Thanks for the segment on I-732, it was a refreshingly sane take on the issue.

@1: You're welcome! Thanks for the feedback.

I anticipate I'll be voting for I-732, the carbon tax initiative.

I'm a long-time supporter of revenue-neutral carbon taxes. They're simple and effective precisely because they don't try to hide the fact that, if we want less of something, then we need to make it cost more. To mitigate that pain, you cut taxes somewhere else, preferably on some activity you want to encourage. When they're done right, revenue-neutral carbon taxes are infinitely better than something like cap-and-trade, which in trying to avoid inflicting pain winds up creating a system that is all too easily gamed. Folks like Goldman Sachs love cap-and-trade precisely because the system can be gamed.

Not knowing as much about I-732 as I should, the only potential flaw I could see in the initiative is if it's not quite revenue-neutral. Could the cut in sales taxes exceed the new revenue from the carbon tax? I don't know what mechanisms, if any, I-732 has in place to prevent a situation like that from happening.

Setting aside that possible concern, my initial reaction to the resistance to I-732 was this. It points to the fact that the greatest strength as policy of carbon taxes (especially revenue-neutral carbon taxes), their simplicity and effectiveness, is also their greatest flaw politically--they have no natural constituency. Unfortunately, "the common good" doesn't have a lobbyist in Olympia.

Slightly off-topic, or maybe not... Which would you rather have, President Trump, or the Zika virus? https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9LQCT2T