With the financial crisis beginning to bite, and the trillion dollar bank bailouts still heavy on the balance sheets, governments everywhere are looking for new ways to get cash in the coffers. The government of Barack Obama may just have hit upon a radical solution – a tax on air.

Congresswoman Hilary Bierbaum, who is supporting the plan, told us that “There are approximately 300 million people in the United States, a $20 a head per year tax is small change, yet it would raise over $6 billion in government revenue. Every year we spend billions on fighting global warming, and on increasing the quality of the air around us, in a democratic society it’s only fair that everyone should share the burden of that”.

Critics of the plan have pointed out that a flat rate tax will hit the poorest in society disproportionately hard, whilst being a mere drop in the ocean to the Bankers and Ultra rich who are largely to blame for the financial crisis, a fact which Hilary Bierbaum refutes,

“It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you breathe the same air. People should pay for what they use, and rightly so, it would be unfair to shift the burden of paying on to others. We’d all like cleaner air for our children, this bill will give them a brighter future. If you think $20 is too much to pay for that then you have to ask yourself what kind of a person you are”.

She refused to respond to questions concerning rumours that this was the first of many new so called green taxes in the pipeline, including a tax upon light, and the so called noise pollution tax which would see fees levied on all persons responsible for making sounds above a certain decibel level (which raises the spectre of police slapping on the spot fines on citizens who happen to fart too loudly within earshot).