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Tax Shift: How to Help the Economy, Improve the Environment, and Get the Tax Man Off Our Backs (New Report) Paperback – April 1, 1998

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Book by Durning, Alan Thein, Bauman, Yoram, Gussett, Rachel, Northwest Environment Watch (Organization)

Review

Northwest Environment Watch, one of the most creative think tanks around, has a new publication by Alan Durning and Yoram Bauman, called Tax Shift. Their ideas would improve the environment and the quality of your life. And it seems so obvious: Tax the things we want to discourage instead of the things we want to encourage. Tax things that degrade the environment, such as pollution, and reduce taxes on things like our income...People in the simplicity movement are working to change their own lives, but we must go the next step and work to change policies as well. The first step is to be an informed citizen, so read Durning and Bauman's book. -- Cecile Andrews, The Seattle Times, April 22, 1998

Revolution comes in small packages. This well thought-out little book analyzes existing taxes in the U. S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest and takes issue with most of them as poorly conceived, difficult to administer, regressive, and tough on the environment. Besides being cumbersome to pay, the proportion of taxes paid by the typical Pacific Northwestern family on both sides of the border is very large relative to gross family income. One statistic indicates that about 43 per cent of the price of a can of Budweiser-the most popular beer in the US-is made up of taxes. Down, say the authors, with the existing Pacific Northwestern, and implied North American, tax structure. In its place, they propose a system of taxes on things society needs less of: carbon (in fuels); pollution from industry and from farms (in the opinion of the authors, the number one tax evader); from cars and parking, traffic, and large houses; and from energy and timber. The book ignores a couple of factors, the first being that consumers ultimately pay all taxes, anyway (Tax the powerplant, and your utility bill goes straight up); the second being that Americans and Canadians, by and large, like their personal motor vehicles awfully much, and proposals to move the population back to using bicycles, trains, and buses have about the same level of attraction to drivers as proposals to eat more steak do to vegetarians. That said, the book is well worth reading, and should be taken quite seriously. The Northwest region and the Continent as a whole need to examine its tax system and the undesirable societal results it engenders. The ensuing international debate can only be helpful. -- From Independent Publisher

From the Publisher

Number 7 in Northwest Environment Watch’s series of short, hard-hitting books on creating a sustainable society.

From the Author

In the other Washington, there’s talk of scrapping the federal tax code. And, if you’ve just completed your return, it’s no myserty why. The Internal Revenue Code runs to 7.5 million words and occupies, with the regulations that interpret it, one and one-half feet of shelf space. A half million earn their living deciphering it for us commoners.

But complexity is not the worst fault of our revenue system, nor is the federal tax the only flawed one. The biggest, and least discussed, problem in taxdom is this: We tax the wrong things.

When you tax something, you get less of it. That’s the stuff of Economics 101. So what do we tax?

Mostly, we tax things we want more of, such as paychecks and enterprise, not things we want less of, such as pollution and resource depletion. Naturally, we get less money and more messes.

Doing the opposite would yield double dividends: cleaner air and flusher bank accounts. In our new book “Tax Shift,” Northwest Environment Watch researcher Yoram Bauman and I discuss how to tax “bads” rather than “goods” in the Pacific Northwest.

About the Author

Alan Thein Durning is founder and executive director of Northwest Environment Watch and author of award-winning books such as This Place on Earth, and How Much Is Enough? Formerly senior researcher at Worldwatch Institute, he lectures widely and lives with his wife and children in Seattle.

Northwest Environment Watch is an independent, not-for-profit research and communication center based in Seattle, Washington. Its mission is to foster a sustainable economy and way of life in the Pacific Northwest.

Previous page
  1. Print length
    115 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Sightline Inst
  4. Publication date
    April 1, 1998
  5. Dimensions
    5.75 x 0.25 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1886093075
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1886093072
  8. See all details
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sightline Inst; First Thus Used edition (April 1, 1998)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 115 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1886093075
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1886093072
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 0.25 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    5.0 5.0 out of 5 stars 1 rating

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  1. Alan Thein Durning

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  2. Yoram Bauman

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    The world's first and only stand-up economist, Yoram Bauman has over 1 million hits on YouTube and performs at colleges, corporations, and comedy clubs around the world. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Washington and has taught at the University of Washington, at Lakeside High School in Seattle, and at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. He studies the economics of climate change and thinks that carbon taxes can save the world. More information about all of the above is at standupeconomist.com.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Possibly the simplest, most powerful way to save the earth
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