Who pays?

michaels

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/zk2t7nb

Electricity costs will likely increase and the impact on customers will depend on how overall costs are split between households, industry and government.

The piece is about the cost of moving to zero carbon energy but what piques my interest is the suggestion that the cost of doing so could be met by different parties.

To me they are all the same:
Households: Higher consumer prices - obviously directly paid by everyone
Industry: Higher company taxes or mandated investment - so either higher prices again or lower profits which means less dividends and lower share prices so the cost falls on anyone who has or will have a private pension - so almost everyone
Govt: Govt gets money from taxes or borrowing, borrowing is just delayed taxation so again this is money that comes from almost everyone

So it doesn't make sense to ask who pays in these terms. The real question is does it fall on people depending on their usage, or whether they have a private pension, or how much tax they pay?

Thrugelmir

Bottom line is that we all pay. Tier rates for usage perhaps. Both consumer and industry.

Sailtheworld

The consumer pays either directly or indirectly.

Political expediency demands the pretence that someone else pays.

phillw

michaels wrote: »

So it doesn't make sense to ask who pays in these terms. The real question is does it fall on people depending on their usage, or whether they have a private pension, or how much tax they pay?

It's not that it doesn't make sense, however you have to accept that money is fluid.

So if you make higher rate tax payers pay for something, then they will try to attain more money to make up for it. If they don't then their buying power goes down and that has other effects on people in other distinct groups.

People who have little or no say over how much they get paid are pretty much always the losers once the dust has settled, unless government does something specifically with taxation or benefits to level it out. Which isn't something the current government look like they have any appetite for, but if they did then it would have lots of subtle effects elsewhere in the economy.

Malthusian

Households = hard-working jams, leave them alone
Government = magic money tree
Industry = magic money tree that everyone hates so let's chop it down and take all the money

As Michaels correctly points out, the paragraph quoted is gibberish. But bear in mind it's from Bitesize, i.e. it's aimed at schoolchildren so they have something to chant the next time they're bunking off to march through London.

phillw wrote: »

People who have little or no say over how much they get paid are pretty much always the losers once the dust has settled, unless government does something specifically with taxation or benefits to level it out.

Which is always minimised / maximised by the sharp-elbowed middle classes, because they didn't get it to be richer than most people without the benefit of inherited privilege by not being sharp-elbowed.

phillw

Malthusian wrote: »

Which is always minimised / maximised by the sharp-elbowed middle classes, because they didn't get it to be richer than most people without the benefit of inherited privilege by not being sharp-elbowed.

If you mean by a combination of luck and hard work then sure. You are talking like it's a bad thing to try your best with the opportunities given to you.

PasturesNew

We pay for everything.
They know how to avoid it -and- usually benefit from our paying.

Such is the world.

"Marry well". It's all you can do to save yourself

phillw

PasturesNew wrote: »

We pay for everything.
They know how to avoid it -and- usually benefit from our paying.

The irony of the nature of the site you posted this not withstanding.

Aren't we here to avoid paying for things? You understand that this means there are others subsidizing us right?

Cakeguts

The BBC are going through a phase of extremely bad reporting bordering on making things up to get a story. They are now only one step away from become a tabloid type news service.



The government cannot cut carbon emissions that much and still have a large part of the population attending university. They might be able to do it if all university courses were done by distance learning apart from the very few that need a lab. Buildings are the biggest energy consumers and they produce the most in carbon emissions. So all this moving about all over the country to study things like film studies will have to stop and those courses will have to be done at home. There won't be anymore going to university.



There is a very good side to the not going to university in that if all degrees are done through distance learning there will effectively be only one degree course for each subject. As that degree course will have to be the standard of the most difficult courses there will be far fewer people actually passing and getting a degree. Everyone else can do a lower standard course and be awarded a certificate. Employers will then know the standard of the qualification that people have.

phillw

Cakeguts wrote: »

Buildings are the biggest energy consumers and they produce the most in carbon emissions. So all this moving about all over the country to study things like film studies will have to stop and those courses will have to be done at home. There won't be anymore going to university.

I guess I'm unique in only being able to inhabit one building at a time.

Universities are outnumbered by employers, so it would make more sense to encourage working from home before targeting universities.

Or do you just have something against universities?

edgex

errr;
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/20/new-windfarms-taxpayers-subsidies-record-low

The UK’s next wave of offshore windfarms will generate clean electricity at no extra cost to consumers after record low subsidy deals fell below the market price for the first time.

New offshore wind projects will power millions of British homes under “zero-subsidy” support contracts within the next four years, following a record-breaking government subsidy auction.

On Friday, the results of the auction showed offshore wind costs had tumbled by a third to about £40 per megawatt hour, which is less than the price of electricity in the wholesale energy market.

This means households will not face extra costs to support the new projects, which may even help to bring energy bills down.

Next round will likely be cheaper still.

That's at the same time that solar pv has plummeted in cost, & is still decreasing in cost.
If you've got a suitable roof & ~£6k, then solar pv is a good investment.