Yoram Keyes Bauman (born November 19, 1973) [1] is an American economist and stand-up comedian. [2]
Yoram Keyes Bauman (born November 19, 1973) [1] is an American economist and stand-up comedian. [2]
Bauman grew up in San Francisco. He received an undergraduate degree in mathematics at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. In 2003, Bauman attended graduate school at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where he obtained a Ph.D. in Economics.
Bauman is an environmental economist. He works as a professor at the University of Washington, in the Program on the Environment,[ clarification needed ] Bainbridge Graduate School, and Lakeside School. [3] He is the co-author of the 1998 book Tax Shift which advocates switching taxation from income and property to resource consumption. [4]
Bauman bills himself as the "world's first and only stand-up economist." [5] His video Principles of Economics, translated has more than 1 million views on YouTube. [6]
Bauman is a strong supporter of a carbon tax, in particular, a revenue-neutral carbon tax. He started an organization called CarbonWA which gathered signatures to put a revenue-neutral carbon tax on the ballot for the Washington elections, 2016. [7] This initiative, known as Washington Initiative 732, would have imposed a steadily increasing tax on emissions of carbon dioxide, and used the revenue to offset other taxes. Washington relies on a sales tax for much of its revenue, making its state tax code one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation. Had it passed, its supporters asserted that it would have decreased the sales tax, eliminated the business and occupation tax on manufacturing, and expanded the state's earned-income tax credit for low-income households. [8] [9]
Emissions trading is a market-oriented approach to controlling pollution by providing economic incentives for reducing the emissions of pollutants. The concept is also known as cap and trade (CAT) or emissions trading scheme (ETS). One prominent example is carbon emission trading for CO2 and other greenhouse gases which is a tool for climate change mitigation. Other schemes include sulfur dioxide and other pollutants.
A carbon tax is a tax levied on the carbon emissions from producing goods and services. Carbon taxes are intended to make visible the hidden social costs of carbon emissions. They are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by essentially increasing the price of fossil fuels. This both decreases demand for goods and services that produce high emissions and incentivizes making them less carbon-intensive. When a fossil fuel such as coal, petroleum, or natural gas is burned, most or all of its carbon is converted to CO2. Greenhouse gas emissions cause climate change. This negative externality can be reduced by taxing carbon content at any point in the product cycle.
Supply-side economics is a macroeconomic theory postulating that economic growth can be most effectively fostered by lowering taxes, decreasing regulation, and allowing free trade. According to supply-side economics theory, consumers will benefit from greater supply of goods and services at lower prices, and employment will increase. Supply-side fiscal policies are designed to increase aggregate supply, as opposed to aggregate demand, thereby expanding output and employment while lowering prices. Such policies are of several general varieties:
A Pigouvian tax is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities. A Pigouvian tax is a method that tries to internalize negative externalities to achieve the Nash equilibrium and optimal Pareto efficiency. The tax is normally set by the government to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome and does so by being set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities. In the presence of negative externalities, social cost includes private cost and external cost caused by negative externalities. This means the social cost of a market activity is not covered by the private cost of the activity. In such a case, the market outcome is not efficient and may lead to over-consumption of the product. Often-cited examples of negative externalities are environmental pollution and increased public healthcare costs associated with tobacco and sugary drink consumption.
Nicholas Gregory Mankiw is an American macroeconomist who is currently the Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Mankiw is best known in academia for his work on New Keynesian economics.
William Dawbney Nordhaus is an American economist. He was a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University, best known for his work in economic modeling and climate change, and a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Nordhaus received the prize "for integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis".
The Pigou Club is described by its creator, economist Gregory Mankiw, as a “group of economists and pundits with the good sense to have publicly advocated higher Pigouvian taxes, such as gasoline taxes or carbon taxes." A Pigouvian tax is a tax levied to correct the negative externalities of a market activity. These ideas are also known as an ecotaxes or green tax shifts.
Carbon pricing is a method for governments to mitigate climate change, in which a monetary cost is applied to greenhouse gas emissions. This is done to encourage polluters to reduce fossil fuel combustion, the main driver of climate change. A carbon price usually takes the form of a carbon tax, or an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that requires firms to purchase allowances to emit. The method is widely agreed to be an efficient policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon pricing seeks to address the economic problem that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases are a negative externality – a detrimental product that is not charged for by any market.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES) was an energy bill in the 111th United States Congress that would have established a variant of an emissions trading plan similar to the European Union Emission Trading Scheme. The bill was approved by the House of Representatives on June 26, 2009, by a vote of 219–212. With no prospect of overcoming a threatened Republican filibuster, the bill was never brought to the floor of the Senate for discussion or a vote. The House passage of the bill was the "first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change."
