The authors make the case that distribution of carbon tax proceeds might make it more palatable to voters. Sounds reasonable, like the sugar with the medicine. But ever wonder why toothpaste contains no sugar?

A carbon dividend works against the tax. Without micro and macro analysis and some econometrics of which none is offered, I will not, unlike the authors, argue one way or the other, but I have no doubt that a much larger carbon tax will be needed to attain the same level of CO2 savings if it comes back to users as additional purchasing power.

Other heroic assumptions like ‘the rich use wasteful sports cars and fly around a lot’ are stupid, if not necessarily always wrong. Poor people cars spit far more CO2 than high end vehicles and air travel if far from a luxury these days.

Talking about “prevailing neoliberal dispensation” sounds weird when the prevailing noise today comes from the frenzied plethora of neo-collectivists attaching false promises of all kinds of nice giveaways to environmental measures, as if to mask the fact that protecting the environment by definition means more effort and less stuff for everyone, no matter how necessary those tradeoffs (and yes, austerity) may be.

I wonder if PS makes any attempt at reviewing the articles before they are published. Opinions can be high on emotion and low on facts, because that’s what the respect for free speech entails.

Nevertheless, one should not be compelled to waste his or her time in reading garbage. The service of a platform like Project Syndicate should include a reasonable filter against random rants, so that I can confidently read free from extreme nonsense. Not filtering reduces PS’s usefulness.