Everything and the kitchen link

At least asking the right questions

2009-12-20T20:18:00.000-08:00

The Environmental Impact of PHP Compared To C On Facebook.

Go smells tasty for the kitchen!

Just tax carbon vs. the great ethanol scam

2009-05-25T17:08:00.000-07:00

"Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it's time to look at ethanol's effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age."

Yes, and a comment by gravesb cooks right to the solution:

just tax carbon

Stop the subsidies, tax carbon to account for externalities, and then let the market decide. The negative effects of biofuels have been on display ever since the Dutch dropped palm oil. Instead of the government pushing this obviously failed product, they should make sure that consumers bear the entire cost of their decisions and let companies develop a way to reduce fossil fuel consumption. And less biofuels means the price of my beer goes down, dammit! Won't someone think of my beer?

Wild highways to connect old and new kitchens of diversity?

2009-02-25T19:05:00.000-08:00

Old NYT article in the kitchen: New Jungles Prompt a Debate on Rain Forests.

KL believes every cell of virgin rainforest is sacred and doesn't want new growth rainforest to be an excuse for not fervently protecting that virginity.

This is cooking up curiously though. Maybe to make the taste fuller, add wild "highways" between virgin and new rainforest so that some species that don't have a way to reach the new habitat can do so.

Prediction Kitchen

2009-01-20T10:38:00.000-08:00

The Kitchen Linker is predicting stuff on HubDub.

Surf Green

2008-12-02T07:17:00.000-08:00

Firefox is slightly greener than IE, but blocking advertisements makes the biggest difference.

Now is the time for introducing and raising the gas tax level!

2008-11-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

Gas prices have fallen by nearly 50% since their June/July peak states facing deficits.

Now is the time to introduce much higher gas taxes -- at the national, state, and local level.

In the long run, it will save the environment. In the short run, it will avoid stupid taxes on production, just when unemployment is racheting up. Do as Al Gore says.

Download and be green

2008-08-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

Explained.

Save (money and environment) driving better

2008-06-26T21:20:00.000-07:00

Be a better lead chef in your car's kitchen.

Ingredient found at Econbrowser.

Toyota: Higher Gas Taxes, or Not?

2008-04-28T00:04:00.000-07:00

Toyota asks:

What do you think about the idea of increased taxes on fuel? Should we pay more in gas tax? If so, why, and if not, why not? And if so, what should the per-gallon tax be, and what should the resulting revenue be used for?

Kitchen Linker says YES, much higher, general revenues.

Many notes on the kitchen board explaining WHY.

KUDOS to Toyota for asking. Now make it happen!

Web page performance = green web page

2008-03-08T14:33:00.000-08:00

How green is your web page?

Performance == green

Lessig in the Kitchen

2008-02-19T21:37:00.000-08:00

Getting serious. Change Congress?

Change Congress in the Kitchen?

2008-02-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

Draft Lessig.

San Francisco Mayor follows Al Gore: Tax waste not work

2007-12-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is in the kitchen:

Mayor Gavin Newsom plans to ask voters next year to approve a "carbon tax" on businesses that he says would provide a financial incentive for conserving energy and motivating workers to use public transportation.

The ballot measure would increase the city's 5 percent commercial utilities tax by an as-yet-undetermined amount to encourage energy-saving steps by hotels, offices and other nonresidential buildings, Newsom said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

To keep the higher rates from becoming an economic drag on the city, the initiative would carry a corresponding decrease in the 1.5 percent payroll tax on for-profit businesses in San Francisco, according to the mayor.

Nice, just like Al Gore.

World's largest oil consumer?

2007-11-25T09:07:00.000-08:00

The U.S. military, via an article criticizing Al Gore for doing nothing to oppose the same.

If Gore would step up to slicing and dicing (kitchen analogy is a must here) the U.S. military in addition to advocating a carbon tax, he'd have a great one-two punch against global warming!

Xmas lights

2007-11-23T22:08:00.000-08:00

Christmas lights. Bah-hum-bug!

Green Your Home Data Kitchen

2007-11-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

Green computing is for data centers and with an extreme engery makeover, your home office. Fortunately most of the benefit comes from replacing a CRT with a LCD monitor, which everyone is doing anyway. To take the next steps, read the article and act in your home data kitchen.

Green Your Data Kitchen

2007-11-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

Or, green your data center, article on Worldchanging.

Lots more great information (to be followed!) at The Green Grid.

Drought West

2007-10-21T22:23:00.000-07:00

Another reason to move agriculture to the East and kill agriculture subsidies. And to fight global warming.

Fural to be green VI: Frugal tax policy

2007-10-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

If the shortest path in the kitchen to being green is being frugal, what is the obvious green tax policy? Consumption tax! Why Not Shift the Burden to Big Spenders? doesn't cover the environmental implications but is good background.

However, Kitchen Linker has concerns with the way this proposed tax is cooked. It requires reporting of income and savings: new frontiers in zero privacy.

Far better to concentrate consumption taxation on carbon, which has no privacy concerns and very directly attacks the number one global environmental concern (global warming, of course).

Algae a viable biofuel?

2007-10-08T03:14:00.000-07:00

Ethanol from corn is nothing but a shakedown, and other biofuels are marginal, but what about algae? --

Yield of vegetable oil in gallons per acre per year:
• Algae: 100,000

• Palm: 700

• Rapeseed: 130

• Sunflower: 110

• Soybeans: 50

• Corn: 29

Source: GlobalGreen Solutions; Valcent Products

Is there anything to this? And why in dry West Texas?

The two companies behind it, El Paso's Valcent Products and Canadian alternative energy firm Global Green Solutions, have developed a system they claim will allow for cheap mass production of algae in just about any corner of the world.

Why not in the wet East?

Realtor cooking

2007-09-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Highly Entertaining: Realtors Suing Other Realtors.

Yep.

Kitchen Linker searches kitchen for a grinding instrument to use on the guild, then a sharp knife to remove the anti-environment mortgage interest tax deduction.

Green Energy Czar

2007-09-30T19:26:00.000-07:00

Google has one, so cool.

Less Watts

2007-09-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Less Watts.org. Go green software, go open source, go green source!

Irrigate the East

2007-09-29T19:55:00.000-07:00

Move agriculture from the massively irrigated and dried out West and Let the East Bloom Again. Kitchen Linker says this could be the most important environmental idea in the USA (the carbon tax is a global idea), via The American Scene.

Q.E.D.

2007-09-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

Powerful editorial in the New York Times from the Pigoufather:

Among policy wonks like me, there is a broad consensus. The scientists tell us that world temperatures are rising because humans are emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Basic economics tells us that when you tax something, you normally get less of it. So if we want to reduce global emissions of carbon, we need a global carbon tax. Q.E.D.

D conference coverage

2007-08-26T21:14:00.000-07:00

Previously mentioned D programming language conference written up at Lambda the Ultimate, Leancode, and Planet D.

Save the Environment: Repeal the Mortgage Interest Deduction

2007-08-26T21:04:00.000-07:00

That's the title of a great Tax Policy Blog post:

Powerful U.S. Rep. John Dingell revealed Tuesday new details of his plan to cut global warming, including adding a 50-cents-a-gallon tax on gasoline and ending the mortgage tax deduction on what he called "McMansions," homes larger than 3,000 square feet.

On the same blog, France rejected a mortgage interest deduction.

