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from the everybody-should-pay-their-fair-share dept.
On Saturday, November 16th, around 282,000 people blocked roads and highways all over France. The protesters, nicknamed the gillets jaunes after the yellow warning vests they wore, had organized through Facebook. Their beef: the increase in environmental taxes on gasoline, on top of a number of other tax increases.
We don't disagree with having to pay more to help act for the environment and fight climate change, was the general opinion, but why should it be only the little folks who have to pay while the elite can easily grin and bear it -- why not tax also all that heavy fuel burned by aeroplanes and tanker ships?
The action, which persisted throughout the day, resulted in over 100 wounded and one tragic death when a mother driving her child to hospital panicked.
The protesters do have a point. While media and politics rightly, if very, very much belatedly, are warning about climate change, the alternatives proposed clearly are not to be taken seriously.
The hard choices we need to face apparently come down to cities investing in smart cameras to fine visitors based on production year and type of their automobile. Public transport investing will come, but not to the countryside where car/ride sharing, Uber and similar services simply are not viable; Tesla and relatives are on another price planet for ordinary people.
As to the EU's emission trading system (ETS) that should drive industry to climate change action: news broke on the same day as the gillets jaunes actions that Britain -- on the verge of leaving the EU -- is one of the biggest net exporters of such credits: Britain had 900 million of these credits too much, for the years 2013-2015 alone.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Sunday November 18 2018, @04:18PM
It isn't just that, one thing forgotten is the increased costs of policing enforcement.
The moment you restrict trade across a border, prices will increase on one side (probably the side that was doing all the importing), while the prices on the other side will drop (because the demand they had suddenly vanished, but supply hasn't adjusted yet).
What usually happens when you have such an arbitrage opportunity? More people will find the risk of getting caught smuggling is less than the benefits from a successful operation, and you will have an increase in smuggling and cross border crime. Also, the economic impact from such a disruption may well end up with a lot of newly jobless, possibly desperate people with families to feed and no income. A perfect situation for recruitment for organised crime, or for people to form such enterprises.
Plus, those people smuggling whatever item you slapped tariffs on, are considered criminals anyway in the eyes of the law now, and many may well diversify into bringing in other items, some of which were banned before, thereby increasing the existing criminal problems before.
You then have to increase policing of the border, increase policing of your citizens, deal with increasingly agitated populace due to your policies. All in all, there is a chance that the costs of enforcing the tariffs, plus the economic disruption, plus increased policing and social costs, may well exceed the losses due to the original free trade that was occuring.