The "robust critique" was not "robust" with respect to taxation of externalities. Externalities do have to be counted properly, however, and while fiscal costs may sometimes be ok proxies for the actual costs to be uses, "fiscal externalities" do not exist.
Maybe that was sloppy language on my part. You're right that the paper I linked to is about how the externality framework gets misused, as opposed to a critique of the Pigouvian framework of treating externalities per se.
As a slight extension to your ideas it irritates me how often any journalistic discussion of an economic shock focuses on the fiscal impact as if the is the only, or most important impact.
This runs alongside the instinct of too many that whenever there is an issue 'government must do something about it' when very much of the time it would be better that government did nothing at all about it.
The "robust critique" was not "robust" with respect to taxation of externalities. Externalities do have to be counted properly, however, and while fiscal costs may sometimes be ok proxies for the actual costs to be uses, "fiscal externalities" do not exist.
Maybe that was sloppy language on my part. You're right that the paper I linked to is about how the externality framework gets misused, as opposed to a critique of the Pigouvian framework of treating externalities per se.
As a slight extension to your ideas it irritates me how often any journalistic discussion of an economic shock focuses on the fiscal impact as if the is the only, or most important impact.
This runs alongside the instinct of too many that whenever there is an issue 'government must do something about it' when very much of the time it would be better that government did nothing at all about it.