OpenOffice 3.0 in 2008

2007-07-14T21:04:00.000-07:00

Contrary to rumor, OpenOffice 3.0 will not be a rewrite and is scheduled for September 2008, with 2.3 and 2.4 releases coming out of the kitchen between now and then.

First D conference next month at Amazon!

2007-07-07T16:45:00.000-07:00

D programming language conference.

One step for green software.

Now if Kitchen Linker could just get out of the kitchen...

Be frugal to be green V

2007-07-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

Last post in this series Kitchen Linker highlighted one extreme version of being frugal to be green, known as freeganism.

Another (of several) way of being frugal to be green is to turn an economist's eye on the problem. Sometimes the results are counterintuitive, e.g., when recycling uses more resources than it saves.

In this kitchen we want to be actually green, as opposed to just going through the motions. To be sure we are meeting this goal, an analytic component is necessary.

What Kitchen Linker really wants is to take the best of freegan philosophy and economic analysis -- and mash them together into something yummy!

AntiPigou

2007-07-05T21:43:00.000-07:00

Iran, Low on Gasoline, to Be Supplied by Venezuela:

Iran, a major oil exporter, imports 40 percent of its gasoline because of high consumption and limited refining capacity. While gasoline costs about $2 a gallon on world markets, the government sells it for 34 cents, a subsidy that costs it about $5 billion a year.

And Kitchen Linker thought NoPigou was bad...

Apology to David Friedman

2007-07-01T14:03:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Linker is honored to have David Friedman commenting here, even if the comment is a justified accusation of making a base assertion. Kitchen Linker has now actually read The Coal Question and Climate Change cited by David Friedman rather than taking a quick glance and throwing it into the frying pan.

A strong case is made that most long term global warming scenarios assume much more hydrocarbons will be burned than are available to burn. Unless we trigger a major change now, the long term (year 2100+) impact on the climate from humans releasing carbon into the atmosphere will be relatively small and transient, because we'll run out of oil and coal.

However, Kitchen Linker does not really believe people are concerned about the year 2100 and beyond, at least not very much (and they shouldn't be--if we survive, people then will have incredible wealth and tools to face down the pedestrian challenges of today). People are concerned about the possibility (admittedly small) of near term catastrophic climate change and/or collapse in oil production.

Frankly, any policy implemented now is going to only slightly tweak the probability of either near term disaster scenario. But that is not an excuse for doing nothing, in particular because people want something done, and that something could be very, very bad, such as anti-technology terrorism and/or resource wars.

Let's ward those off with policy that is good and addresses climate change and energy depletion. In a comment on his own blog post, David Friedman has sage advice:

The conclusions I want to reach lead me to conclude that the future is sufficiently uncertain so that it is almost always a mistake to bear large costs now in or to avoid problems in the distant future. For more on that, see the webbed draft of my current writing project, Future Imperfect.

Yes, but a green tax shift does not involve bearing large costs. To the contrary, it costs less than equivalent taxes on production.

Readings from the Pigoufather

2007-07-01T13:10:00.000-07:00

He recommends The Tax Free Lunch by Charles Krauthammer.

He also recommends A Green Employment Tax Swap: Using A Carbon Tax To Finance Payroll Tax Relief by Gilbert Metcalf.

Both recommend swapping the payroll tax for a carbon tax, same as Al Gore. Kitchen Linker could not agree more.

He is of course Greg Mankiw. Podfather, Pigoufather, get it? Ha ha.

No bailout for Wall Street!

2007-07-01T12:59:00.000-07:00

Gretchen Morgenson interviewed by Bill Moyers:

BILL MOYERS: But I mean, look what they've been doing. Their past experience is no indication that they will respond to what you're saying.

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Only if they're held accountable.

BILL MOYERS: By?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: And if they have to pay the bill that comes a cropper. Let's not make it a bail out where the taxpayer bails out Wall Street, please.

BILL MOYERS: Then Wall Street would be the winner and--

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: Then Wall Street would say, "Fine. I'll go do that again. I'll go throw money at a problem and let it blow up, and I don't mind."

BILL MOYERS: Does this contribute to what you and I both know are-- is growing inequality in the country? The gap between the rich and the poor? The greatest gap since 1929? Is this contributing to that gap?

GRETCHEN MORGENSON: To the degree that Wall Street made an awful, awful lot of money on these securities, yes, it contributes to that gap. To people who work on Wall Street, you saw the enormous bonuses, the enormous payouts to the CEOs of these firms. Absolutely. The mortgage mania contributed to that. The little guy doesn't have the benefit of all the powerful friends in Washington and the powerful friends on Wall Street. The little guy is just trying to be able to retire comfortably and not have to scrimp and worry about money. And he and she have a right to that. And if we're in an ownership society that's ballyhooed around, that should be a benefit. That should be who wins. But unfortunately, the little guy is the guy that's usually the bag holder.

Kitchen Linker may post this ARM reset schedule chart on the kitchen wall, noting that any housing bubble is in part a kitchen bubble, and any housing bust is in part a kitchen blowout.

Both links via Ben's Housing Bubble Blog.

The Price of Gasoline SHOULD Go Up

2007-06-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

Tom Evslin (on the kitchen blogroll) has a must read post on why The Price of Gasoline SHOULD Go Up:

Suppose we were to raise the tax on gasoline and diesel used as motor fuels by $.50/gallon every six months for the next three years. We could immediately end the $.50/gallon subsidy to ethanol producers without discouraging production. We could remove the stupid restrictions on importing ethanol made from sugar since there’s be plenty of demand for both foreign and domestic ethanol. We could stop the tariffs which protect the sugar growers as they find a market – as corn has already done – as a fuel source.

Even more expensive biofuels would become economical without subsidy. The government could stop playing the pork barrel game of trying to decide which alternative fuels to subsidize how much and let the most efficient producers replace gasoline.

Putting aside the politics, there are still two enormous problems with this proposal:

The tax is extremely regressive – the working poor pay much more of their income in gas tax than the rich.
The government will withdraw huge sums from the economy and legislators’ll invent vote-buying programs to spend it.

Both problems could be solved, however, by reducing or eliminating social security taxes – also regressive – at lower income levels, maybe after keeping a little of the surplus to make sure that social security and Medicare are actually funded for when the baby boomers retire.

Absolutely, though Kitchen Linker will argue that a gas tax is not regressive on a global and long term scale.

Peak Oil vs. Global Warming

2007-06-26T20:06:00.000-07:00

David Friedman points out an apparent contradiction in the arguments of those who believe both peak oil and global warming are problems:

A recent post on FuturePundit cites some interesting calculations by CalTech professor Dave Rutledge. Using the estimation approach on which current, widespread concerns about running out of petroleum are based, he finds that the IPCC global warming calculations overestimate future hydrocarbon burning by a factor of at least three or four--because the hydrocarbons are not there to be burned.

Nice try, but Kitchen Linker illustrated how both could be problems in Dangerous conflation of global warming and peak oil:

Clinton to Start $1 Billion Renewable Energy Fund, quote from WaPo:
"The Earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems," Clinton said.
I applaud these efforts, but ain't the symmetry ... ironic, dreamlike, unlikely, ??? Actually there is no symmetry and the above is a gross oversimplification -- we're nowhere near to running out of coal or low quality oil sources (tar sands and shale), each of which is worse for the environment and global warming in particular than high grade crude that we are slowly running out of. So yes, efforts like Clinton's and Branson's are desperately needed, but they undersell the case!

