Carbon tax, wealth redistribution and more power to the state.

Cartoon: by Inkcinct.

"You, who've expended an inconceivable flow of energy, have been called a parasite. You, who've created abundance where there had been nothing but wastelands and helpless, starving men before you, have been called a robber. You, who've kept them all alive, have been called an exploiter. You, the purest and most moral man among them, have been sneered at as a 'vulgar materialist.' "Have you stopped to ask them: by what right? — by what code? — by what standard?" – Atlas Shrugged.

This seems appropriate as we now are told to see our major industries, major employers, and main providers of our economy, branded as planet wreckers and polluters.

The Gillard government is pushing hard to establish its idiotic idea of taxing carbon. Today the Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet announced that it will be, essentially the greatest redistribution of wealth ever seen in this country.

He is claiming that the government is going to make the 1000 big ‘polluters’ pay and the top 50 to fork out about two thirds of the loot. These companies are in the main power generators, who very efficiently provide electricity to the population, as well as steel, aluminum, petroleum companies, and the like who produce products used here and for export.

Between them they also generate thousands of jobs and are a substantial part of the backbone of the economy. To the creatures of the state in Canberra, they are worse than sub-human.

This will inevitably cause prices to rise across the board hurting consumers and exporters with higher prices. This is where the cynicism of those in power reaches its zenith. They are proposing to ‘compensate’ lower income earners to the point where they claim these people will be better off. At least at first they may be.

There is no guarantee that the tax will remain the same, and there have been indications that it will escalate in following years. There is no guarantee that the amount redistributed will remain at that level after the next election.

LNP Senator, Barnaby Joyce in one of his more lucid moments made a rather succinct statement on the matter today:

Minister Combet’s announcement that they are going to compensate working families for the cost of carbon tax should confirm one thing; a carbon tax is going to cost working families.

The fundamental issue here is that a carbon tax is not going to change the temperature of the globe or change the climate in any shape or form. It is merely a gesture. A gesture that means that those who are already finding it extremely difficult to get by are going to have that difficulty exacerbated by a pointless tax with a deceitful inference that it will the change global climatic conditions.

What is the point of taking money off people, spinning it around a bureaucracy and giving people back a bit of their own money and expecting be thanked for it? Why don’t you just let people keep their own money and go away?

In the meantime you put up the price of the fundamental mechanism of commerce, power, so what is now our competitive advantage? Obviously we don’t want lower wages so ultimately there will be fewer jobs.

The ability to reap huge funds from the economy, and use it to bribe a substantial percentage of voters places incredible power into the hands of the governing power. There is little doubt that this is the prime motivation.

We are looking at an authority who were so incompetent that they were unable to carry out a project like insulating homes without wasting billions, screwing it up, burning down houses, and killing workers, now claiming the ability to make the climate better.

The opposition has a problem with this in that they too have a plan. Abbott is so convinced that the government has the ability to affect climate for the better and that there is an expectation for him to save the environment that he wants to spend heaps on it.

He would be better to accept that no government in the history of mankind has ever improved the climate nor had the competence to do so. Say you will do nothing Tony.