Environmental Benefits of the FairTax
Paul Gessing provides some good insights in his new article “Environmental Benefits of the FairTax.”
An excerpt:
Environmentalists should be licking their chops at the possibilities the FairTax presents for creating widespread environmental improvements throughout American society. First, by levying a 23 percent tax on top of whatever sales taxes state and local governments charge (up to 10 percent in some areas), taxes on all forms of consumption will increase, thus creating major disincentives for heavy consumption. Since our nation’s consumer-driven behavior causes us to use more resources than any other society in the history of man, the opportunity to assist conservatives in creating disproportionate burdens on consumption relative to hard work and saving ought to be very attractive.
The power of the FairTax to help the environment goes far beyond just transferring the entire federal tax burden onto consumption. Under the FairTax (remember this plan has the support of some of the most conservative members of Congress including Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay, not to mention Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan) the only time the tax is levied is on the purchase of new goods. Used items are not taxed! I can’t think of a better incentive for reuse, conservation, and the general spread of simpler living throughout this country than forcing heavy consumers to pay the heaviest taxes while creating vast new markets for used products of all varieties.
Further, as Charles Cusic notes:
Mr. Gessing told his story very well; but, he failed to mention [that] there will no be a need to waste approximately 300,000 trees every year. This is the estimated number of trees it takes to produce the instructional booklets forwarded to taxpayers each year.
One web page on www.fairtax.org also tells us if all the income tax forms filed each year by our taxpayers were placed end to end they would circle the globe 28 times. No mention is made of how many trees are consumed to produce these forms and the billion 1099 forms that are sent to investors and the IRS by our investment firms. My guess is the filed tax forms and the billion 1099 forms are in addition to the 300,000 trees mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Of course, the FairTax would not be without its own forms and manuals. But they would be far simpler and shorter, thus saving many trees when compared to the current system.
The country has quite the disposable economy. Marketers are always pushing us to buy new products. However, many electronics can be repaired. Usually it is just one simple part that fails—and the whole unit is trashed.
Take a look at the used Sony Play Station market. On Ebay used games are purchased by teenagers who know how to fix and resell them. Elsewhere on the internet are many sites that teach users how to fix the games and where to buy parts. Money strapped teenagers have figured out how to save money. With the FairTax, productivity in the form of repair services will be encouraged.
One potential new war cry of the movement could be “Save the Landfills!”