David Friedman, in this kitchen doing nothing (still) is a false choice.

Greening Linux

2007-06-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Linker noticed on LWN.net that Linux Foundation says:

Power Management: Throughout the Summit, Linux developers, including the Linux Desktop Architects, met to discuss the increasing need for efficient power management in Linux. As a result of these meetings, Linux Foundation is organizing a “Green Linux” initiative to improve power management functionality in Linux. Making Linux “green” is becoming ever more important in all aspects of Linux adoption: mobile, desktop and server. The Linux Foundation will work with its workgroups, identify key projects and coordinate resources among its members to improve this functionality in the Linux platform. Power management developers will meet next week in Ottawa to continue work in this area.

That smells good in the kitchen.

Be freegan to be green?

2007-06-20T19:15:00.000-07:00

Not Buying It in the NYT:

[T]he freegan movement has become much more visible and increasingly popular over the past year, in part as a result of growing frustrations with mainstream environmentalism.

Environmentalism, Mr. Torres said, “is becoming this issue of, consume the right set of green goods and you’re green,” regardless of how much in the way of natural resources those goods require to manufacture and distribute.

“If you ask the average person what can you do to reduce global warming, they’d say buy a Prius,” he added.

Kitchen Linker isn't a freegan, but has some sympathies. Freeganism is the extreme of be frugal to be green.

Tax global warming

2007-06-19T19:16:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Linker loves this idea to impose high carbon taxes to the extent there is evidence for anthropogenic global warming, quoted via EconLog, as the original source is behind a paywall, so they don't get linked into the kitchen:

climate models predict that, if greenhouse gases are driving climate change, there will be a unique fingerprint in the form of a strong warming trend in the tropical troposphere, the region of the atmosphere up to 15 kilometres in altitude, over the tropics, from 20 degrees North to 20 degrees South. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that this will be an early and strong signal of anthropogenic warming. Climate changes due to solar variability or other natural factors will not yield this pattern: only sustained greenhouse warming will do it.

...Suppose each country implements something called the T3 tax, whose U.S. dollar rate is set equal to 20 times the three-year moving average of the RSS and UAH estimates of the mean tropical tropospheric temperature anomaly, assessed per tonne of carbon dioxide, updated annually. Based on current data, the tax would be US$4.70 per ton...

This tax rate is low, and would yield very little emissions abatement. Global-warming skeptics and opponents of greenhouse-abatement policy will like that. But would global-warming activists? They should -- because according to them, the tax will climb rapidly in the years ahead.

The IPCC predicts a warming rate in the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to $24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive schedule of emission fee increases than most current proposals.

Really neat idea, but Kitchen Linker still supports high carbon taxes, now, for two reasons: 1) prevention better than cure and 2) a carbon tax would be a big improvement over production taxes even if global warming did not exist.

Javascript 2 reference implementation in Standard ML

2007-06-08T17:34:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Linker says this is way cool:

As we've discussed before here on LtU, the reference implementation of ECMAScript is being written in Standard ML. This choice should have many benefits, including:
to make the specification more precise than previous pseudocode conventions
to give implementors an executable framework to test against
to provide an opportunity to find bugs in the spec early
to spark interest and spur feedback from the research and user communities
to provide fodder for interesting program analyses to prove properties of the language (like various notions of type soundness)
to use as a test-bed for interesting extensions to the language

Prediction: Europeans and Asians take over rap

2007-06-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

SF Chronicle on jazz fans complaining about too few African American jazz players, although people of African descent pioneered the genre -- in America.

The same will happen to rap and hip-hop. In a generation the vast majority of rappers will be of European, Asian, or mixed descent, and there will be similar complaints.

The big question is this: What is the next big mainstream genre? Will it be pioneered by African Americans? Kitchen Linker has no idea what the next big genre is, but suspects it will be pioneered by Africans or Indians not living in America -- or perhaps Brazilians.

America is too rich, complacent, and stifled by copyright to be the wellspring of the next big musical-cultural shift. "America" includes African Americans.

Be frugal to be green III

2007-04-20T19:50:00.000-07:00

Kitchen Linker has pointed out a couple times that being frugal roughly equals being green. The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice summary of how being frugal sometimes directly equals being green. Read and implement!

We can do better than Sunstein predicts

2007-04-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Cass Sunstein predicts a cap-and-trade program in the U.S. within five years:

I am predicting, then, that the United States will adopt a domestic program that imposes significant domestic costs for insignificant domestic gains.

Kitchen Linker says that we could adopt a domestic program with significant domestic cost reduction instead -- a carbon tax with a corresponding reduction in anti-growth income or payroll taxes.

Ronald Bailey: "carbon taxes is the way to go"

2007-04-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

Ronald Bailey writes about To Spur Energy Innovation,Tax Carbon, Says Newsweek Editor Zakaria. Bailey's conclusion:

Just a heads up--I have done a lot of reporting and just completed an article for The American on carbon markets versus carbon taxes. As a generally market-friendly guy, I've nevertheless concluded that carbon taxes is the way to go. I will link to the article when it appears this summer.

It must be really lonely over at the NoPigou Club.

A big platform needs a big hole in the ground

2007-03-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Recently recommended Techcrunch transcribes a quote from the putative YouTube competitor from big media:

Chernin: this will be the largest advertising platform on earth.

Kitchen Linker's comment: A big platform is built on a big hole in the ground. This YouTube competitor is the hole in the ground.

European commissioning smarts

2007-03-23T11:15:00.000-07:00

Greg Mankiw points out that the European Commission is considering doing the right thing for the environment and its torpid economy:

The Commission will on 28 March present ideas for “green taxes” to save energy and cut greenhouse gas emissions. It says that such an ‘ecological tax reform’ could increase the bloc’s competitiveness by shifting the burden away from labour taxes.

Could the EU lead down the smart path?

Convenient Truth

2007-03-23T11:11:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Rausch makes the obvious point that a carbon tax is the best way to deal with global warming and has good side effects:

Just as conveniently, the most efficient way to get started is also the simplest, albeit not the easiest politically: tax carbon emissions. "At around $30 per ton of CO2 over a 25-year horizon, experts seem to think this is the kind of price that will encourage the kind of technologies that are necessary," says Billy Pizer, an environmental economist at Resources for the Future, a Washington think tank. That would translate into an additional 27 cents or so on a gallon of gasoline and about a 20 percent increase in residential electricity bills (more like 34 percent for industrial users). Unpleasant, but hardly radical. Perfectly do-able, in fact.

Fortuitously, a carbon tax could also reduce the U.S. budget deficit and the geopolitical leverage of sinister "petrocracies" such as Iran, Russia, and Venezuela. Policy prescriptions don't come any more convenient than that.

Al Gore's testimony

2007-03-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

As reported at Reason, includes:

(2) I believe we should start using the tax code to reduce taxes on production and employment and substitute pollution taxes. We’re discouraging work and encouraging the destruction of the planet’s habitability. We should discourage pollution while encouraging work. Carbon pollution is not currently priced into the marketplace. I internalize air and water and I think that the economic system should too.

Great, but his other nine points consist of a mismash of regulation, prohibition, and subsidy.

Smart people need to advocate the best policy, doing nothing is a false choice (also see Greg Mankiw's criticism of accepting the worst policies by default).

