For perspective, US airlines' consumption of aviation fuel is 197 mln gallons a year.
US motorists' consumption of vehicle fuel is 390 mln gallons a day.
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/gasoline/use-of-gasoline...
If you go to this[1] page, it buckets all aviation into a category, and shows it accounts for 9.4% of US transportation energy consumption. Still significantly lower than the 54.5% that light-duty account for, but a substantially larger proportion than the gasoline page leads one to believe.
One thing to keep in mind for [1] is that it doesn't differentiate between consumer and commercial usage. And there are a lot of non-consumer vehicles that'd fall into it. A few examples likely to be large contributors to that category due to sheer volume and time on the road: last mile delivery vehicles, taxis, and police cruisers.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transporta...
Rich people may not consume more in proportion to their wealth, but they do consume more in absolute terms. WRT carbon tax in particular the rich do consume substantiall more with plane rides, so the tax side would be more progressive than a plain VAT.
Also, they buy their kids cars.
> It'll be a slight redistribution of wealth from the wealthy to the poor and that's it. It won't fulfill the role of a UBI.
Maybe it's not enough but that doesn't make it a bad thing. One could combine a bunch of externalizes taxes (carbon, land, etc.) which together could create a better UBI. Or yes, throw in VAT Yang style too.
> In an unideal world it will just be gamed to all hell instead.
"gaming" is finding ways to maximally consume / Cabon impact. Yes, please game this as much as possible!
> Also, good luck getting people to swallow a doubling of their tax bill even if you give it back.
By definition only the people that consume 2 / punative-rate the average double there taxes. I'm sure these few rich people will raise a fit and have outside political power, but this applies to any progressive tax.