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Oxfam proposes a global shipping tax

Incoming email from newly signed up Samizdatista Rob Fisher (who can only do emails right now) about how Oxfam is proposing a global shipping tax. Watts Up With That? has the story.

Says Rob:

This is extraordinary. Read the whole thing but in particular the money flowchart diagram.

Bishop Hill calls this Oxfam creating famine.

Says Anthony Watts:

These people have no business writing tax law proposals, especially when it appears part of the larder goes back to them. This is so wrong on so many levels.

Says Bishop Hill commenter ScientistForTruth:

These [snip – please tone down the language] are in principle no different from the pirates operating out of Somalia, wanting to skive money off international shipping. And just as Oxfam would be solicitous to ensure that no-one gets their hands on the dosh unless they sign up to an eco-fascist agenda, so the pirates will be sure to share the booty only with their mates.

I do enjoy those Bishop’s Gaff Bishop’s Rules bits in his comments section. Perhaps “what a bunch of total snips” will catch on as an insult.

13 comments to Oxfam proposes a global shipping tax

  • Paul Marks

    The Oxfam people have exactly the same right to make policy proposals as anyone else.

    This suggestion of the Oxfam people is absurd – and should be ignored.

    However, it does provide a useful piece of information.

    The people in charge of Oxfam have no judgement – they are fools.

    Therefore one should not give the organization any money – one should give money to charities that are not run by idiots.

  • I think the sinister thing here is that Oxfam have apparently taken over the seat of the Bolivian delegation to this conference, so that they can negotiate using the privileges of a country, rather than just acting as a lobbying organisation.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Oxfam is not really about aid any more. I refuse to give it a penny. I usually contribute money and items to the Trinity Hospice, which is a fine organisation caring for terminally ill people and appears not to go in for dubious political causes or call for new taxes.

    As ever, the costs will be passed on to the public from a tax such as this, assuming that anyone is stupid enough to levy it. No doubt some of the people on another recent Samizdata thread who disapprove of free trade and the like will be glad. As for those of us who understand economics, not so much.

  • The British Government are often accused of using George Orwells 1984 as a reference manual for setting up a Big Brother State rather then a dystopian novel.

    In the latest developments, it seems that Oxfam and the New World Order, sorry WWF are trying to kill the shipping industry by loading it with what they will presumably call a Sinbad Tax(apropos the FTT Tobin Taxes resurrection as the Robin Hood Tax).

    If they want to replicate the total collapse of society as foretold in “Atlas Shrugged” I can’t think of a better way to do it as this new Sinbad Tax would reward both the Looters and the Moochers at the cost of the general public.

    Sorry – but who elected these idiots? Because I don’t remember voting for either the WWF or Oxfam in the last election.

  • Erm, no. This isn’t as bad as you’re making out.

    OK, assume, no, go on for a moment, just assume, that there is something to this climate change lark.

    Yes, yes, I know, you don’t agree, it’s all nonsense etc.

    However, if it is true then what we actually want to do as the solution is to have a carbon tax. Very simply, a carbon tax on all carbon emissions. And that’s it. End of story. No feed in tariffs, no subsidies, no carbon credits, none of that bollocks. Just a simple carbon tax.

    And yes, international aviation and international shipping should pay it as well.

    However, just one more wrinkle. There’s absolutely nothing at all about climate change that says that the general tax level needs to be higher. Or that we even desire the general tax level to be higher. So, we put on the carbon tax and then we reduce other taxes by the same amount so that tax revenue is stable.

    We could, for example, stick this $25 a tonne (seems quite low actually, should probably be higher) on bunker fuel. Fuel costs as a percentage of shipping are near nothing anway.

    Then we , say reduce income tax on hte poor. We live in a country where quite insanely someone on minimum wage part time is paying income tax. Completely barmy.

    Tax carbon: but we don’t give the money to Oxfam, we simply reduce our own current taxes.

  • Runcie Balspune

    The really scary part of this proposal is the “global” bit, I know some libertarians have issues with sovereignty, but this is as far away from individual liberty as you can get.

  • Jerry

    Tim,

    ‘Very simply, a carbon tax on all carbon emissions. And that’s it. End of story’

    Nice idea but it doesn’t work that way.
    End of story ?? Don’t you believe it for an instant !!
    If you create a carbon tax, for ANY reason, then next year or the year after that, there will be still ANOTHER reason why somebody somewhere NEEDS MORE OF YOUR MONEY !!

    Remember this and NEVER forget –
    There is NO LIMIT or END to the greed governments and other so-called groups have for YOUR MONEY!
    The only advantage governments have is they can take it by force ( and have in some instances ).

    They will try ANYTHING to get just a bit more for some purpose ( real or, as in the case of ‘global warming/climate change’ bogus – bogus, at least from the point of humans being able to do anything
    about it ) which which they will tout as being absolutely necessary for the world to keep
    spinning !!!

    As for income tax on the poor, I agree, up to a point.
    I don’t know where you live but in my country, we now have 47% of people who pay NO INCOME TAX.
    What do you think will happen when that hits 51% ??