Doing nothing a false choice

2007-03-17T20:05:00.000-07:00

David Friedman comes out against carbon taxes (at least he's an anarchist, so that is a valid policy choice for him, not so for others). But Friedman really just opposes doing anything:

Finally, I suspect that widespread acceptance of the catastrophist view of global warming would result in quite a lot more than carbon taxes. It would provide a new justification for politically motivated interferences in a wide range of human activities. Anyone who questioned such policies would be labelled a denialist, accused of wanting Bangladeshis to drown and African children to starve. Again, look at the ongoing exchanges on Brian's blog.

Hence I conclude that serious efforts to combat global warming would have large costs, costs justified only if there were good reason to be confident that not taking such efforts would have catastrophic effects.

Not doing something sane (i.e., cabon tax) is going to lead to result in other practices Friedman will like much less, for example blunt regulation, crazy subsidies, and politically manipulated cap-and-trade markets -- also far worse than Pigouvian tax, as spelled out by Steven Postrel:

So the final score is: Permits get a moderate edge on political economy/public choice issues; taxes have a big advantage on institutional/governance issues; and taxes deliver a big can of whipass on traditional economic efficiency concerns. So conditional on accepting the weak case for CO2 emissions control, the Pigou people have a strong case against the cap-and-trade brigade. Maybe they should start making it.

Last quote via pointed out by Greg Mankiw.

The Friedman post comes via the NoPigou Club, which has yet to answer the question if not Pigou, then what?

Taxation six plus times more efficient than regulation

2007-03-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

Econbrowser on CAFE standards:

Overall, Jacobsen estimates that a one-mile-per-gallon increase in the required average corporate fuel efficiency would increase the average fuel-efficiency of all new cars sold by 2.5%. However, since most of the older cars would still be on the road, Jacobsen estimates that during the first year, total U.S. gasoline consumption would decline by only 0.8%. He estimates the costs of this 1 mpg tightening of CAFE would be $20 billion in the first year, with these first-year costs shared about equally between U.S. consumers and producers. For comparison, Jacobsen claims that a gasoline tax could accomplish the same first-year effect at an efficiency cost of significantly less than $1 billion.

Over time, the fuel savings from tightening CAFE would of course increase, but even after 10 years, Jacobsen concludes that that a gasoline tax could accomplish the same thing at 1/6 the cost.

That's not even including that gas taxes produce revenue which can be used to reduce horribly inefficient taxes on labor and capital.

For the n'th time Kitchen Linker says Pigou means less planning, more growth, a cleaner environment, nor that OPEC pays part of any gas tax.

OPEC tax shift

2007-02-25T11:10:00.000-08:00

Greg Mankiw provides some hard budget info:

For example, if I am reading it correctly, we could increase the gasoline tax by $1 (see revenue option 48) and reduce all ordinary income tax rates, AMT rates, and dividend and capital gains rates by 2 percentage points (see revenue option 1) to produce an approximately revenue-neutral tax reform.

That's a start.

But Kitchen Linker really likes a comment by "Mr. Mercy Vetsel" on Mankiw's post:

Amen! Now we just need to package that with a clever name that doesn't inspire thoughts of pork...

Preparing to join the "OPEC Tax Shift (Shift Taxes to OPEC)" club

Amen!

Toyota #1: fear and marketing or pricing and environment?

2007-02-25T11:01:00.000-08:00

BusinessWeek on Why Toyota Is Afraid Of Being Number One -- anti-foreign backlash. So Toyota is afraid, and running ad campaigns to emphasize its U.S. employment base.

Kitchen Linker's observations:

Toyota doesn't have to take the #1 spot no matter how bad the Big Three get. Toyota can raise prices instead.

Toyota should emphasize (and invest in) green cars. Nothing could be more patriotic, or good for the U.S. economy. Fear and marketing is no substitute for doing good.

Ruby 2.0/Yarv for green software?

2007-02-19T14:45:00.000-08:00

Ruby 2.0 will be very fast, which is a good thing for the planet.

Return of the Gao tree

2007-02-12T13:00:00.000-08:00

Must read article in the NYT on return of trees to Niger during a period of population explosion.

Enlightened policies leading to such results are badly needed for the poorest to cope with (now inevitable) global warming:

Still, more trees mean that Niger’s people are in a better position to withstand whatever changes the climate might bring. “This is something the farmers control, and something they do for themselves,” said Dr. Larwanou. “It demonstrates that with a little effort and foresight, you can reduce poverty in the Sahel. It is not impossible or hopeless, and does not have to cost a lot of money. It can be done.”

A combination of efficient policies to make sure global warming doesn't get increasingly worse from industrialized countries (i.e., green tax shift) and low cost but highly effective green policies like those that led to the re-greening of Niger, and we can get through this.

Continental Europe: Getting out of the way?

2007-02-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Greg Mankiw links to an interesting column that has nothing to do with Pigouvian taxes ... Ed Phelps on Why European economies lag behind the U.S.:

The values that might impact dynamism are of special interest here. Relatively few in the Big Three report that they want jobs offering opportunities for achievement (42% in France and 54% in Italy, versus an average of 73% in Canada and the U.S.); chances for initiative in the job (38% in France and 47% in Italy, as against an average of 53% in Canada and the U.S.), and even interesting work (59% in France and Italy, versus an average of 71.5% in Canada and the U.K). Relatively few are keen on taking responsibility, or freedom (57% in Germany and 58% in France as against 61% in the U.S. and 65% in Canada), and relatively few are happy about taking orders (Italy 1.03, of a possible 3.0, and Germany 1.13, as against 1.34 in Canada and 1.47 in the U.S.).

So EUians don't want to lead or follow. As a result their relatively shrinking economies are getting out of the way.

Now if the US would just take a dynamic lead on efficient environmental policies...

Congestion pricing goes well with other eco-efficient policies

2007-02-11T14:24:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Linker is a big fan of congestion pricing. While not as important as (much) higher gas taxes replacing less efficient taxes, congestion pricing is another win-win: more efficient and more environmentally friendly transportation system.

Save the environment and the economy, yada yadda yaddda.

Branson's billions putting brains to work for the earth

2007-02-11T14:10:00.000-08:00

Richard Branson's investments in biofuels were welcome but not exciting, as biofuels are marginal at best (and environmental suicide via politics at worst).

With the Virgin Earth Challenge (and some instruction from Al Gore?), Branson's money is working smarter. Very very cool.

The Virgin Earth Challenge is a prize of $25m for whoever can demonstrate to the judges' satisfaction a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth’s climate.

High risk of housing BUST

2007-02-11T14:01:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Linker doesn't like writing about the housing bubble, but sometimes the facts are too much. Take this paragraph from the San Jose Mercury News story on a National Association of Realtors survey:

The highest loan-to-value ratios for first-time buyers were in the South, where the median mortgage was 100 percent of the sale price. In the West, the median was 99 percent, in the Midwest 98 percent, and in the East, 96 percent.

By comparison, the typical repeat home buyer nationwide invested a median 16 percent as a down payment to purchase a replacement home -- typically from the proceeds of a prior sale -- and financed the remaining 84 percent.

Kitchen-mates, a price decline over the next year or two is going to put millions of home "owners" under water. Any increase in unemployment is going to send millions to the hills, or rather cheap apartments and parent's homes (think abut that recursively). Result: housing BUST.

