Dec 8, 2017 12:23 AM
https://aeon.co/ideas/everyone-in-the-wo...-footprint
EXCERPT: [...] a businessman oversees his economic activities across several [...] countries from a base in Dubai. He largely evades tax through an intricate tax-haven/residence arrangement [...] frequent jet travel, the consumption of imported goods [...] In another instance, a civil servant [...] lives in the diplomatic district [...] of a developing nation [...] her work- and play-spaces remove her from the society she’s supposedly serving, while revolving around a carbon-heavy diet of jet travel and imported goods and experiences.
[...] Both these lifestyles, hatched in the 20th century and continued in the 21st, show disregard for ecological costs associated with global networks, alongside a culture of wasteful consumption. Yet such behaviours have only increased: a third example represents the 21st century’s remote workers, freelancers and consultants. Employed as web-designers, interpreters or editors, they boost mobility by leveraging online jobs, cheap airline tickets, powerful passports and unregulated sharing technologies such as Airbnb and Uber.
This fluidity of movement allows this class, to which I belong as both a freelance journalist and a former UN official, to transcend the 20th-century model of a white-collar job tied to the country of residence and taxed income, and relocate away from expensive London, Geneva or Hong Kong to affordable peripheral foreign capitals such as Lisbon or Hanoi. But the money saved comes at the expense of massive energy outlays associated with disposable, socially detached living, and the kind of frequent international travel required to tap into the cost benefits achieved by inhabiting cheaper nearby countries. Members of this class show scant consideration for the huge environmental footprint their transnational lifestyles incur, and their calculations are driven by financial rationale and market-driven competition.
So, if our current tax systems don’t penalise damage to the planet and can be side-stepped by the nomadic, hybrid lifestyles unlocked by technology, one solution could be to shift from disconnected national taxation systems to a collaborative global regime, whereby individuals are charged on the basis of their personal energy footprint. Those eating and living locally, rarely travelling on airplanes, and using recycled or multi-purpose materials would be taxed less than high-living internationals fuelling their lifestyle with imported products and jet travel. Equally, those whose job requires frequent travel and a high-energy footprint would pass the tax bill on to their employers, compelling companies to factor ecological impact into their bottom line....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/everyone-in-the-wo...-footprint
EXCERPT: [...] a businessman oversees his economic activities across several [...] countries from a base in Dubai. He largely evades tax through an intricate tax-haven/residence arrangement [...] frequent jet travel, the consumption of imported goods [...] In another instance, a civil servant [...] lives in the diplomatic district [...] of a developing nation [...] her work- and play-spaces remove her from the society she’s supposedly serving, while revolving around a carbon-heavy diet of jet travel and imported goods and experiences.
[...] Both these lifestyles, hatched in the 20th century and continued in the 21st, show disregard for ecological costs associated with global networks, alongside a culture of wasteful consumption. Yet such behaviours have only increased: a third example represents the 21st century’s remote workers, freelancers and consultants. Employed as web-designers, interpreters or editors, they boost mobility by leveraging online jobs, cheap airline tickets, powerful passports and unregulated sharing technologies such as Airbnb and Uber.
This fluidity of movement allows this class, to which I belong as both a freelance journalist and a former UN official, to transcend the 20th-century model of a white-collar job tied to the country of residence and taxed income, and relocate away from expensive London, Geneva or Hong Kong to affordable peripheral foreign capitals such as Lisbon or Hanoi. But the money saved comes at the expense of massive energy outlays associated with disposable, socially detached living, and the kind of frequent international travel required to tap into the cost benefits achieved by inhabiting cheaper nearby countries. Members of this class show scant consideration for the huge environmental footprint their transnational lifestyles incur, and their calculations are driven by financial rationale and market-driven competition.
So, if our current tax systems don’t penalise damage to the planet and can be side-stepped by the nomadic, hybrid lifestyles unlocked by technology, one solution could be to shift from disconnected national taxation systems to a collaborative global regime, whereby individuals are charged on the basis of their personal energy footprint. Those eating and living locally, rarely travelling on airplanes, and using recycled or multi-purpose materials would be taxed less than high-living internationals fuelling their lifestyle with imported products and jet travel. Equally, those whose job requires frequent travel and a high-energy footprint would pass the tax bill on to their employers, compelling companies to factor ecological impact into their bottom line....
MORE: https://aeon.co/ideas/everyone-in-the-wo...-footprint