The UN wants to make your steak more expensive

Source: Conservative Review | July 10, 2016 | Logan Albright

….

But the fun-spoiling United Nations isn’t happy. Recently, they got together to discuss a proposal for a tax on meat producers and sellers, in order to decrease worldwide demand for meat by artificially raising the price. And to no one’s surprise, the Washington Post followed suit with an accompanying article titled, “Meat is horrible.” Their reasoning is that livestock produces a lot of carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is apparently a terrible poison if you believe the hysterical global warming alarmists.

Where to begin? I guess we should start with questioning the wisdom of using the tax code for social engineering in the first place. America’s tax system was designed with one purpose in mind, to raise revenue to fund the government. As odious as that goal is, it’s worlds better than trying to use punitive taxes to change people’s behavior. For one thing, it’s counterproductive from a revenue standpoint, because if people do as they’re told and stop consuming meat, no one will be paying the tax, and the revenue gains will be negligible. Whereas is people ignore the tax and buy meat anyway, the stated goal will have failed, and the government will simply be soaking the population for more money, which is a dishonest and cynical approach to tax policy.

Economists frequently labor under the delusion that they can derive demand curves, solve optimization problems, and figure out the tax that will produce the “optimum” level of meat consumption. This is a fantasy. You don’t know beforehand how people will react to a tax, because individuals have free will to make decisions that we can’t predict with any real accuracy. It’s probable that people will eat “less” meat if the cost is higher, but no one can say precisely how much less, making the idea of optimization a ludicrous impossibility.

….

As your mother used to say when you wouldn’t finish your dinner, there are starving people in the world. The idea that an international body supposedly devoted to peace and prosperity would actually disincentivize food production with a punitive tax is unforgivable. Apart from the specious scientific claims that eating meat is going to destroy the planet, the very notion that these bureaucrats have any business telling us, and particularly poor people who depend on meat production to live, how to eat, is downright immoral. Now if you’ll excuse me, I think my steak is about ready.

Tagged: ,

Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)
Viewing 1 post (of 1 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic.