Tag Archives: political economy

Big Progressive-Democrat Government

Posted on by
Reply

A Rasmussen poll suggests that a majority of Americans oppose the socialism in the policies of the Biden-Harris administration.

That’s encouraging, but I have some concerns about the policies anyway, given that they’re being jammed through without regard for the views of the government’s employers.

The socialism aspect of the Biden-Harris and Progressive-Democratic Party policies is less a matter of the raw spending and usurious taxes in them much more a matter of the strings attached to the spending and of who gets (punitively) taxed.

The strings attached would give the Federal government more control over the States and over what businesses are allowed to produce and the prices they charge. The proposed tax structure would give the Federal government more indirect control by “encouraging” businesses to comport themselves IAW Government wishes.

That control is the essence of socialism, whether the control is through outright ownership or through controlling production permissions.

The spendthriftiness should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

The tax distortions should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

The increased Government control should be enough by itself to keep the bill from being passed.

Unfortunately, dangerously, each of the three individually (as well as together) are tightly aligned with Progressive-Democratic Party goals of spending to buy votes, taxing the Evil Rich to virtue-signal for votes, and to outright accrete power to Party.

Two Mistakes

Posted on by
Reply

The Chevron Deference “rule,” which the Supreme Court coalesced out of the æther in its 37-year-old Chevron v Natural Resources Defense Council ruling, comes up again in this year’s American Hospital Association v Becerra case, which centers on Medicare’s drug reimbursement schedule for hospitals.

The Supremes invented a two-step evaluation of Executive Branch agency rules in that Chevron case:

First, courts are to give effect to the “unambiguously expressed intent of Congress.” Second, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous…then it is bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation.

The second step contains the two mistakes, a remarkable achievement even for the activist Court that dreamed up the process.

First, if a court finds that the statute is ambiguous, then the court has no other option, under each of our Constitution and the judge’s/Justices’ oaths of office, to strike the statute as unconstitutionally ambiguous. It has no need, it cannot, then reach that second bit.

Second, a court is not at all bound to respect any plausible agency interpretation. Far from it. In evaluating an agency rule or regulation—having found the statute constitutionally clear—any court must, by the Supreme Court’s rule, treat the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress as their limit. From that, a court must evaluate, de novo, the rule or regulation for whether it fits within the clear confines of the statute.

There can be no deference to another branch of government, much less to a subordinate agency of another branch, if judges of the judicial branch are to be faithful to our Constitution’s construction of three coequal branches of government, rather than to, say, the British construction of the judiciary being subordinate to another branch (Parliament in the British construction).

If the Supreme Court is to satisfy its function in AHA, it must rescind, reverse, root out to every jot and tittle Chevron Deference (and all other deferences, vis., Skidmore, City of Arlington v FCC‘s Arlington, etc) and evaluate the Becerra rule on the basis of whether the governing statute truly is unambiguous and if so, then on the fit of Becerra’s rule within that statute.

A Rain Tax

Posted on by
Reply

It’s back.

Recall the Maryland rain tax that Progressive-Democrats in that State’s legislature actually got passed into law. That…foolishness…contributed to the State’s Progressive-Democrat Governor getting tossed at the next election and replaced by a Republican. The State’s legislature then repealed the tax within the next couple years.

Now we see that the Progressive-Democrat City Manager for Fairfax (that Fairfax), Robert Stalzer, proposed

taxing local residents and businesses for the amount of rainwater that falls on their roofs, driveways, parking lots, and other “impervious surfaces” on their property.

Just the News opened its article on this with this bit from The Beatles:

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street
If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat
If you get too cold I’ll tax the heat
If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet

Not to be outdone, or not too badly, anyway, I offer this adaptation from The Lovin’ Spoonful:

You and me and rain on the roof,
Caught up in a taxing shower,
Going broke while it soaks our wallets.
Maybe we’ll be broke in hours,
Waiting out the Guv….

To quote Joe Biden, who railed in a different venue, this is a bonehead idea.

A Comment on Two Crises

Posted on by
Reply

Tax revenues, in the main, rose slightly as a fraction of GDP in wealthier nations despite the existence of the Wuhan Virus situation.

That surprise outcome underlines the novel nature of the economic contraction that accompanied the first surge of Covid-19 infections, and contrasts with the global financial crisis, when revenues fell as a share of economic output, an outcome more typical of recessions.

Novel indeed. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,

revenues across its 38 members rose to 33.5% of gross domestic product in 2020 from 33.4% in 2019. In the wake of the global financial crisis, revenues in 2009 fell to 31.8% of GDP from 32.6% of GDP in 2008.

And

In both instances, tax revenues and total economic output fell, but in 2020 the former declined less sharply than the latter.

These…economists…lay off the outcome of the 2020 situation to impacts on jobs.

Employment reductions in 2020 were concentrated at the lower end of the income distribution, as were falls in working hours.  This limited the impact of the Covid-19 crisis on revenues relative to the GFC [global financial crisis], in which job losses and reductions in working hours were more evenly spread.

But this is an outcome, and the economists of the OECD have mischaracterized the cause.

Look at the two examples the OECD cited for its comparison. The “global financial crisis” of 2009 was an economic event that was driven by purely economic factors—in that case, a credit crunch. The economic conditions of 2020 were driven, not by the prevalence of the Wuhan Virus, but by governments’ (over)reaction to the virus, not from the virus.

That political reaction—lockdowns, restrictions on movements, vaccine requirements levied on businesses by governments—differentially impacted economies in the manner indicated. Of course wealthier nations fared better than less wealthy ones. The less wealthy are far more dependent on those low-paying jobs.

SALT Debates

Posted on by
Reply

Recall the SALT—State and Local Taxes—deduction, capped at $10,000 under the Trump income tax reform of a few years ago. Keep in mind the current debate among Progressive-Democrats about whether to raise the cap to $80,000, or higher, or eliminate the cap altogether. Set aside the debate centering on how much lifting the cap would aid essentially exclusively the Evil Rich vs most of those Evil Rich are heavy donors to various Progressive-Democrat politicians.

Consider instead that

some of America’s top earners—including private-equity managers and law firm partners—are already legally circumventing the cap on much of their income.
That is because state governments and the Trump administration blessed a cap workaround for owners of closely held businesses that is proliferating around the country.

That workaround is quite byzantine, too.

Here’s how it works. Normally, so-called pass-through businesses such as partnerships and S corporations don’t pay taxes themselves. Instead, they pass earnings through to their owners, who report income on individual tax returns. That subjects them to state individual income taxes—and the federal limit on deducting more than $10,000, created in the 2017 tax law.
Details vary by state, but the workaround flips that concept. The states impose taxes—often optional—on pass-through entities that are roughly equal to their owners’ state income taxes. Those taxes then get deducted before income flows to the business owners.
The laws then use tax credits or other mechanisms to absolve owners of their individual income-tax liabilities from business income. Thus, they satisfy state income-tax obligations without generating individual state income-tax deductions subject to the federal cap.

The SALT cap was well intended, if set too high at $10k. However, both the SALT and these convoluted workarounds illustrate the foolishness of using our tax code for social engineering and other political purposes instead of simply to raise revenue to cover the few Constitutionally mandated spending purposes.

One low, flat rate tax on income from all sources would simplify things immensely, with no negative impact on revenues for the government. And it would reduce the cost of compliance, with an associated reduction, however small, in end prices to consumers.