Tax tax tax tax tax

This Myron Ebell is going on like a broken record now. Here's his considered eight point refutation of the Waxman-Markey Bill:

• 1. It’s a tax.


• 2. It’s an indirect, hidden, sneaky tax, but it’s a tax.


• 3. It’s a tax on energy that will raise prices on energy and all goods and services that are produced with or use energy.


• 4. It’s a tax that will fall more heavily on poorer people because poorer people spend a higher percentage of their incomes on energy than do wealthier people.


• 5.It’s not a one-time or steady tax, but a tax that will cause energy prices to increase every year.


• 6. It’s a tax that will destroy jobs in energy-intensive industries, which are concentrated in the States that use coal for electricity.


• 7. It’s a tax that will raise energy prices more in States that depend on coal for electricity.


• 8. It’s a tax that will create perpetual economic stagnation.

So??? That's the point of it. Of course, a knuckle-brain like Myron can't tell the difference between a tax that is for raising revenue (like the income tax) and a tax that is intended to discourage use and raise funds to mitigate the damage (like cigarette and alchohol taxes -- these are substances that you shouldn't be encouraged to use and whose abuse results in great costs to the public funds).

Such distinctions are far too subtle for a complete simpleton.

Also, we could also note that claim 8 is false, unless we're talking about economic stagnation to the coal and oil industries (who pay Myron's salary so that he can harm us with his lies), and claim 4 is deceitful, because it doesn't count the poor who generally benefit from the spending of these taxes raised.

Taxes on heating fuel will go up, but the money can be used to pay for house insulations and thus reduce the demand. Why don't people save and invest in their own house insulation and reap the payback made from the savings in fuel costs? I don't know. They just don't. And that's one good example of many for why the so-called free market frequently doesn't work. If you're going to assume that consumers are all slick calculating machines capable of rationally assessing the cost benefit of each action they could do and taking responsibility, then you're living in a fantasy world.

But that's what you do, Myron. If people were intelligent and reasonable in all matters, then you wouldn't have a job, would you, because no one would be interested in letting you lie to them, would they?