San Francisco Mayor follows Al Gore: Tax waste not work

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.

Prediction: Europeans and Asians take over rap

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

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!

Gas prices change habits

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.

Another reason a gas tax is ideal

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!

Pelosi's pigouvian opportunity

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.