Corporate Tax Rate Cuts

…must lead to Federal government tax revenue reductions. Or so Progressive-Democrats claim. Say it ain’t so, Joe. President Joe Biden (D) won’t say it, though, so I will. It ain’t so, as this table from The Wall Street Journal illustrates.

When you leave money in the hands of private economy operators—individual or corporate—they do productive things with their money. That productivity leads to more R&D, more innovation, more physical capital improvement, physical capital expansion, wage increases, more jobs (which represent the mothers of all wage increases, for many, from zero wage to an actual paycheck), the latter two leading to human capital improvement, which leads to greater private economy demand for goods and services, which leads to greater production of those goods and services, expanding the economic virtuous circle.

In comparison, Government merely redistributes from one operator—individual or corporate—to another its collected revenues, producing very little. Even the redistributions to noneconomic operators—individuals on welfare, for instance—the resulting production has less value than the transferred funds. The recipients of those redistributions have very small demand increases from the redistributions since they start out with small demands: they’re unemployed or employed only in low-wage, low-value jobs, and all those redistribution payments do is trap those folks in those two statuses.

All of that is even before any discussion of any need for the tax revenues Big Government Progressive-Democrats claim exists.

Insufficient

People’s Republic of China government securities regulators are offering a change to PRC securities laws that would remove a requirement that

audit inspections of overseas-listed Chinese companies be done mainly by Chinese regulators.

Another part of the PRC regulators’ offer:

Under the draft rules, the burden of protecting state secrets now falls to private companies as well. They have to report to the financial watchdog and other authorities before cooperating with overseas regulators.

Far from being a serious offer, this is insulting.

PRC regulators of companies possessing PRC state secrets—or held to possess them by the PRC government—will have too easy a time using the secrets excuse to delay, obfuscate, or outright censor any effort at an audit.

Audits not being done “mainly” by PRC regulators are not the same as agreeing to let host nation auditors—American auditors in our case—have full, complete, open access to PRC company books immediately on request, including no-notice requests.

Anything less is too much interference with the audits of companies listed on our exchanges, whether foreign companies are PRC-domiciled or elsewhere.

The SEC must not take this move by the PRC seriously.

Idiocy

David Cameron, once (and future?) British Prime Minister, thinks that if Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the upcoming G-20 meeting, everyone else should boycott the meeting.

Cameron griped, among other things that when Putin and then-President Barack Obama (D) attended the G-20 meetings in ’14 and ’15,

the conversations with Mr Putin were worse than pointless.

Then Cameron gave the game away, amusingly, without recognizing it.

What does or doesn’t happen at the G-20 won’t change the world.

Indeed. The G-20 is a coffee klatch wherein previously and behind the scenes decisions are announced. Otherwise, the gathering is just a see-and-be-scene show for the political glitterati of the developed world.

Conversations with Putin are, indeed, worse than pointless, but avoiding the G-20 because Putin shows up is the wrong answer.

Instead, boycott Putin, don’t waste time on conversations with him. Don’t interact with him at all. For those two seated next to him at dinners, they should turn their backs on him and converse with the dinner companions on the other side.

Boycotting the G-20 if he shows up would be just a toddler-ish face-spiting nose-cutting temper tantrum. Or a cowering away from the Big Bad Man.

A Thought on Gasoline Production

I had one. Take a breath.

California citizens pay a far higher price for a gallon of gasoline than even the average nation-wide: $5.79 against $4.29. Most of that difference comes from California’s State-unique regulations imposing, for instance, a low-carbon fuel standard and cap-and-trade taxes.

Separate from President Joe Biden’s (D) war on fossil fuel-sourced energy inflating the price of energy generally and gasoline in particular, that California price-inflating set of requirements also inflates the cost of gasoline nationally, since refiners are reluctant to produce separate kinds of gasoline for separate markets. Which brings me to my thought.

Refiners should produce a single type of gasoline related to carbon content, cap-and-trade taxes, and other froo-froo, based on the lower levels of regulatory interference in the rest of the nation, and sell that gasoline virtually nation-wide. Then they should offer to sell that single type to California buyers together with license(s) so those buyers can to modify the refiners’ product as they wish to bring that gasoline to within California desires.

In this way, drivers in the other 49 States would get a lower cost fuel from the refiners’ not having to impose some of that California cost on the rest of us, and the refiners would be able to recoup in the form of license fees most, if not all, of the putative costs of not selling directly into the California driver market.

It’s a Start

The House, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority—424-8—passed a bill that would strip Russia and its satrap Belarus of Most Favored Nation status. The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden (or his veto overridden), would allow us to

raise tariffs on goods from Russia and Belarus and give President Biden power to impose even stricter import taxes on their exports amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. …
The bill also sets up strict guidelines for when the president can restore normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus based on the state of the Ukraine war.
The Biden administration will additionally be obligated to push for Russia’s removal from the World Trade Organization and oppose Belarus joining the group, which would subject both to higher tariffs and steeper trade barriers.

Eight Republicans voted against the bill; their concerns centered in part on their push to make President Joe Biden’s Executive Order barring importation of Russian oil statutory by including that in the bill.

The more we pile economic burdens onto Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities Putin’s barbarians are perpetrating on Ukrainians, the better. However, we need to keep such moves in perspective: they’ve forced Putin to withdraw zero battalions from Ukraine, and they forced Putin to drop zero fewer bombs, rockets, or missiles on Ukrainian women, children, hospitals, schools,…. Weapons, ammunition, and medicines need to flow freely and rapidly to the Ukrainian military.