Coalition Politics
In an earlier post arguing that any carbon tax that emerges from a real political process is not likely to closely resemble academic theory, I said that:
It doesn’t require complete cynicism to observe that political coalitions are not entirely composed of philosopher-kings debating the good of humanity. Trillions of dollars of assets and millions of jobs will be threatened by pushing a huge portion of a currently widely-distributed tax burden onto a subset of the economy. What do you think the reactions of the good people of Wyoming, North Dakota, and Alaska will be to the idea of paying for huge tax cuts for their beloved countrymen in New York, California and Florida? The senators for any 20 states can block most legislation. In my original NR article, I described how, in a presidential election, this dynamic would likely play out to punish harshly any candidate foolish enough to propose such a tax.
In support of this, consider the following quick chart that I did (inspired by analysis that I remember from Roger Pielke, Jr.) that compares the % of the 2004 vote that went for Bush to CO2 emissions per capita by state:
Now correlation doesn’t imply causality, and there are many reasons for such a correlation, but it does point to the idea that there is a natural, in fact basically pre-existing, Senate coalition to charge an enormous toll on the rest of the country for agreement to aggressive abatement of carbon emissions.
Jim, that graph sure is interesting, and the LoBF you drew looks like a pretty accurate reflection on the data, but I’m wondering if you could tell us what the r^2 of the data set is.
— Matt Zeitlin · Jan 6, 12:02 AM · #
Matt:
Thanks for your interest.
Technically speaking, since these are ranks, it is improper to simply calculate an R^2 for this dataset. One would typically use Spearman’s Rank Correlation Coefficient or, if unwilling to assume the difference between each rank was equivalent to all others, Kendall’s Tau.
A log-linear model using the underlying raw data for this chart (i.e., prior to transformation to ranks) has an R^2 of 0.43.
I hope this is helpful
— Jim Manzi · Jan 6, 12:28 AM · #
Here is Pielke’s original analysis:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/001109why_al_gore_will_be_.html
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/science_politics/001112al_gore_2008_part_2.html
Pielke’s prediction about Gore sure didn’t pan out, did it?
— anonymous · Jan 6, 04:14 AM · #
It’s worth pointing out that a revenue-neutral payroll-for-carbon tax is a huge win for most working class people. It’s not even close. In a pathological case, suppose I’m in construction and I drive a heavy-duty pickup 20,000 miles in a year, consuming 2000 gallons of gasoline. The tax on that carbon, swapping for payroll in a revenue neutral way, is $2400. If said construction worker makes $40,000, his payroll tax (employer and employee; as economist point out, the burden uniformly falls on the worker), is something like $4800. Now, obviously the price of other things would go up, like electricity, but not $2400 worth of up … and even if it did, you could just do a flat rebate or LIHEAP or more EITC whatever to get the progressivity back.
— Nicholas Beaudrot · Jan 6, 05:53 AM · #
Anonymous:
Thanks so much – I couldn’t find the original analysis. If you go through the comments section of the first item that you reference, you will see me making the point that I think this data supports the idea of the politics cutting the other way.
Nicholas:
Thanks for your comment.
In the post I referenced in this one, I laid out my reasons for thinking that the version of such a tax that would end being enacted would be very unlikely to be either efficient or revenue-neutral.
— Jim Manzi · Jan 6, 07:18 AM · #