip, and from the examples I have seen, it will be a far better road for all vehicles than the ones we have now, because it can also have all kinds of tech in it to guide us, repel us, melt snow, create automatic braking and speed control and new communication systems to make for a smoother, safer, 100% pollution free ride.
Of course, that problem is also the solution to the unemployment problem on a massive scale because in order to make it work we would have to rebuild every road in the country. How many jobs would that create? How much demand for product would those salaries fuel? How many private sector jobs would that demand create?
What would the British Columbia tax look like fiscally in the US? Experts claim that at its current rate it would raise about $145 billion a year. That would allow us to lower both personal and business taxes by 10% and still have about $35 billion left over to start the infrastructure bank needed to replace our roads. And the key is that the government doesn’t have to put up all the money. All it has to do is put up the guarantees. There is about $1.1 trillion of investible money sitting around in industry bank accounts. Give the investors a government guarantee and put the jobs up for bids and that money will magically appear and do what it is supposed to do, finance job growth, by replacing an ancient infrastructure.
Before I get off the soapbox and while we’re stalking about money, how many billions or even trillions would be saved every year by eliminating the poisons from our atmosphere that create so much illness and death in our country? The medical savings alone would put any healthcare program in the black. How much less funding would we have to put into Medicare or Medicaid and how far would that go to reducing our deficit?
But to achieve these goals we have to get rid of the deadwood in congress, not just the right or the left but the hardened arteries of slow decay and graft that have made congress the pathetic, incompetent bunch of losers that are currently sucking the blood out of our beloved country. There’s an election coming up in a month and a half. It’s time to select those with solutions, not those who are blocking our roads to prosperity.