Part I was a response to Riehan Salam's well-meaning critique of the flat tax.
Part II was a response to a good-but-timid fiscal plan from folks at AEI.
Part III was a response to Jerry Taylor's principled case for an energy tax.
And I'm going to retroactively categorize my friendly attacks on the destination-based cash-flow tax as Part IVa, Party IVb, and Part IVc.
Today's column could be considered Part IIIb since I'm going to revisit the case against energy taxes. Except it's not going to be a friendly assessment. That's because there's a legitimate case (made by Jerry) for a carbon tax, based on the notion that it could address an externality, obviate the need for command-and-control regulation, and provide revenue to finance pro-growth tax cuts.

But there's also a distasteful argument for such a tax and it revolves around crony capitalists seeking to obtain unearned wealth by imposing costs on their competitors.

Elon Musk already is infamous for trying to put taxpayers on the hook for some of his grandiose schemes. Now, as reported by Bloomberg, he wants an energy tax on American consumers.