Wednesday 30 June 2010

Emissions Tax Scam Day almost upon us

This time tomorrow, you’ll already be paying more for petrol, diesel, power and everything else that uses any of these things—which means you’ll be paying more for everything—paying more because Nick Smith and John Key have been hell-bent on signing you up to a scheme few want, nobody can afford, whose alleged “benefits” will do precisely nothing to fix the alleged problem, and whose economic impact no-one will even be able to quantify.

But just because “it will be difficult if not impossible” to quantify its economic impact—except to say that we know it will be wearing a negative sign in front of it--that doesn’t mean we can’t quantify the sort of impact it’s going to have on our hip pockets, and on the expenses columns of every would-be producer.

So the money you would have spent on more food, more books or a new pair of shoes for your kids—or that a business might have spent on new investment or, you know, creating new jobs--will instead now be going every week to… well, no-one can really tell you where the hell it’s going, can they. Around a billion dollars a year going … somewhere.

Meanwhile, the coal that would have and could have been burned here to provide warmer homes and cheaper power will instead be shipped to China to provide more and cheaper power there.

But don’t complain about it.  This is what madman Nick Smith has been touting since at least 2006. This is exactly what you voted for.

And tomorrow you’re going to get it good and hard.

It really isn’t about science; it’s about control.  After all, even if the IPCC’s worst prognostications came to pass, it doesn’t follow that we all need to stick our head in Nick Smith’s noose. As Bernard Darnton says, we know that socialism doesn’t work at fifteen degrees, so why will it work at seventeen?

So what would a libertarian do about global warmingPlenty. Property rights can still work over international borders. Fact is, it’s not sacrifice and self-abnegation that’s needed, but more self-interested pursuit of technology, more freedom to adapt to price signals -- and what's needed to pursue that is more freedom and less big government.

Tomorrow, John Boy will deliver the opposite. 

Smile.  He might wave back. And remind you there’s more hikes to come

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't believe that nobody has picked up/commented on the fact Trustpower increased all their charges across the board a month ago with no explaination yet they get no mention today from any source. We are screwed and I do NOT believe that Key is unaware of the ill feeling to the ETS. Mind you, bearing in mind that not everyone has a computer and relies on TV1/2/3 for their news and the local printed toilet paper for news as I was told by a retired couple last week, they have no idea whats going on in the real world.

medusa

Anonymous said...

explanation (my bad)

Anonymous said...

ETS: Eat Tax Suckers!

Anonymous said...

Dr Nick Smith seems more than happy to let Kiwi families, already struggling to pay their power bills, simply freeze as the ETS increases electricity prices - while millions of dollars go to forestry owners, ACT New Zealand Climate Change Spokesman John Boscawen said today.
"In question time today, I asked him what he would say to pensioners Kevin and Gabrielle Holden, who told ‘3 News’ last night that they were down to one bar on their heater and who were now facing increased costs due to the ETS, so that foreign forest owners like Fujitsu Xerox Company, Oji Paper Company and ITOCHU Corporation could receive hundreds of millions of dollars. Dr Smith could only point to the $80 million that Marlborough Forest owners would receive under the ETS," Mr Boscawen said.

"Dr Smith seems to think that the Holdens should take solace in the fact that forestry owners in Marlborough are going to benefit by $80 million. It’s hard to comprehend that Dr Smith could be so out of touch with the struggles of ordinary New Zealanders and particularly the disadvantaged and those on low and fixed incomes."

Libertyscott said...

Meanwhile, the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar all have per capita emissions far beyond New Zealand, per capita GDP far beyond New Zealand, all make a fortune selling the fuel that allegedly contributes to global warming, all spend it on luxury goods, big cars, subsidised petrol, air travel.

NONE of them will do anything about reducing emissions, because they are classified by the UN as "developing countries".

It is the sacrifice of the rich Western economies, which allows the likes of China, India and the Middle East to rise unencumbered.

Of course the UN and its agencies have a majority of members from poor countries that couldn't give a damn about strangling Western economies.

Anonymous said...

It's absolutely sickening, is it not? Talk about sold out by Key, oh, the arrogance is coming out now. There he is, with his 50 million in the bank, taxing the rest of us, oppressing us with a GST hike and the ETS, I mean, if that's not oppression, I don't know what is. Smile and wave, I won't be waving back, nor voting blue in my lifetime again. Youch! Galling.