Monthly Archives: March 2019

Pied-à-Terre Tax

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New York City wants one, and The Wall Street Journal, among a host of other folks, think it’s a terrible idea.

The idea is what the politicians are calling a pied-à-terre tax—which is French for “give me your money, fat cat.”

I’m not sure I agree with the WSJ.  I see the pied-à-terre tax as a vast boon to New Yorkers, and to others.

a Journal analysis this week suggested it could crash New York’s luxury property market.

There actually are strong upsides to this tax. Fewer of New York’s rich folks will be hurt by the SALT cap on Federal income tax deductions as they leave this high and higher tax State for better States.

To the extent the WSJ‘s analysis is accurate, the luxury property market’s crash will have cascade effects that will make all housing property cheaper—and more affordable—for middle- and lower-class folks in New York at large as well as in New York City.  And that will have its own knock-on effect: even fewer people impacted by the SALT cap.

I’m having trouble seeing the downside to NYC’s pied-à-terre tax.

Naïve

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A bunch of non-defense and non-foreign policy folks—and so experts on both—don’t think we should be moving to defend ourselves against our enemies.  Such actions might…provoke…them.

Dozens of scientists, health care professionals and academics have written a letter to the UN calling for an international ban of autonomous killer robots, saying recent advances in artificial intelligence “have brought us to the brink of a new arms race in lethal autonomous weapons.”

These tools might also fall into the hands of terrorists and despots.

Such a withdrawal or failure to engage in the first place, though, would amount to unilateral disarmament in the face of our enemies: an agreement—done at the UN or done between nations—cannot be expected to be honored by those who wish us ill.  It’s necessary only to see the years-long Russian violation of the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaty in Europe and its partition and occupation of parts of Georgia and Ukraine.  It’s necessary only to see the People’s Republic of China’s seizure of the South China Sea and the islands therein—the territory of other nations around the Sea, albeit disputed among those nations—and the militarization of those occupied islands.

It’s necessary only to see the continued nuclear weapons arming of northern Korea, despite past agreements to stop.  It’s necessary only to see the continued drive toward nuclear weapons development in Iran, despite past agreements not to.

Our enemies will—and are—racing to development “killer robots” regardless of any piously agreed treaties to not.  Many of these enemies—Iran, for instance, and northern Korea—would be happy to sell the weapons to terrorists and despots to facilitate their ability to do us harm.

We should be leading in this development and deployment not hiding from it.  That’s the only way to maximize our ability to control their use: from understanding how to counter them to minimizing through deterrence the likelihood of our enemies using them or selling them on.  That’s the only way to maximize our ability to defend ourselves.

Aside from all of that, an arms race is itself a useful tool in facing down our adversaries.  It’s necessary only to recall the space-based missile defense race, the economic toll that took on the Soviet Union, and the outcome of that price exaction.

At best, these folks are naïve.

Delusions of Average

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Some folks think an annual income of a half million dollars leaves them…average…and strapped. The tweeted image of an example of this delusion is below.  CNBC represents this as a real couple.

You can read the CNBC article linked to in the tweet here, but the image and many of the comments in the tweet’s thread are instructive by themselves.

Morgan Housel offered a couple:

@morganhousel
So $36K in 401k contributions should be added to “what’s left over,” along with $18K in charity contributions (not an expense either).

@morganhousel
If you fix that then the headline becomes “This couple that makes $500K and spends too much money still saves more than 20% of their after-tax salary, which is what happens when you make a lot of money.”

Here’s ODS:

‏@brendan_schleen
Average people don’t have the ability to contribute 18k a year to charity either

KP:

@lightsoutonight
Their house is $1.5 million, with $20,000 property tax payment.  So average.

m night…:

‏@HezbollottaLove
Personally I love to be so goddamn deluded that I can save $36k a year for retirement, have a $200/month per person clothing budget, and spend $2000/month on food, and STILL have $7300 leftover as Do Whatever money, and think that’s “average”

And Thomas:

‏@MintyMultimedia
3 6k vacations a year, 12k a year for “lessons” even though the kids are young enough to need 42k a year in childcare.
The dude who deluded himself into thinking this was “average” was high off his own farts.

 

In the end, though, go ahead and read the linked-to article.  Its author, Kathleen Elkins, shows herself to be delusional with remarks like these:

As the example of one New York City couple shows, you and your partner could be making $500,000 a year and still end up with very little besides 401(k) money.

And

…there’s only $7,300 left each year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts, or retirement funds.

Very little.  Those 401(k)s getting 36 stacks per year aren’t actually retirement funds, apparently.  And the $7,300 that’s left over is just dog food.  Never mind that lots of actually average income households would love to have that much at the end of the year to go towards other savings goals, investment accounts….

 

h/t to ralf.

Progressive-Democrat Disingenuousness

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The manufactured anxiety of many Progressive-Democrats and their support entities over release of the Mueller report is breathtaking.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (I, VT) wants

the whole damn report.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren (D, MA)”

The American people deserve to see the full report.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Amy Klobuchar (D, MN):

Today, like everyone else, I want to see that Mueller report.  It’s time to make the entire report public. That’s justice.

Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris:

…a short letter from Trump’s hand-picked Attorney General is not sufficient.”  The American public deserves transparency and accountability and the Mueller report must be made public for a full accounting of what happened….

Congressmen and Committee Chairs of six House Committees, Jerry Nadler, Adam Schiff, Elijah Cummings, Maxine Waters, Richard Neal, and Eliot Engel wrote a letter to AG William Barr demanding release of the report “within a week.”

Senator Patrick Leahy (D, VT):

The next step: the full release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report, with its underlying evidence, and with only limited redactions for truly classified material. Not a summary.

Congressman Peter Welch (D, VT):

The American people have a right to know what’s in his report.  If the Attorney General refuses to make it public, Congress should demand its immediate release and subpoena it if he refuses.

Public Citizen:

[Nine] in 10 Americans believe the complete Mueller report should be public…. The demand is vocal, obvious, and must be met.

What these folks are carefully ignoring as they emphasize their hysteria is that Barr has already, and repeatedly, promised as complete a release as the law and DoJ regulations allow and as quickly as possible.

This disingenuous personally aggrandizing worry should be kept in mind during the campaign season.

Control

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Senator and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants the Federal government to pay a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries.

What a terrible idea.

The Federal government paying a significant fraction of public school teachers’ salaries means Federal government control of our public schools. Those schools are in enough trouble; we don’t need the Feds getting in the way, also.

Aside from that, this is just another Progressive-Democratic Party attempt to grab our money, this time to deny it to our heirs.  Again.

Apart from both of those, this is another example of the Progressive-Democratic Party’s contributing to the erosion of our families, illustrated by this claim of Harris’:

Our country’s success is a product of the two groups who raise our children: parents and teachers. We are not paying our teachers their value[.]

Teachers help raise our children? No, that’s the exclusive province of parents; schools are not ex loco parentis child care centers, and teachers must stop being babysitters and do the only thing they’re hired to do: teach.