A much more sensible tax (than a windfall profits tax) would be a carbon tax to reduce emissions. After all, we like profits and want to encourage them, that is the American Way. But we don’t like emissions; at least, not too many of them anyway. So tax the emissions, not the profits.
jeffmiller (edited by me) - A great way to boil down the windfall profits tax debate into one sentence. Every economist will agree - at a basic level, an economy should tax those things which we want to discourage (cigarettes, emissions, etc), and reduce taxes on those things we want to encourage (green energy, donation to charity, etc).
Source: streetsofchicago