Truth too inconvenient

2007-02-09T10:01:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post has some excellent columnists. Robert Samuelson says:

What we really need is a more urgent program of research and development, focusing on nuclear power, electric batteries, alternative fuels and the capture of carbon dioxide. Naturally, there's no guarantee that socially acceptable and cost-competitive technologies will result. But without them, global warming is more or less on automatic pilot. Only new technologies would enable countries -- rich and poor -- to reconcile the immediate imperative of economic growth with the potential hazards of climate change.

Meanwhile, we could temper our energy appetite. I've argued before for a high oil tax to prod Americans to buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. The main aim would be to limit insecure oil imports, but it would also check CO2 emissions. Similarly, we might be better off shifting some of the tax burden from wages and profits to a broader tax on energy or carbon. That would favor more fuel-efficient light bulbs, appliances and industrial processes.

It's a debate we ought to have -- but probably won't. Any realistic response would be costly, uncertain and no doubt unpopular. That's one truth too inconvenient for almost anyone to admit.

Kitchen Linker is 100% for a realistic response.

Global Warming's Simple Remedy

2007-02-06T13:37:00.000-08:00

Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post:

Any lasting solutions will have to be extremely simple, and -- because of the cost implicit in reducing the use and emissions of fossil fuels -- will also have to benefit those countries that impose them in other ways. Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics and is easy for any country to implement. It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations? As a foreign policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Persian Gulf oil or Russian natural gas, too.

Most of all, though, the successful use of carbon taxes does not require "American leadership," or a U.N. committee, or a complicated international effort of any kind. It can be done country by country: If the British environment minister or the German chancellor wants to go ahead with it tomorrow, nothing is preventing them. If a future American president wants to rally the nation around a patriotic and noble cause, then he or she has the perfect opportunity. If the Chinese see that such a tax has produced unexpected benefits in America and Europe, they'll follow. And when that happens, we'll know that the apocalyptic climate change rhetoric has finally been taken seriously.

Bono the tax hypocrite

2007-02-03T19:53:00.000-08:00

See the New York Times story on U2's use of tax shelters.

This story isn't about Pigouvian taxes, but Kitchen Linker will take the opportunity to advocate 'em. If taxation were shifted from activities with positive externalities to activities with negative externalities then U2's licensing income would not be taxed and hypocritical tax dodges would not be "required" by U2-the-business, nor would they be possible.

On the other hand, U2 and U2 fan's jet-setting ways (KL includes the fans, as let's face it, only rich fans can afford to attend top stars' concerts, and fans often travel to do so) would be heavily taxed.

Pigou Club vs. Pig Club

2007-01-29T22:40:00.000-08:00

Bryan Caplan:

Given all the pork involved in the biofuels ripoff, I think that those politicians who support it ought to be called the Pig Club.

Indeed. Let Kitchen Linker give Caplan a hint: the Pigou Club is the alternative to the Pig Club.

Tax Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Venezuela

2007-01-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

A hefty gas tax would initially be paid by American drivers. But as Americans became more fuel efficient as a result of the tax, the tax would be paid by oil producers. Read about tax incidence.

So the U.S. can replace taxes on goods with taxes on bads, save the environment, and make American foreign policy enemies pay the tax!

Kitchen Linker asks: Why are we not doing this already!?

Fix corporate tax competition with green taxes

2007-01-19T12:57:00.000-08:00

Today's Financial Times has a subscriber-only article Europe's tax rivalry keeps multinationals on the move bemoaning tax competition and an eventual "race to the bottom" for corporate taxation.

Kitchen Linker says this is not a problem but a grand opportunity: replace corporate taxes (and taxes on increasingly mobile labor) with green taxes. Save the environment, economy, and state, all in one fell swoop!

Another FT article hints this is the way things are going:

French VAT is already at 19.6 per cent, and Germany had implemented some significant structural reforms that remained elusive in France. However the ministry was examining whether some of the tax burden on labour could be transferred, for example through environmental charges, he said.

France’s expression of interest in Berlin’s VAT experiment could be the first of many, according to economists.

“You can see that possibly even Britain is going that way with the debate on the environmental tax,” said Holger Schmieding, senior economist with Bank of America.

Excellent, now go faster, and also in America!

Mankiw's blunder

2007-01-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

Greg Mankiw posts that Robert Samuelson has joined the Pigou club in calling for a $2/gallon gas tax. Wonderful.

And Mankiw says:

One purpose of Pigovian taxation, in my view, is to avoid heavy-handed regulations with all their unintended consequences.

Absolutely, a point Kitchen Linker has loved to harp on these last few months.

Approving links to Mankiw have been a feature of the Kitchen for awhile now, even coming to dominate what Kitchen Linker intended to be just another blog about cool tech stuff. But that's good. What could be more important than saving the environment in the most efficient way possible?

Anyhoo, Mankiw makes a blunder in this last post:

I have proposed a more modest $1 increase, in part based on the research of Parry and Small, but of course there is a degree of uncertainty about how high the optimal tax is.

No, no, no! "Optimality" in the sense of correcting for externalities is the wrong, wrong, wrong metric to judge a Pigouvian tax by.

What is the right metric? Is the tax an better than growth-destroying taxes on labor and capital? That's all. Debating optimality may be a pins-on-the-head-of-an-angel-counting excercise for academic papers but is totally irrelevant to the public debate and to reality, which consists of trillions of dollars of taxes on production that could be shifted to taxes on destruction.

Pigou Talk!

2007-01-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

Two important updates from Pigou-father Greg Mankiw. First, signs that a carbon tax is being taken seriously in the halls of government. Way cooler, Ray Magliozzi of Car Talk has a page advocating higher gas taxes.

Government employees and public transit

2007-01-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

Freakonomics points out that a New York Times article notes that in Manhattan government workers are the group second most likely to drive onto the island (most likely are workers in "transportation, warehousing and utilities"), likely because they get free parking with their government jobs (and probably many get free use of vehicles).

Kitchen Linker says government employees should be required to take public transit or at least should not get any subsidy for private transportation. This will result in more lobbying for better public transit (who is in a better position to lobby than government employees?), better transit, and more of everyone using public transit, in a virtuous cycle.

Be frugal to be green II

2007-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

stecay makes the case that frugality is the easiest and best way to be green:

A typical, and in my book unimaginative response to An Inconvenient Truth is along the lines of 'My next car's a hybrid'. Other commentators wax lyrical about 'a Prius in every garage'. And so on. Sorry, but I find it hard to buy a notion of the car as a route to ecological nirvana.
It's not very high tech, but the best (and easiest) way to be green(er) is to consume less.
Be generous. Use your car less.

Kitchen Linker agrees.

Bush's Pigouvian opportunity

2007-01-08T08:53:00.000-08:00

It is no surprise that in order to pay for massive increases in federal spending (think Iraq and drug payments) Bush will raise taxes. If Bush is smart (stay with Kitchen Linker; even a broken clock is smart twice a day) he would use this "opportunity" to join the Pigou Club and increase the federal gas tax.

Dear GWB,

Extending the payroll tax will not contribute to your legacy. Taking the first step to efficiently save the planet from climate change will. You decide.

Sincerely,
Kitchen Linker

p.s. Top Democrats have good ideas on tax simplification that should be bipartisan. Work with them.

