One way a country could get to this would also be revenue-neutral taxes. A revenue-neutral carbon tax, for instance – a lot of taxes would be collected, on the theory of limiting output, or maybe you could use the theory that you were charging for access to the environmental load, which is a public resource held equally by all people. To make it revenue neutral then you have to return that tax money to people. You could cut taxes or put it some bullshit "lock box" but that's nonsense thinking. IMHO the only reasonable way to keep it truly revenue neutral is to directly funnel the money back to individuals. A basic income would be the result.
People freak out that a carbon tax would be regressive, and it would, but the return would be so progressive that it would more than undo that.
In general I think this kind of theory should be applied to more use taxes – places where ostensibly a tax supports something like roads, making a system self-supporting. But the use taxes only address a small part of the cost of roads, they don't consider the opportunity cost of using land for roads and they don't address the negative externalities. A use tax that included all of that, and returned some portion to people, would be a fairer tax. In that context something like congestion pricing would be fair in a way that it isn't currently.
People freak out that a carbon tax would be regressive, and it would, but the return would be so progressive that it would more than undo that.
In general I think this kind of theory should be applied to more use taxes – places where ostensibly a tax supports something like roads, making a system self-supporting. But the use taxes only address a small part of the cost of roads, they don't consider the opportunity cost of using land for roads and they don't address the negative externalities. A use tax that included all of that, and returned some portion to people, would be a fairer tax. In that context something like congestion pricing would be fair in a way that it isn't currently.