A carbon fee and dividend or climate income is a system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address climate change. The system imposes a carbon tax on the sale of fossil fuels, and then distributes the revenue of this tax over the entire population as a monthly income or regular payment.
A carbon pricing scheme in Australia was introduced by the Gillard Labor minority government in 2011 as the Clean Energy Act 2011 which came into effect on 1 July 2012. Emissions from companies subject to the scheme dropped 7% upon its introduction. As a result of being in place for such a short time, and because the then Opposition leader Tony Abbott indicated he intended to repeal "the carbon tax", regulated organizations responded rather weakly, with very few investments in emissions reductions being made. The scheme was repealed on 17 July 2014, backdated to 1 July 2014. In its place the Abbott government set up the Emission Reduction Fund in December 2014. Emissions thereafter resumed their growth evident before the tax.
Citizens' Climate Lobby (CCL) is an international grassroots environmental group that trains and supports volunteers to build relationships with their elected representatives in order to influence climate policy. The CCL is a registered 501(c)(4) with approximately $680,000 in revenue in the United States in 2018. Operating since 2007, the goal of CCL is to build political support across party lines to put a price on carbon, specifically a revenue-neutral carbon fee and dividend (CF&D) at the national level. CCL is supported by notable climate scientists James Hansen, Katharine Hayhoe, and Daniel Kammen. CCL's advisory board also includes former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, former US Representative Bob Inglis, actor Don Cheadle, and RESULTS founder Sam Daley-Harris.
The British Columbia carbon tax has been in place since 2008. It is a British Columbia policy that adds additional carbon taxes to fossil fuels burned for transportation, home heating, and electricity and reduces personal income taxes and corporate taxes by a roughly equal amount. The carbon tax is collected at the point of retail consumption.
A general election was held in the U.S. state of Washington on November 8, 2016. The primary was held on August 2.
Washington Initiative 732 (I-732) was a ballot initiative in 2016 to levy a carbon tax in the State of Washington, and simultaneously reduce the state sales tax. It was rejected 59.3% to 40.7%. The measure appeared on the November 2016 ballot. The backers of I-732 submitted roughly 350,000 signatures in December 2015 to certify the initiative.
The Washington Carbon Emissions Fee and Revenue Allocation Initiative, also known as Initiative 1631 or the Protect Washington Act was a ballot initiative that appeared on ballots in the State of Washington in the November 2018 election. The initiative proposed to reduce pollution by levying a fee on greenhouse gas emissions generated within the state of Washington, and using that revenue to support air quality and energy projects, as well as water quality and forest health initiatives. The measure failed with 56.3% of voters rejecting it. As of 2018, more had been spent in campaigning for and against the initiative than on any other ballot measure in Washington history.
Carbon pricing in Canada is implemented either as a regulatory fee or tax levied on the carbon content of fuels at the Canadian provincial, territorial or federal level. Provinces and territories of Canada are allowed to create their own system of carbon pricing as long as they comply with the minimum requirements set by the federal government; individual provinces and territories thus may have a higher tax than the federally mandated one but not a lower one. Currently, all provinces and territories are subject to a carbon pricing mechanism, either by an in-province program or by one of two federal programs. As of April 2024 the federal minimum tax is set at CA$80 per tonne of CO2 equivalent, set to increase to CA$170 in 2030.
The Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends is a joint statement signed by over 3,500 U.S. economists promoting a carbon dividends framework for U.S. climate policy. The statement was organized by the Climate Leadership Council and originally published on January 16, 2019 in The Wall Street Journal with 45 signatories, including Nobel Prize winning economists, former chairs of the Federal Reserve, former chairs of the Council of Economic Advisors, and former secretaries of the Treasury Department.
The climate change policy of Washington state involves a combination of incentives and penalties intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). State legislators and governors have consistently rejected climate change denial and stated their belief that addressing climate change is one of the most pressing issues at hand. In modern political history, Washington state is considered a stronghold for the Democratic party, which favors government action to reduce carbon emissions.
Initiative No. 2117 (I-2117) is a ballot initiative in the U.S. State of Washington that will appear on the ballot on November 5, 2024. The initiative was brought to the state legislature by Let's Go Washington, a Redmond-based political action committee founded by Brian Heywood. The initiative seeks to repeal the Washington Climate Commitment Act (CCA), a cap and trade program adopted by the state in 2021 to begin pricing carbon emissions in order to create a downward pressure on state carbon emissions.
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