I know she talked a lot but I only heard the "how dare you" that everyone else had and my immediate thought is "how dare you come here, lecture my country and not offer solutions".

I am sure in her speaking tour she offered solutions but we need solutions that do not bankrupt nations or harm the wallets of the people of those nations. That's why I love how this post at one point did turn toward discussion of solutions.

If we can do wind and solar with minimal impact on my wallet and no negative impact on power availability then, by all means, let's get that shyte done. Same goes with other solutions. I will buy a Ferrari before I buy a tesla so we need some cheaper solutions to vehicles one I suggested before in this thread is propane conversions. For those who want or can afford the cheaper than tesla options, or hybrids why not hybrids that use propane as the alternative fuel instead of gasoline?

Tittums wrote:

it seems the current generation, even when confronted with evidence, is hesitant to address the issue...

delta1 wrote:

https://tinyurl.com/rj78v5l

Girl from Sweden responds to Greta.

MACS wrote:

I am automatically against anything that impacts my wallet. The way pretty much any government spends money is atrocious so I just see "carbon taxes" as scams.

Tittums wrote:

Looks like most of her beef is with the immigration policies and what they are doing to the local economy. The personal tax rate is over 57% now and expected to go over 61% soon with a sales tax of 25%.

How dare you indeed!

deadeyedick wrote:

Looks like most of her beef is with the immigration policies and what they are doing to the local economy. The personal tax rate is over 57% now and expected to go over 61% soon with a sales tax of 25%.

How dare you indeed!

deadeyedick wrote:

That's not really an appropriate argument for things however.

I mean... let's back things up and look at it from one extreme... let's take gasoline taxes (because the "rape is up because there are immigrants in sweden" woman was discussing gas tax).

Let's start at 0% tax. Pretend that there was no tax on the gasoline you purchased. Pretty awesome, right? I agree.

However, there are two things going on: 1 - Use of gasoline has an externality (this is a negative impact which impacts others, not the person using the object, or which is spread out across many people)... driving a vehicle creates some amount of emissions, which has a negative impact on air quality. You don't live in a closed system, so you're only going to personally experience a very small percentage of the externality. Therefore the externality is NOT a disincentive for your to use the gasoline (as opposed to a closed system, like your garage. You are not likely to run your car indefinitely in a garage because the externality is suddenly an "internality" (see what I did there? I crack myself up))... In these cases, taxes on a good are collected with the intent of either a) reducing use (sin taxes) or b) putting the tax revenue towards abating the negative externality. 2 - Some goods have infrastructure directly tied to the use of that good. Gas is an excellent example of this, as use of roads is almost directly tied to use of gas. Taxing gas to pay for road work ensures that for the most part, that common infrastructure is paid in an equitable way, where those who use it contribute proportionately to the use.

Both those items above are very rational reasons to implement a tax... and both of those reasons above would negatively impact your wallet if we started at a zero tax point.

victor809 wrote:

Enter electric cars...

But never fear.
Massachusetts has a tax for that.

tailgater wrote:

Correct. I was going to say bicycles as well.

Once electric cars becomes a large enough user of roads, it would make sense to try to find a way to have them pay their fair share of infrastructure costs. Why would you disagree with that?

victor809 wrote:

Not disagreeing, just showing that MA is ahead of the curve.

They're floating a mile tax out there.

And the collected money goes into the general fund. By default it pays for the roads, but it isn't earmarked for it. So it's a scam. At least in my home state.

tailgater wrote:

My point is simply that everything needs to be approached individually, and that making blanket statements only ensures you will be wrong at least some of the time.

victor809 wrote:

Isn't that a blanket statement?

If there's one thing I find to be true, it's that people who generalize are annoying.

tailgater wrote: