patrick.net

A group of former Republican officials (including James A. Baker, Henry Paulson, George P. Shultz, Marty Feldstein and Greg Mankiw) is proposing a carbon tax that would start at $40 per ton and gradually increase.

The proceeds of the tax would be distributed to every American.

The average family of four would receive $2,000 annually in dividends. As the tax rises, so would their dividends. Since everyone would receive the same amount of revenue from the tax regardless of their income level, the dividend would make a bigger difference for poorer families than for wealthier ones.

It’s a win-win: Less carbon in the atmosphere, and more equal distribution of income.

That it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make the idea any less worthy.

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It's damn surprising that Republicans would propose this as it goes against everything they've ever pushed.
1. Letting big corporations pollute with impunity.
2. Redistributing wealth to the poor or common man.
3. Lowering the wealth gap.
4. Providing any kind of social safety net.
5. A guaranteed income
6. Increasing the bargaining power of labor. A guaranteed income makes a person less coerced to accept a crappy job to survive.

This sounds like something the Green Party would propose.

I like it mostly, but as the article says,

I’m aware that some on the left would rather use revenues from such a tax to invest in clean energy and other social causes rather than return the revenues directly to the public. That detail can be worked out.

That's an important detail, for two reasons.
1. The best use of a sin tax is to fix the problems caused by the sin. This means the carbon tax should fight carbon pollution, and a wealth tax should fight class warfare.
2. This creates a perverse incentive to increase pollution to increase the guaranteed income. This should be avoided.

I'm for a carbon tax and a guaranteed income, but those two things should not be married. Also, $40/ton is way too little. You can't even buy shit, literal shit, for $40/ton. It should be more like $1/pound or $2000/ton. That's 50 times the proposed initial rate. Sure, starting small and increasing it is a good strategy, but it's gotta increase 50 times over the next 20 years top.