Welfare Sun King

2007-01-06T17:31:00.000-08:00

Solar-Powered Welfare shows what you get when you choose planning over Pigou. Tax credits for the wealthy.

Pigou means less planning and it saves the environment. What a deal!

D 1.0 coming

2007-01-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

According to Slashdot version 1.0 of the D programming language is coming soon.

Very exciting! Kitchen Linker endorses big compatible improvements to the current paradigm.

D made an appearance in the kitchen once before, regarding green programming.

Merry Dies Natalis Solis Invicti!

2006-12-25T10:40:00.000-08:00

Sol Invictus (Wikipedia):

A festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun (or Dies Natalis Solis Invicti) was celebrated when the duration of daylight first begins to increase after the winter solstice, — the "rebirth" of the sun.

The Sol Invictus festival ran from December 22 through December 25. Eradicating the remnants of this much-celebrated pagan holiday is likely the reason why Christmas was picked by the early Catholic leaders as the birthday of Jesus Christ.

Kitchen Linker wishes you and yours a happy one.

Sanguine about Pigou

2006-12-25T10:17:00.000-08:00

Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek:

For this reason, among others, I cannot join my colleague Tyler Cowen in joining Greg Mankiw's Pigou Club. Even if global warming is a reality, another reality -- one with a much more consistent track record throughout history and across different countries -- is the perversity of political incentives. Given these perverse political incentives (not to mention the inevitiable scrawniness of government's access to information and knowledge), I don't trust government to impose and administer a Pigouvian tax with sufficient disinterestness and skill to make such a tax a plausible policy option.

So Don, Kitchen Linker has a question for you: Do you really prefer taxes on income and capital to a Pigouvian energy tax? Please read Pigou means less planning.

At least Don doesn't stoop to linking to the fools at the NoPigou Club.

Efficiently attacking inequality

2006-12-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

Since discovering the Pigou Club, Kitchen Linker has gotten a little interested in tax policy. Here's a great article on this that has nothing to do with Pigou or energy. Sebastian Mallaby on Attacking Inequality in the Washington Post:

Fixing these egregiously regressive programs could yield really juicy benefits. On a back-of-the-envelope calculation, raising the minimum wage might transfer $10 billion a year to poor workers; call it $20 billion if you want to stretch the assumptions generously. But if you eliminated just a quarter of the subsidies in the tax code, you would liberate about $180 billion a year -- enough to finance a big expansion in the earned-income tax credit plus a cut in the regressive payroll tax. And this sort of redistribution would not risk higher unemployment or compromise economic growth at all. Democrats on the left and right ought to be embracing it.

The Milk Mafia

2006-12-10T09:40:00.000-08:00

Unlike the SugarCorn Mafia, the Milk Mafia doesn't directly impact energy policy, but read the stunning and disgusting expose in the Washington Post and take our your anger on the SugarCorn Mafia.

p.s. Kitchen Linker says "milk is bad for your bones and immune system, say away from the cows, don't get hit by the milk mafia!"

A pro-Pigouvian anarchist!

2006-12-09T21:21:00.000-08:00

It seems even anarchists accept that Pigouvian taxes are superior. Or at least hard-core libertarians can accept this, as Kitchen Linker is not certain that Degrees of Freedom is an anarchist, though the probability is high given DoF linkage. After a list of moralistic reasons taxes in general are bad, DoF says:

If a tax on gasoline could be implemented as a dollar-for-dollar replacement for the tax on capital gains, even I would be in favor of that.

DoF doesn't think a tax shift is possible because politicians like to spend, but then no tax reduction would be possible ever, and obviously taxes have been cut at various times. The important thing though is that a NoPigou type has admitted that Pigouvian taxes are superior!

Should other anarchists reconsider? And if anarchists, the only group that can logically oppose Pigouvian taxes, then everyone else should join the Pigou Club, pronto!

An anarchist comments!

2006-12-09T21:06:00.000-08:00

Someone who claims to be an anarchist has commented on a post in which Kitchen Linker said:

Unless all NoPigouClub members are anarchists, they will admit that taxes need to be collected. The level of energy tax should not be set by the EPA or Commerce Department, but by Congress ... just as Income and other taxes are now set, mostly according to what Congress thinks it can get away with and how much is needed to cover spending minus borrowing. There is no additional planning, just a shift from one sort of taxes to another.

And the shift is better if you care about the environment, the economy, or simply distrust planners.

Why?
Taxes on income and capital suppress positive externalities (ex: economic growth).
Pigouvian taxes substitute for regulation and prohibition of greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions.
(Redundant, but Kitchen Linker must drive home the point) Without pigouvian taxes, we will continue to have damaging tax on labor and capital AND extremely inefficient and politically determined non-solutions to our environmental problems (ex: the SugarCorn mafia)
Come to grips with reality NoPigou and switch clubs!

So Francis St Pierre is an anarchist. Other NoPigouers, come out or come to grips!

All taxes not created equally

2006-12-09T20:56:00.000-08:00

Greg Mankiw finally comes out swinging against NoPigou types, making points Kitchen Linker has been trying to make:

The Pigou Club wants to move beyond the rhetorical syllogism, all too common in Republican circles, that

1. Taxes are bad.
2. Pigovian taxes are taxes.
3. Pigovian taxes are bad.

Such a simplistic mindset makes it impossible for people to discuss in a responsible way the relative merits of different tax systems. Instead, we Pigovians acknowledge:

1. There will be some government spending.
2. This spending will be funded with taxes.
3. Government should use the least bad taxes it has available.

and this:

Pigovians have no magic bullet to keep down government spending. Like many others, I believe that government spending is too high. But Pigovians need not be united about this. The key thing that unites us is the belief that whatever government spending is done, the tax revenue to pay for that spending should be raised in a way that does the least harm or, better yet, the most good.

Greg Mankiw also points out that economist and writer Tim Harford has succinctly joined the Pigou Club:

Consider the problem of climate change: a centralised regulatory approach here would be a catastrophe, lashing out at easy political targets such as SUVs or cheap airline travel. But pure laissez-faire will not save the planet either. A predictable tax on carbon would unleash a lot of world-saving creativity at minimum cost.

Jon's radio moves to Microsoft

2006-12-08T10:14:00.000-08:00

The very first Kitchen Link blogroll additon has joined Microsoft, to evangelize for all that is good, as Jon Udell has always done:

Over the years I've evangelized a bunch of things to the alpha-geek crowd: Internet groupware, blogging, syndication, tagging, web architecture, lightweight integration, microformats, structured search, screencasting, dynamic languages, geographic mapping, random-access audio, and more. There's a purpose behind all this, and Doug Engelbart saw it very clearly a long time ago. The augmentation of human capability in these sorts of ways isn't just some kind of geek chic. It's nothing less than a survival issue for our species. We face some really serious challenges. The only way we're going to be able to tackle them is to figure out how to work together in shared information spaces. I've chosen to align myself with Microsoft because I think it has the scale, the resources, and the business incentive to help me empower a lot of people to learn how to do that.

Congratulations!

Fourth blogroll addition: ongoing

2006-12-07T21:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, ongoing additions to the Kitchen Link blogroll, and this one by Tim Bray is called ongoing. Tim Bray writes eloquently about IT and Canada (no kidding) and has a wonderful sense of design. Apparently he is one of the inventors of XML. That sounds painful, but he can visit the Kitchen any time so long as he keeps his sharp angle brackets at home.

