Disposal tax

[catenoid]

Dear Lazyweb

Comments

[aeduna]

This means that product makers have no incentive to make products that are easy to dispose of

Or indeed products that don't break after a year, and actually might not need to be disposed of.

I suspect its just inertia and resistence to raising the costs of production, rather than the inverse.

[rhonan]

It's called the real cost tax. See, modern western capitalism works by privatizing profits, while forcing as many of the costs onto the community. The most common form of this is manufactured products that are toxic when disposed of. We've paid a fortune to clean up lead paint, and lead from electronics. Companies insisted that there was nothing else they could use to solder electronics, until lead solder was taxed. All of a sudden they find all these green solutions. Another example is with Walmart. A significant number of their employees don't even make enough to get off of food stamps, so the USDA is effectively subsidizing Walmart's labor cost. Needless to say, I've long been a fan of real cost based taxes. Seriously, if we had taxed SUVs based on cleaning up the pollution they caused, far fewer people would have bought them.

[huddyn]

Dunno, thats sort of the idea behind paying an extra nickel for pop in a bottle, then giving anyone who returns the bottle for recycling a nickel. They do still do that in Oregon.