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0 pointsandy_ppp10y ago0 comments

I'd like to see this sort of research too...

I'd also like to see things like the tax system be used to make changes to income inequality - both in terms of like for like pay as well as to some extent evening up the pay professions each sex choose to go into. i.e. if you are a woman you get tax off up to a certain amount because society screws over your pay for getting pregnant.

I'd also love to see meat taxed on a trading system where by everyone would get a meat quota that was quite small - if you want to eat shitloads of meat great - go for it - but you have to pay someone else for their meat points.

You could set the level of everyone's meat tokens for the year at a level to raise people out of poverty/or alternatively just to reflect the costs to the environment.

I'll releasing more totally unworkable economic policies soon... :-)

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3 comments · 2 top-level

AnimalMuppet10y ago· 1 in thread

Your "meat points" idea is horrible, because it destroys market knowledge.

That is: In a free market, there are two things, supply and demand, and they communicate via price. In your idea, you fix the amount of supply, for absolutely no reason. All that's left is for the price to move the demand to where it meets (no pun intended) the supply. But you're throwing away half of the ability of the market to respond - the supply side, and you're doing it for absolutely no reason.

Um, unless you're doing it as research. That... might be interesting research, but I suspect that it will show that "supply and demand" makes a more efficient market than "demand alone".

andy_pppOP10y ago

"for absolutely no reason"

I thought manufacturing meat was destroying the planet?

The whole point of the idea is to stop the supply side isn't it and the price of meat remains at whatever level the market thinks - the meat tokens are traded separately. It's simply that there would be a centrally planned amount of meat produced and it would go to those willing to pay the most for it. The tokens that everyone gets are designed to sweeten the deal for those who decide not to eat meat.

Sure you can eat meat, but your quota is worth £4000 per year to someone.

I'm not saying cap and trade has worked well for fossil fuels, but this is effectively carbon offsetting done in a better way.

Unfortunately I'm not certain that capitalism has solved the problems we are going to face over the next century if we want to survive. If we leave things to the market completely all this cheap oil will ruin the environment. Needs to be taxed.

undersuit10y ago

I think you're going after just meat when you should be going after all manufactured foods. Meat prices are kept low in part by the same sort of subsidies that keep poptarts, fruit rollups, and white bread cheap. Force meat to be an expensive product, let the animals live on large tracts of land, eating naturally with minimal assistance, and deal with the occasional predation or with the additional effort to protect your animals from predation.

Taxing meat as we have now hurts the consumers and lets the manufacturers continue with wasteful, unethical, and harmful practices.

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