“Energy is the lifeblood of any economy,” writes H. Sterling Burnett, a fellow at the Heartland Institute. “A carbon tax would increase energy prices and thus cost jobs, making it difficult U.S. companies to compete with foreign rivals and punishing the poor.”
The Manhattan Institute’s Robert Bryce agrees. In an article for the National Review, he tells us that a carbon tax would “disproportionately hurt low-income consumers,” especially those who “live in rural areas and must drive long distances to get to and from their job sites.”
The American Energy Alliance echoes that sentiment, placing the “it will hurt the poor” argument in the third spot on a list of 10 reasons to oppose carbon taxes:
The carbon tax is by nature regressive, because it will raise the prices of gasoline, electricity, and other goods by the same dollar amount for all consumers, regardless of their incomes. This disproportionately affects the poor, because energy costs are a bigger portion of their overall budgets. A carbon tax will therefore hurt low-income families and seniors more than it will hurt middle- and upper-class households.
It is true, as we will see, that poor households do devote larger shares of their incomes to energy than do those with higher incomes, but there is more to the story than that. If we properly…
