Bicycler wrote:the "comparatively small... cost would be spread over the year" would be the last straw for many.
We've been hearing that last comment at every petrol price rise for the last forty years.
I'm sure ypu're right; I'm equally sure each hike hits the lowly paid casual worker hardest
Bicycler wrote: Every one has been about to bring down society as we know it.
I never implied any such thing: The increase in suffering for those at the bottom of the work ladder (and there will always be someone there, until full equality (regardless of merit or desire) becomes a reality) is unlikely to bring down society.
Bicycler wrote:If people can only trade
Trade? No, if they were traders then the increase cost would be easy to pass on, they are casual workers with little or no control over their employers.
Bicycler wrote: because they are unfairly subsidised by the peculiarities of an unequal pollution tax then it doesn't strike me as sustainable anyway.
Sustainable or not, casual work is the way many live (and has been for centuries).
Bicycler wrote: Surely if it affected a whole class of workers to the extent of preventing them from working at a given wage their employers would have to pay higher wages (in the same way as your business customers).
Or perhaps seek cheaper labour elsewhere? Labour whose movement they can control. Or perhaps offer lower wages because the worker is unable to seek work in as wide an area, so competition between employers is reduced.
Bicycler wrote: And what of the hardship of those unfairly penalised by the current system? The rural old people who trundle down to the local town once a week but have to pay the same tax as a 30,000 mile a year sales rep.
The same VED but not the same tax (fuel is already highly taxed in the UK).
Bicycler wrote:There will be winners and losers in every scenario but if we're going to have a tax on pollution it should be a fair one, not one which subsidises greater pollution
The argument is not whether there should be a tax on pollution but the form such a tax should take (and whether every vehiclular tax should be on pollution). Personally I don't like the idea of hitting those with least, in order to enact a principle whose effect on wider society is debatable..