Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change

Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by bko on Thursday July 01, 2021 @03:39PM (#27703589)

> In February 2019, the center-right American Action Forum, estimated that the plan could cost between $51–$93 trillion over the next decade [0]

Take the low estimate of $51 trillion over a decade so $5 trillion per year.

> The top 1% of Americans have a combined net worth of $34.2 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data last updated Oct. 19, 2020

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_New_Deal

[1] https://windfalldata.com/blog/what-it-takes-to-be-in-the-top...

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jdgoesmarching on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:01PM (#27703951)

The American Action Forum is nowhere close to “center-right”, only they call themselves that. It is a conservative think tank that almost exclusively works for Republicans.

Their figures aren’t even in “let’s debate” realm. They cite $36 trillion just for universal healthcare when even the CBO admits that Medicare for All would save $300-600 billion per year. This is nowhere close to good faith accounting, it’s intentionally misleading

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by LorenPechtel on Thursday July 01, 2021 @05:29PM (#27705111)

The $36T figure isn't unreasonable, just cherry-picked. It's counting up the costs without counting the money that is no longer spent elsewhere.

It's like saying that if I decide to patronize the Chevron station it's going to cost $800/year to buy gas, without considering that I'm currently spending $800/year at the Shell station.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by bko on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:08PM (#27704045)

This was the google snippet for green new deal cost. Please provide a better source of the actual cost.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by handrous on Thursday July 01, 2021 @05:19PM (#27705012)

I quick search yields that the best answer is "no-one knows because the proposal remains too vague and too much in-flux to provide an answer".

The CBO has not yet weighed in. That's usually a good starting point for any legislation that's getting seriously close to consideration.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by qqqwerty on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:09PM (#27704060)

The GND included universal healthcare and jobs programs, both of which are the biggest line items in the AAF estimates. They estimated the cost of dealing with carbon emissions at around $7 trillion. And that money is largely for capital expenditures, which anyone who has half a brain would finance over 20-30 year period. And a large chunk of that $7 trillion can be passed off to utility rate payers over that time period with barely a noticeable increase in rates based on how cheap renewables are getting.

Also, AAF can hardly be trusted to fairly evaluate the cost/benefits. A slight increase in utility bills pales in comparison to having to abandon your house due to increased flooding due to climate change. It is funny how when they are doing analysis of tax cuts, they turn over every stone looking to squeeze out questionable "economic productivity" increases to add to their models, and yet when it comes to climate change, they just throw out a bunch of big numbers and call it a day.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jessaustin on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:12PM (#27704108)

So if you seize all the wealth of the top 1% you'll pay for ~7 years of something that no one claims will actually solve climate change.

Maybe we could buy some healthcare or bike paths or something. The important thing is seizing the wealth of the 1%.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by walkedaway on Thursday July 01, 2021 @06:15PM (#27705554)

Why do you think you're entitled to 100% of my wealth?

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jessaustin on Thursday July 01, 2021 @06:20PM (#27705608)

I doubt I'll get it. I don't even get a discount on healthcare.gov. Mostly I'd like to see USA governed by its citizens rather than the rich. If they weren't rich anymore that might happen. Of course the point is that the rich won't allow this. The system will not fix the harms it was designed to create. If something like this went through it would probably take from the (5-1)% and give to the 0.1%.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by walkedaway on Thursday July 01, 2021 @11:47PM (#27707638)

Got it. Make everyone poor and suffer. Great plan.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jessaustin on Friday July 02, 2021 @08:59AM (#27710916)

The cutoff I've seen for the 1% is $11M net worth. Is everyone poorer than that, "suffering"? What kind of world do you live in?

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by walkedaway on Friday July 02, 2021 @11:43AM (#27712968)

By definition there's a new 1% when you take the top 1% and make it 0. Then you take the new 1%. And so on.

Simple math. Everyone ends up with zero.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jessaustin on Friday July 02, 2021 @12:02PM (#27713229)

Haha that's the most amusing slippery-slope argument I've seen recently, and it also has a pleasing Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox aspect to it as well. Bravo!

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by trboyden on Saturday July 03, 2021 @09:43AM (#27721577)

It's easy to throw around numbers without understanding the people behind them. Say the plumber whose business is worth $10 million dollars, pays himself $100k, and re-invests the rest back into his business and his employees. Is he rich? No. That's the problem with ideological socialism. You just want to stick it to the guy who is rich on paper - it has nothing to do with actually improving peoples lives.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by jessaustin on Sunday July 04, 2021 @11:07AM (#27730202)

I'm not a socialist at all, let alone an "ideological" one. My motivation is not to make people poor. My motivation is to arrange some sort of sovereignty for the vast majority of people. As long as billionaires choose all our public officials [0] while paying minimal taxes [1], we don't have majoritarian rule. If we did have it, this country would be better-run and better for both the people who live here and everyone else in the world.

Even if we can assume there is a single ten-millionaire working plumber (and really, that's far-fetched), such a person won't be harmed if all of the billionaires get trimmed back to her level.

[0] https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by Aperocky on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:03PM (#27703986)

> $51–$93 trillion over the next decade

About right when you spend $1280 on a coffee cup: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-force-spent-1280-on-c...

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by Lammy on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:01PM (#27703946)

Personally I tend to be skeptical of anything that discusses nationality at all when it comes to climate change, unless we can somehow move all of the pollution outside the environment (into another environment)

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by falcolas on Thursday July 01, 2021 @03:55PM (#27703836)

> seize all the wealth

How do you propose doing that legally? Or how should the US government survive the wealthy citizen's legal assault if they were to find a loophole?

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by bko on Thursday July 01, 2021 @03:57PM (#27703889)

I'm not. I'm just pointing out that a massive effort requires a broad tax base. I understand everyone wants the wealthy to pay for everything, but there is quite literally not enough wealthy people in the world to begin to tackle a large problem. Everyone has to contribute

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by falcolas on Thursday July 01, 2021 @04:19PM (#27704208)

You should clarify such; it's not even remotely clear from the original post.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by RcouF1uZ4gsC on Thursday July 01, 2021 @03:41PM (#27703633)

> Take the low estimate of $51 trillion over a decade so $500 billion per year.

Over a decade, that would be $5 Trillion per year since a decade has 10 years.

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Re:Americans aren't willing to pay to stop climate change by bko on Thursday July 01, 2021 @03:43PM (#27703655)

Thanks for pointing that out. edited

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