The last Kitchen Link was inspired by Tim Bray.

The last blogroll addition was Tom Evslin's Fractals of Change.

Taxing Avatars

2006-12-07T21:22:00.000-08:00

Tim Bray writes about calculations that say an avatar in an online world consumes as much electricity as an average Brazilian. Kitchen Linker thinks this is a little exaggerated, as a human uses many other forms of energy. But those who run server farms could use some additional incentive to become more efficient. Yes, that's right, time to trot out the Pigouvian energy tax yet again. That might not be bad for Sun, Tim's employer, which apparently sells efficient servers and has an enviroguru.

Besides, aren't politicos looking for a way to tax virtual worlds anyway? An energy tax is a way to do it non-intrusively.

But long term virtual worlds are all good for the environment. They can allow us to cut back on car and plane trips. As Kitchen Linked before, IT is an efficiency-enabler.

Third blogroll addition: Fractalize Everything!

2006-12-07T18:45:00.000-08:00

Actually, Tom "nothing great has ever been accomplished without irrational exuberance" Evslin's blog is called Fractals of Change, but the title of this post is a probably stretched reference to his recent post Distribute ALL Networks. Decentralization, and not just of computer networks, is one of Tom's themes that Kitchen Linker finds compelling, and required reading. Here's an excerpt:

However, the same technology which allows us to run a decentralized communication network like the Internet and which can allow us to move to a mesh architecture for Internet access, also can help with decentralizing our energy supply. To be continued shortly in another post.

Previously blogged about a decentralized Internet as America’s Antiterrorism Network (here and here).

The Kitchen's second blogroll addition was Greg Mankiw, who has been Linked more times than KL can count by now.

Unfair hearing for Pigou Club

2006-12-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

Greg Mankiw says Bloomberg's Amity Shales gives the Pigou Club a "fair hearing." Kitchen Linker isn't going to judge "fair" but the columnist gets everything wrong in Gas Tax Fans Invoke a Telling Name for Road Hogs. Her three anti-Pigouvian arguments:

Well not all. For there is already a No Pigou Club, founded by Terence Corcoran, editor of Canada's National Post. Corcoran offers some compelling counterarguments. Pigovian taxes change behavior, he notes, but not necessarily as their sponsors wish. Gas taxes may depress driving, but perhaps not enough to matter. Late in life Pigou himself acknowledged this, writing that when it came to such taxes ``we seldom know enough to decide'' which is the right tax or the right tax rate.

The second argument against a gas tax is that today, when even GE calls itself green, it's a hard sell. Democrats in Washington believe they won in November by playing against the stereotype of their party. So they are unlikely to push for a levy associated with Al Gore.

But the strongest argument against a gas tax is that revenues from such taxes tend to be used for purposes other than those intended. The states' cigarette taxes, for example, are classically Pigovian, punishing an unwanted behavior. But the billions those taxes have earned have promoted another kind of sin: excessive government spending. Too often the money has gone into state general revenue coffers instead of paying for smoking prevention and medical care for smokers.

The second is not an argument against Pigouvian taxes per se. It just says they will be politically difficult to enact. So what? Is any change from the status quo politically easy? As noted previously, any tax change is hard, so why not go for a big and much better one?

The first and third arguments only make sense if Shales is an anarchist. Does anyone ever argue against taxes on labor or capital because it is hard to figure out their "optimal" level? The fact is the primary purpose of taxation is to raise revenue for government, nevermind their "optimal level" for any other purpose. Quite simply Pigouvian taxes discourage harmful behavior, most taxes (for example on labor or capital) discourage productive behavior. Any questions?

Any anti-Pigouvian non-anarchist ignoring these facts needs to address them or completely miss the point, verging on dishonesty.

WikiElders

2006-12-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

Are you an advocate of elder rights on the Internet?

Have you ever used or edited a wiki, such as the world-famous Wikipedia?

Then we want you to join the Wiki Elders Movement.

http://wikielders.org

Wikis like Wikipedia allow elders everywhere to share knowledge, ideas and experiences. But wherever elders use the Internet, they are faced with ignorant and condescending views. Crass and unwise "youth culture" pervades online content and communities. The Wiki Elders Association seeks to give elder readers, users and editors a voice.

Beyond demanding equal treatment as wiki contributors, our goal is to build a shared understanding of wiki ethics. Vandalism and immature behavior are condemned on most wikis, and sensible learning approaches for new wiki users are encouraged. We want to have fun, but not at the expense of others. We want to help you to understand the maze of wiki-rules, so that you too can have fun.

We would also like to give intelligent elders a shared social space where they can talk about their experiences in not only wiki communities, but also their daily lives. eventually, we hope that we can develop the WEA into a true social movement which organizes events and campaigns. But our initial goals are modest: we only want to become the single largest world-wide community of elder wiki users.

The WEA is not a formal organization. There is no membership other than registration for our wiki and forums.

Join today!

Someone should start WikiElders. Kitchen Linker has nothing against WikiYouth, who are probably wise indeed relative to other youth. May all you become WikiYouth, all elders WikiElders, all people WikiPeople, all robots WikiRobots ... ok, let's not get carried away.

What is the age distribution of Wikipedians?

Win-win taxes

2006-12-05T19:07:00.000-08:00

Pigou Club founder Greg Mankiw quotes Brink Lindsey on win-win taxes:

Tax reform also offers the possibility of win-win bargains. The basic idea is simple: Shift taxes away from things we want more of and onto things we want less of. Specifically, cut taxes on savings and investment, cut payroll taxes on labor, and make up the shortfall with increased taxation of consumption. Go ahead, tax the rich, but don't do it when they're being productive. Tax them instead when they're splurging--by capping the deductibility of home-mortgage interest and tax incentives for purchasing health insurance. And tax everybody's energy consumption. All taxes impose costs on the economy, but at least energy taxes carry the silver lining of encouraging conservation--plus, because such taxes exert downward pressure on world oil prices, foreign oil monopolies would wind up getting stuck with part of the bill.

Blogging and scooping

2006-12-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Linker didn't intend for this blog to be dominated by green tax policy. The expectation was to write about technology, cool stuff, blogging, and the occasional rant.

So back to about blogging for just one post. I decided to add a link to Scoopt, which facilitates licensing of blog content to mainstream media.

That means if you don't want to play by the Kitchen Rules you can pay to still use the Kitchen.

Gas prices change habits

2006-12-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

Kitchen Linker says, duh. San Francisco Chronicle, SALES SLOW FOR HYBRIDS: Gas prices fall, so does federal tax credit. Just evidence that increased gas prices change long term behavior, which is what is needed for a long term solution to global warming. A pigouvian tax of course can push this change along nicely, and replace destructive taxes on labor and capital.

Pigou Club on Wikipedia

2006-12-01T09:56:00.000-08:00

Did you know the Pigou Club has an article on Wikipedia?

Kitchen Linker did link it last post.

Another reason a gas tax is ideal

2006-12-01T09:43:00.000-08:00

San Francisco Chronicle, Gas prices hardly effect demand.

Record high gasoline prices haven't made a serious dent in America's demand for fuel, a new UC Davis study suggests.

