Monday, August 2, 2010

Round-Up: Monday, Aug. 2, 2010

News: The cap-and-trade bill may be dead, but the issue of dealing with climate change is not going away.
But the main reason is simply this: at some point, the country is going to have to raise revenues to fix the deficit. And cap-and-trade, if done the right way -- if permits are sold, rather than given away to the industry -- can produce quite a lot of revenues...
Most of those costs will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher energy prices -- although interestingly, the CBO analysis suggests that the public will bear less of the cost if the permits are indeed sold to produce revenue rather than given away.
But my premise is that tax increases are inevitable: it's a question of who bears those taxes and how they bear them. And at some point Congress -- which is surely headed for some massive showdowns over the budget at some point in the next several years -- might conclude that cap-and-trade is a more acceptable way to raise revenues than an omnibus tax increase... But other than increased taxes on the very wealthy, and some gimmicky stuff like sin taxes and windfall profits taxes that don't have all that much revenue-generating potential, it polls a lot better than other types of tax increases, and may be a more politically palatable compromise.
Picture: Los Angeles parking fun (via)


Video: Ridiculous compilation The Chairman announcing every "secret" ingredient on Iron Chef America.


Video: The "rapist" video I posted last week gets the Auto-Tune remix treatment