Ecological Taxes

[AnthonyAú]

Platform - Green Party US
  Section III. Ecological Sustainability
        A. Climate Change

              Economic Bill of Rights
                Financing the Green New Deal

                  Progressive Tax Reform
                    Ecological Taxes

Three ecological taxes should be instituted to support the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.

• A carbon tax will disincentivize fossil fuel use and do so internationally because carbon taxes function as a tariff on high-carbon imports, encouraging firms and nations that want to export products to the US to lower their carbon content.
  
• Land value taxation enables the whole community to benefit from the land values of a limited resource instead of a landowning class. Its revenues could be dedicated to funding affordable homes, farms, and business locations.
  
• Federal severance taxes on non-renewable resources, including reform of the 1872 Mining Law that now enables corporations to purchase mineral rights on public lands for a mere $5 an acre and pay no severance tax for minerals taken.
  

Peace Conversion — Deep cuts in the US military budget on the order of 50% to 75% and reallocating the savings into the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.
Public Money — Greens favor Monetary Reform based on the creation of debt-free public money by a Monetary Authority in the Treasury Department and spending that money into the economy through the federal budget, including the budget for the Ecosocialist Green New Deal.
Borrowing — Progressive and ecological taxes and reallocating military spending to the Ecosocialist Green New Deal may not generate enough revenue to make the massive investments immediately needed to rapidly transform the economy to clean energy. Climate breakdown will cost much more than not making those investments.

So pending Green Monetary Reform, the federal government may have to borrow to make the needed investments.

In such borrowing, Greens favor a program of Green Quantitative Easing where the Federal Reserve creates the money to buy the Treasury securities issued to support the Green New Deal investments.

This quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve would be used to bail out the planet and the people instead of the big banks as happened in the wake of the Great Recession.
Public Banks — Greens favor the creation of public banks at the local, state, and federal levels to help finance and target Green New Deal and other socially beneficial investments.
Sales of Public Goods and Services — The Ecosocialist Green New Deal will be producing and selling public goods and services through the public sector and receiving income for them, including power bill payments, transit fees, housing rents, and green machinery leases.

Over time, these revenues should cover the costs of the initial borrowing like any successful business investment.