    We got to this point with tax credits, a ‘government has to take care of EVERYBODY’ mentality and various programs all of which look good based on their intent but which are also ripe for widespread abuse ( food stamps and welfare are just two examples )

    If you can remove the abuse ( HIGHLY doubtful ) I’ll go alone with ‘those who are truly destitute should not pay income tax.

    Finally, although I may have said this before on this site, ( I tell this to anyone who’ll listen ) when I speak of more of your money above, did anyone else ever notice the the amount ‘requested’ is never a large amount ? Taxes NEVER go up by 25% at one time. It’s always in small increments. Easier to justify with ‘this is not very expensive’ and ‘we REALLY NEED to do this’. All the good bleeding hearts BS.

    Well folk, right now, just about HALF of what I earn goes to taxes in one for or another.
    income tax
    sales tax
    property tax
    gasoline tax
    car inspection
    car license plates
    building permits
    hazardous disposal fees ( for batteries )
    disposal fees ( for tires )

    The list is ENDLESS and yet, every day it seems, someone else comes up with another way to take MY money for something THEY want. Whether they can legally do it or not is totally irrelevant, at least to them ( I give you nationally mandated health care and gun control – neither allowed by the Constitution unless, in the latter example, I simply don’t understand ‘shall not be infringed’ ).

    And yet, they trundle onward without regard to the usefulness, or validity, or value or effectiveness of their ’cause’.

    So you see Tim, they will NEVER stop. No matter what you give them, it WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH !!
    All of their ideas are sold on their INTENT and NEVER later either validated as useful/needed/worthwhile etc or eliminated. Once, instituted, we’re STUCK with it.

  • Laird

    I can’t begin to tell you how much I despise Oxfam.

    Oh, and what Jerry said. There are already enough camels with their noses (and more) in our tent; we don’t need another.

  • @Tim Worstall:

    Tim – You’re pretty sound on most things Libertarian, but you are way, way, way off on the whole Warble Gloaming thing. It’s natural variation being used to as camouflage for more Big State/Big Eco tax and spend.

    You’ve read the e-mails from Climategate 1 & 2, these guys are deep into the science and are biased towards finding a solution whose answer is CO2 causes climate change, end of story, “The Science is Settled”!

    The’ve spent nearly 20 years pouring over the the data and the best they can prove that there has been some warming in the last part of the 20th Century, but it seems to have stopped or paused.

    Equally, most of the pre-cursors that they consider to be supporting evidence for CO2 based Warble Gloaming are either not there, too weak or actually show opposite results.

    It’s okay, I understand – it’s a con, many of us were taken in by it at the beginning, but we’ve spent years of time and billions of dollars attempting to prove the sensitivity of the climate to CO2 change and proven the square root of fuck all.

    I’m fundamentally a believer in the scientific method, but all I’ve seen to date have been preliminary studies that have only been confirmed by other members of the hockey team and lots and lots of conclusive studies that are either biased, misjudged, based on the wrong premise or just plain country house bollocks.

    You’re deluded – give it up.

  • If you read the PDF on WUWT, there are some interesting details. For instance, that the tax will only “marginally” affect shipping companies’ costs. Well, yes, that’s the point. The changes always happen at the margins.

    And that in an attempt to make the net costs to developing countries 0, they calculate a rebate based on the value of each country’s imports. Presumably the negative effect on exports is irrelevant.

    But what really gets me is Figure 1. This shows money flowing out of the shipping industry and towards a “green climate fund” and developing countries. There are so many naive (or malicious?) assumptions here it’s hard to know where to start. One is that shipping will not be affected. But a *huge* one is that the unit of measurement is a *country*.

    As far as I can see, money will be taken from import/export businesses in developing countries and given to their governments. But that’s a “zero net cost” to the country?

  • Runcie Balspune

    “developing countries”

    Does this include those “developing countries” who are nuclear armed with space programs and are being feted with to dig Europe out of its financial crisis ?

  • Tom

    Tim!… TIM!
    stop running around and woofing at the base of the wrong tree.

    OXFAM:
    http://fakecharities.org/2011/02/charity-202918/

  • Paul Marks

    I see.

    So the demands for a “Carbon Tax” are quite sincere and are not a statist power grab.

    Leave aside the recordings of people like Van Jones (who used to be Obama’s point man on this – and now works at the de facto world government socialist “Centre for American Progress”) ADMITTING it is a power grab.

    Let us just look at all those nuclear power stations being built in Germany, the United States, Italy (and so on).

    Errrr.

    Accept lots of nuclear power stations are NOT being built.

    Indeed in Germany (the country that is actually most fanatical about “man made globel warming”) what nuclear power stations that exit are being CLOSED DOWN.

    So one does not need the cloak and dagger operations of people working for Glenn Beck or Andrew Brietbart (rivals – but in a healthy rivarly) to record the collectivists admitting it is a power grab. (Although it is nice that these things have been recorded).

    The facts on the ground prove it.

    If the globel warming people were sincere they would be supporting the building of vast number of nuclear power stations (demanding that regulations which do NOT help safety be repealed – and so on).

    Instead they are (with a few exceptions such as James Lovelock) fanatcially campaigning for the CLOSURE of nuclear power stations.

    So whatever this “Carbon Tax” is about it is NOT about “man made globel warming”.