joshhsoj1902

That isn't the definition of working class, or middle class

The carbon pricing redistributes the earnings back to people.

This then does let people have an impact on climate change by influencing them to choose products that produce less carbon and therefore appear to cost less.

The genius is that the price difference is artificial, if on average people in the province choose the more expensive option, they will make back the difference quarterly.

As is the system only really penalizes people who consistently choose the more carbon inefficient options and do it a lot.

Did you not read the earlier comments in this thread? That very point was already addressed.

The point the article is trying to make is that after selling the house, even after mortgage is settled, these homeowners have a lot of cash. Much more than their renter peers who are in the same position (houseless) and trying to find something they can afford.

The point above seems obvious when it's put like that, but it's still hard for people to grasp.

This is why the article argues that people who are in the privileged position of having huge equity in their house need to also consider what that does to their wealth class, even if they themselves don't believe it. A lot of home owners who have had a house for 10-15 years (and even more who paid off their house years ago) have no clue how much harder it has gotten for middle class income people to buy houses.

I don't agree with that take.

Those house owners likely fall into upper middle class rather than middle class.

Another way to look at it. Depending on who you ask middle class roughly covers household income of about 75k-150k

If one of those home owners sold their home and made 1 million in equity, that money could be expected to make them ~50k a year. For many current home owners that hypothetical raise would push them above the middle-class bracket.

For anyone who purchased a house in the last 5ish years sure. Much longer than that and they are sitting on a whole lot of equity.

Yes if they sold the house they would have 1/2 - 1 million dollars in cash and be homeless. But that's a lot of dollars better than all the other people who currently also don't own a home and don't have all that cash.

Which is sorta the point the article is trying to make.

A lot of people do love in dense areas in cities though. That's what makes them dense.

And programs like the carbon pricing makes those places more attractive to build denser housing.

EVs don't even need to be the only alternative, if the carbon pricing is encouraging someone to buy a more fuel efficient ICE vehicle, the incentive is still working.

I still have such a hard time understanding how people are calling the carbon pricing setup a stick, most of us are getting more money back from the program. Yes overall oil prices worldwide have gone up since the program started, but international oil prices aren't impacted by Canadian carbon pricing policy...

The rebate is paid out quarterly

The trouble you're having is with increased gas prices is a global problem not caused by the carbon tax, oil prices have gone up everywhere.

You asking to get rid of the carbon tax is just you asking to have less money in your pocket, which is hard to understand when you're also complaining about costs.

All of those improvements do and are happening though, but ridership is used to inform the changes.

The denser parts of cities do have transit that accomplishes what you're asking for.

And if there is no viable alternative for then to turn to they will not change their minds.

Policy like this isn't meant to impact everyone the same way.

If a city has public transit, they likely have coverage targets. Every city does this differently, but in most cities, the majority of people are targetted to be covered.

This means that if more people start using the system who are covered, it's more likely the system itself will be expanded to cover more places.

But you're all missing the 2nd incentive, this could also incentivise people to move to places near transit and could encourage higher density buildings near better transit.

Both of those are things you want, and both of them are things the carbon pricing helps do.

How do you build transit infrastructure when you don't know where the demand is?

I encourage you to look into China's bullet train network, they did what you're suggesting. And the last I heard the system is struggling because the stations and lines weren't built where people actually needed them so it's heavily underutalized.

The most successful public transit systems were ones built up over time. It's going to take decades to fix public transit in many of our cities, are there any cities that aren't doing this?

Also remember that city policy falls under provincial jurisdiction. I was surprised this year to even see the feds start trying to throw money at that problem and incentivise cities to rethink zoning. But it takes time, and it also takes voting people who care into the right spots (city hall and provincial governments)

The carbon tax isn't a "shakedown" btw, the income is redistributed.

Are you suggesting there is a city in Canada that doesn't have some form of public transit? I'm not aware of any large cities like that so I really struggle to understand why you feel the carbon pricing wouldn't be effective right now.

What's the tax in this case? The current carbon tax is redistributed equally, so there's no greed there, it's effectively more of a wealth transfer then a tax.