But:

Severin Borenstein, director of the University of California Energy Institute, noted that the UC Davis study measures short-term changes in gasoline use based on short-term price increases.
Long-term changes in driving and buying habits are harder to track but matter far more, Borenstein said. And taxes, which stick around year after year, can prompt drivers to make long-term changes, such as buying more efficient cars or living closer to work.
"That's what actually changes auto fleets, housing decisions, political support for mass transit," said Borenstein, whose institute organized today's research conference. "They're right that this is a little piece of that puzzle, but the jump they make on gas taxes is a stretch."

This however is totally untrue:

Research showing that use doesn't decline much as prices rise undercuts arguments for higher gas taxes.

Rather, it means there is huge latitude for higher gas taxes. And Kitchen Linker says shoot for the moon, cause enacting a high tax that can replace, say the payroll or other harmful tax as Al Gore and others have proposed, is no harder than enacting a small increase. Also from the Chronicle article:

"I would advocate for a tax, but I'm also a realist, and I know it would never work," said Christopher Knittel, a Davis economist and one of the report's co-authors. "It's hard to get a 10-cent gasoline tax passed, much less one over a dollar."

Knittel is wrong to be pessimistic. Join the Pigou Club and make it happen!

Rational energy tax, what would it look like?

2006-12-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

Good longish article:

Our national energy tax policy is misguided in at least three ways. First, a policy to promote energy independence through reduced oil imports is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how energy markets function. A policy that attempts to establish energy independence by promoting domestic fossil fuel production is especially misguided. Second, our policy relies heavily on energy subsidies, most of which are socially wasteful, inefficient, and driven by political rather than energy considerations. Third, current energy taxes are deficient on a number of levels.

The article is from the AEI, a conservative think tank. They use different language, but the policy ends up matching Al Gore's proposal. Also from the AEI article:

Second, we should implement a green tax swap. A green tax swap uses revenue from environmentally motivated taxes to lower other taxes in a revenue-neutral reform. For example, Congress could reduce reliance on oil and other polluting sources of energy by implementing a carbon tax. The revenue could be used to finance corporate tax reform or reductions in the payroll tax. [12] Consider a tax of $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide--a tax rate comparable to the current carbon price in the European Emissions Trading System. Focusing only on carbon [13] and assuming a short-term reduction in carbon emissions of 10 percent in response to the tax, a $15-per-ton tax rate would collect nearly $80 billion a year, an amount that represents 28 percent of all corporate taxes collected in the United States in 2005. Assuming the carbon tax was fully passed forward into consumer prices, it would raise the price of gasoline by 13 cents a gallon, the cost of electricity generated by natural gas by 0.6 cents per kWh, and the cost of electricity generated by coal by 1.4 cents per kWh.

Or Congress could raise the gasoline tax, index it for inflation, and return the additional revenue through a tax reduction. A gasoline tax increase is less efficient than a carbon tax at reducing carbon emissions. [14] Accepting the references cited above at face value, however, the gasoline tax increase would move us in the direction of the optimal Pigouvian tax on motor fuels, taking into account other pollution externalities as well as congestion and accident externalities. [15]

Next we should eliminate the gas guzzler tax loophole for SUVs and light trucks. Congress might also consider augmenting the gas guzzler tax by shifting to a feebate approach whereby low-mileage vehicles are taxed at increasing rates, as under the current gas guzzler tax, and fuel-efficient vehicles receive a tax subsidy. That could be structured to be revenue neutral.

Bravo!

Answering NoPigou in Canada

2006-11-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

Mike Moffat has a great article at about.com answering NoPigou in more detail than Kitchen Linker did but with the same thrust and an explanation of how taxation, spending, and regulation actually work in Canada (where NoPigou originates).

Pigou means less planning

2006-11-29T20:55:00.000-08:00

NoPigouClub:

But here's Jaccard's big claim: He supports Pigovian taxes because they involve "no role for planners." We'll have more on this untruth in later postings, but let's begin with one question: Who sets the price--i.e. the tax?

and

And then another question: What do we do with the money collected through the Pigovian tax? Let's get the Ministry of the Environment and the Department of Industry...but, hey, no planners, please.

Unless all NoPigouClub members are anarchists, they will admit that taxes need to be collected. The level of energy tax should not be set by the EPA or Commerce Department, but by Congress ... just as Income and other taxes are now set, mostly according to what Congress thinks it can get away with and how much is needed to cover spending minus borrowing. There is no additional planning, just a shift from one sort of taxes to another.

And the shift is better if you care about the environment, the economy, or simply distrust planners.

Why?

Taxes on income and capital suppress positive externalities (ex: economic growth).
Pigouvian taxes substitute for regulation and prohibition of greenhouse gas and other pollutant emissions.
(Redundant, but Kitchen Linker must drive home the point) Without pigouvian taxes, we will continue to have damaging tax on labor and capital AND extremely inefficient and politically determined non-solutions to our environmental problems (ex: the SugarCorn mafia)

Come to grips with reality NoPigou and switch clubs!

65% of economists are pigouvians

2006-11-29T20:53:00.000-08:00

Arnold Kling quoting Robert Whaples:

65 percent of economists are members of the Pigou Club--they want to raise taxes on energy.

Kitchen Linker is surprised that percentage isn't even higher.

Pelosi's pigouvian opportunity

2006-11-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

SF Chronicle on how fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax, which hits Democratic voters hard, is putting the new Democratic Congress in a tough spot:

But if Democrats impose the pay-go rule, they cannot fix the alternative minimum tax without gutting existing spending programs -- much less creating new ones -- or sharply raising other taxes.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to swap in a gas tax, which should doubly please environmentalist Democrats.

SugarCorn Mafia

2006-11-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

Bring it to justice. James Surowiecki in the New Yorker:

Our current policy is absurd even by Washington standards: Congress is paying billions in subsidies to get us to use more ethanol, while keeping in place tariffs and quotas that guarantee that we’ll use less. And while most of the time tariffs just mean higher prices and reduced competition, in the case of ethanol the negative effects are considerably greater, leaving us saddled with an inferior and less energy-efficient technology and as dependent as ever on oil-producing countries. Because of the ethanol tariffs, we’re imposing taxes on fuel from countries that are friendly to the U.S., but no tax at all on fuel from countries that are among our most vehement opponents. Congressmen justify the barriers to foreign ethanol with talk of “energy security.” But how is the U.S. more secure when it has to import oil from Venezuela rather than ethanol from Brazil? These tariffs are bad economic policy, bad energy policy, and bad foreign policy. Talk about your Domino effect.

Of course ethanol from tropical sugar, not eight times less efficient midwestern corn, could be an important component of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Time to congress with Congress.

Java and Javascript, free and efficient

2006-11-13T21:00:00.000-08:00

Wow, Javascript and now Java, free.

Both are good for the environment, too. Adobe's JS VM is way faster (i.e., more efficient) than the ones that ship with web browsers. And Sun's Java is way fast too. To the extent scripting languages (Python, Ruby, ...) run on the Java VM instead of their own, lots of cycles (i.e., energy/emissions) are saved.

Kitchen Linker lives in interesting and cool times!

Pigou or what? Part III

2006-11-13T20:55:00.000-08:00

Mike Moffatt talks sense in the National Post:

High taxes on labour discourage work. High taxes on capital gains discourage saving, investment, and risk taking. High taxes on activities which pollute will encourage consumers to switch to environmentally friendlier alternatives.

Pigou opponents need to respond to this or they're merely blowing hot air.