Thanks to everyone who voted for me in the Turtledoves again. I quite honestly was expecting to lose to Meadow from the start, but thanks for keeping it close; I didn't realize I had so many readers
Legitimately the GOP does have rather a lot to feel outraged about... the incredibly large stimulus bill, healthcare reform, the carbon tax, and probably a whole host of different measures like financial reform or the dream act which have outraged their conservative base. The biggest question is if the outrage is gaining traction with the general electorate. The Republicans probably have more blame for the economy this time around, and there's so much to be outraged about they risk muddling their message, but ultimately if it looks like the democrats have focused more on passing their liberal agenda than helping the average joe, they'll face serious losses.
The general electorate is mostly concerned about the economy, as always; the rest matters more to the extent of the perception of a Democratic congress focusing on their pet issues to the exclusion of helping people. At least at the start of 2010.
In that regard the carbon tax is at least less hurtful than it otherwise might of been. I personally would have preferred the money be annually invested in green energy or mass transit, but an annual tax rebate is much more politically useful.
From a purely economic perspective, if the intent of pushing green energy and mass transit is focused purely upon decreasing CO2 emissions, then a properly priced carbon tax would already have achieve that effect, whereas green energy investment would effectively be picking winners and losers among the alternatives. (E.g. the OTL heavy pushing of ethanol for political reasons.)
I was wondering about Specter, since you mentioned another Republican was running for the seat in 2010.
Specter's cancer was discovered and diagnosed as fatal much earlier ITTL, resulting in his move leftward and decision to retire rather than fight it out.
The 111th had bad press with a good agenda IOTL, and they have what sounds like equally bad press with an even better agenda ITTL; that seems like a net improvement to me. What's more, I keep focusing on the kind of opposition forming in the GOP camp. It's of a much more moderate character then IOTL. This is still potentially bad news for the Democrats electorally, but good news for the country if the GOP isn't so bogged down in...well, I won't get too partisan in my descriptions of what I think of them IOTL.
And about the voter ID cards, I look forward to see how that develops. Another potential outcome is that any "bungling" is just not noticed beyond the segment of the media that talks about under-served communities. It might not get noticed at all by the public at-large.
Very true. The issue of going with a media-driven narrative (as I've been doing), of course, is that happenings behind the scenes are a lot more difficult to convey or assess.
Proof of residency would probably be the next big fight. People with voter ID but no proof of residency would still get turned away (as a DC resident, I understand probably better than most why this is necessary; it's the only thing stopping me from hopping across the river to vote in a jurisdiction that matters!)
The carbon tax is really interesting! Money in the pocket should make this impossible to kill. I know it's not good to make generalizations about public opinion on TTL, but I'm pretty comfortable with that one.
At the same time, the rapid speed of legislation has made it hard for citizens to be properly educated on each specific piece. When people think of a carbon tax, they usually think of fossil fuels, and it's not widely known how much agriculture actually does contribute to equivalent CO2 emissions, and so the connection isn't completely obvious, despite attempts at education.
It's the same reason why ITTL certain Republicans are proposing that the carbon tax should be repealed, but the yearly tax credits should be kept (rather defeating the purpose of the whole thing.)
I wonder why cap and trade wasn't done ITTL (Not that I oppose a carbon tax by the way). Is it because with the larger majority and greater apathy toward the GOP, the Democrats feel they can do something bigger?
It's a common misperception that carbon taxes is somehow 'bigger' than cap and trade. Both are viable solutions in general to pollution, and there are reasons to argue that a carbon tax is the real free-market solution due to its relative simplicity (as opposed to cap and trade, which requires the creation of governmental agencies and top-down mandates on emission limits.)
This is why in e.g. British Columbia, the carbon tax was pushed by the more pro-market Liberals as a market-friendly alternative to cap and trade. Why the free-market libertarian Reason magazine has
advocated a carbon tax, as has e.g. the
American Enterprise Institute.
From a policy standpoint, the main differences between cap and trade and carbon taxation is that one fixes the emission, while the other fixes the cost of carbon. Proponents of cap+trade argue that it's counter-cyclical (i.e. in recessions, the carbon price drops), but the general feeling in this Congress is to pass counter-cyclical legislation to achieve counter-cyclical ends. In addition, the fact that cap+trade involves a fixed 'supply' of carbon permits compared to variable demand means that it's very subject to price swings. T
he European cap+trade program IOTL, for instance, saw the price of carbon drop wildly from ~20 euros/ton in early 2008 to as low as 2-3 euros/ton in 2013 thanks to greatly decreased demand from the recession. The heavier scope of the recession IOTL means that the initial price drop in the EU scheme was even greater; the wild price swings and hence uncertainty for business helped make carbon taxation seem a more attractive option ITTL.
No, i believe you got your points across perfectly fine.
Though admittedly it's not just the onion article, but the fact that many of your latest teasers have dealt with the carbon tax and backlash to it. It does make some logical sense after all, healthcare reform is complicated and ATL has good branding and a sudden death to piggyback on, the carbon tax really doesn't have any of that. Still a smart move on the Dems part to make it a rebate, but people are still going to see a 'tax' and a directly applicable rise in food prices. I see parallels to Australia's dealing with the Carbon Tax in this, but perhaps rather than being repealed it'll instead be given some exemptions for agricultural products.
Part of it with healthcare is just in how the mandate is portrayed and 'sold.' "Everyone has to have health insurance or you pay a fine" is received rather differently from "If you want to opt-out of Medicare, and you don't want to get private insurance to replace it, you have to pay a fee."
Repeal is rather unlikely at this point since it'd require Republicans to capture a majority in both Congressional houses. Which isn't feasible until 2012 at the very earliest.
From the economic standpoint, there's no reason to exempt agriculture from carbon taxation, except for political expediency. It's worth noting that in OTL's France, the carbon tax the UMP passed had so many exemptions (agriculture, industry, etc.) that it was struck down as unconstitutional in 2010 for being grossly unequal.
Looking at the math a bit, are people really that upset about the food prices? I understand most anger about taxes is theoretical, but I've never seen people monitor food the way they monitor gas, for example. What's the average person spending increase look like for the year? 10-20 bucks for meat? How much mileage can they get out of that? The most red-blooded conservative eating two pounds of steak a day, every day, wouldn't even crack $50.
Fuel seems a more likely culture war target, since people already seem to watch gas station price boards like hawks. I wonder if it's enough to affect the ride-hailing business model? The margins are already pretty thin there.
If you do the math, most households actually get a net benefit from the carbon tax. That's because the taxed amount is roughly proportional to income (to first approximation), while the dividend is equal for every person. Then again, OTL's Obama cut taxes on most of the population during his first term, and yet polls consistently found that more people thought he'd raised taxes than lowered them.
What's driving the anger ITTL is more the symbol rather than the actual impact of having a tax on meat. It cuts to the core of every culture-war stereotype about red-blooded meat-eating 'real Americans' versus the high-brow arugula-munching East Coast snob. The presence of a gas tax means that it's at least engrained into the political landscape, but the appearance of a meat tax from what looks like out of the blue raises anger about perceived social engineering and "Get your government hands off of my meat!" Food-related taxes targeted at public health in other countries such as Denmark, Hungary, Finland, France, Mexico have proved universally unpopular and generally ended up scrapped. This particular tax isn't oriented at public health, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't at least experience an initial backlash.
Hope, Change, and Nutmeg is again on hiatus for the foreseeable future. I realize that I originally specified the summer as the projected resumption time, but the situation has recently shifted (I'll be leaving graduate school soon), and so it's difficult for me to make any concrete promises when my plans are quite up in the air.
