That gets at the heart of the lie that any tax can create jobs — that government can simply tax a dollar, with the economic damage that causes, reduce its value through administrative processing, and somehow deploy what’s left more effectively and efficiently than if it had just left it in the private market. Even in the implausible best-case scenario where a tax is perfectly “revenue neutral,” returned dollar-for-dollar to taxpayers—requiring absolutely no administration costs—it might be able to exchange one job in one sector for one job in another. In reality, it will unfailingly trade more jobs for fewer.
We have a live time green scam just down the road from us. West Fraser with the generous support of federal and provincial taxpayers opened a new plant that is supposed to recover lignin from wood wastes as a substitute for dirty old oil. It is just like the kids story about the emperor and his new clothes. Everyone is pretending that they see something usefull and economical but there is really f-all there but a big stupid parade.
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