Tag Archives: political economy

Facilitation

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Recall that the Progressive-Democrat-controlled Congress and President Joe Biden (D) enacted a $1.9 trillion Wuhan Virus Relief bill that contained a sliver of money for actual virus-related relief. The bill also included $12 billion in transfer payments for New York to “assist” that State with its budget.

This is what that bill and those $12 billion in transfers also facilitated.

The Democrat-controlled New York legislature has passed a budget deal that includes a $2.1 billion fund for illegal immigrants—including a one-time, $15,600 payment for those who lost their job during the pandemic.

Fully 17% of that Federal largesse—of average American‘ generosity—went to illegal aliens (whether us citizens agree with that or not). It’s plain that the State, at bottom, had no need for those $12 billion, since it has no need to spend the money on the citizens of New York.

Corporate Taxes

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Treasury Secretary and ex-Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen opened her Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed with this:

When Congress enacted the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017, the result was a dramatic reduction in corporate tax revenue. Over the past three years, corporate tax collections have fallen to their lowest level since World War II: 1% of gross domestic product.

Amazingly—shockingly—Yellen wrote that as if it were a Bad Thing.

Then she partially rationalized her disparagement with this:

Proponents of the TCJA said the US would get something in return for these tax cuts. Lower rates, the argument went, would lure production and investment to our shores, but that hasn’t happened—and for an obvious reason: other countries see what we’re doing and respond. When they see us lower our rates, they lower theirs to undercut us. In the end, no nation ends up more competitive. The result is a global race to the bottom….

Some of this is plain wrong. We did get trillions of dollars of corporate cash repatriated. We did get production and investment returned. And that spurred the outcome that Yellen so breathtakingly mistakes as a further Bad Thing. Other nations were spurred to compete on tax rates in order to retain their own businesses and to attract foreign investment.

Which drives the race to Yellen’s so-feared bottom.

But what is that bottom? Our Constitution specifies that the only things our Federal government is allowed, legitimately, to raise revenues for are three: to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States. Those, with the general Welfare further specified by the remaining clauses of that Article I, Section 8, also, are the only things on which our Federal government may spend our taxpayer money. The other nations, particularly those competing with us on tax rates, have their own taxing (and spending) floors.

Racing to those bottoms may be bad for Government bureaucrats like Yellen, but they’re unalloyed Goods for the citizens of all of our nations, as we get to keep more of our money and make our own spending, saving, investing, and other allocating decisions with our money—and our decisions will be far better and far more efficiently done than any of our Governments can ever hope to do.

And at that natural bottom, nations can stop trying to compete on tax policy and focus on Adam Smith’s competition—providing better quality goods and services. Which is even better for us citizens, if not for the power of Government personages.

Only a Leftist or an entrenched bureaucrat can misunderstand that.

“Don’t Tax You…”

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“…Don’t tax me;
Tax that rich guy
Behind the tree.”

With (not too) many apologies to Russell Long.

New York’s Progressive-Democrats are on the move, again.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and state legislators are close to reaching a budget agreement that would raise taxes on residents earning over $1 million.
If approved by the Democratic governor and Democrat-controlled legislature, New York would become the state with the highest personal income tax rate in the country.
The budget measure also includes increasing the state’s corporate tax rates….

And

The proposed changes would increase tax rate from 8.82% to 9.65% for individuals making over $1 million or those joint-filing making more than $2 million.
Two new additional tax brackets would also be created –10.3% for those making $5 million to $25 million, and 10.9% for those making over $25 million.
New York City high-income earners could be paying the highest in the country in personal income taxes. By adding New York City’s additional top-earner tax rate, those making over $1 million could pay as high as a 14.8% tax rate, surpassing California’s 13.3% tax rate, the highest in the country.

The State’s Progressive-Democrats already tax the hell out of all the yous and mes in that State, also, though, so Long’s plea is being implemented much more broadly.

It’s important to recall, also, another of Long’s aphorisms:

I have become convinced you’re going to have to have capital if you’re going to have capitalism.

New York’s Progressive-Democrats are bent on denying precisely that to the State’s private economy. That says volumes about Party’s ultimate goal.

Preferences

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Editorial Board, in their Tuesday piece, wrote strongly about CEOs vs Shareholders in the context of the CEOs’ (among others)…disingenuousness…regarding Georgia’s newly enacted voting law, which expanded access to ballots and to the voting process while tightening the integrity of both.

The question is much broader than that, though.

President Joe Biden (D), with his blatant lies regarding Georgia’s election law, his open advocating for business boycotts of Georgia, while simultaneously scoffing at the idea of boycotting the People’s Republic of China’s Olympics—or anything else PRC—demonstrates his strong preference for the PRC government over the citizens of Georgia and of America.

Businesses like major league baseball, Coca-Cola, Delta, et al., repeating those lies about Georgia’s election law and pushing to leave Georgia, all the while being so desperate to do business within the PRC are similarly demonstrating their naked preference for the PRC government over the citizens of Georgia and of America.

It’s disgusting, and it’s shameful.

We can answer the businesses by boycotting them, starting yesterday. We can answer Biden and his coterie by tossing his Progressive-Democratic Party-controlled Congress in 2022 and then by tossing the Progressive-Democrat Biden/Harris administration in 2024.

It’s interesting, too, that the Party of Jim Crow suddenly is decrying Jim Crow—even as it lies about what is Jim Crow.

This is Why Baseball

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…is no longer America’s Pastime. Although it has become the Extreme Left’s Woke-time and it comes with a measure of naked racism.

These are some demographics for Atlanta, GA, which was going to host major league baseball’s All Star game and for Denver, CO, which now is going to host that All Star game, after baseball’s management team, led by Robert Manfred, unilaterally chose to take the game away over Manfred’s angst from Georgia’s new voter law. Since that law expanded voter access to ballots and to voting generally while increasing the integrity of both, and since Colorado’s voter law is substantially identical to Georgia’s new law, I have to wonder what Manfred has against minorities or against blacks in particular.

Anyway. These data are from, variously, Wikipedia, US Census for Denver County/Atlanta City, and Society for American Baseball Research:

Atlanta Denver
Population 420,000 600,200
Population Density 3,154/sq mi 5,470/sq mi
Per Centage Black 50.4 9.8
Per Centage Asian 3.1 4.1
Per Centage Native American 0.2 1.7
Per Centage White 40.9 80.9
Economics (a/o 2012)
Minority-Owned firms 30,100 18,000
Nonminority-Owned firms 31,750 57,100
Veteran-Owned firms 5,400 6,300
Per cent persons in poverty 20.8 12.1
Player Demographics

—as of 2016

 Per Centage
White 63.7
Black 6.7
Latino 27.4
Asian 2.1

Manfred moved the game from a predominantly black city, with minority- and nonminority-owned businesses roughly equal in number to a lily white city having more than 3 times the number of nonminority-owned businesses as minority-owned businesses.

Manfred, with his move, blocked somewhere between $65 million and $100 million in game-related economic activity—activity including things like 19,300 hotel room nights (and associated spending by those hotel guests), temporary employment (and associated spending by the influx of customers driving the hiring and the subsequent spending by those temps) in surrounding businesses related to the game, and other businesses supporting/supplying those game-related businesses—from entering that slightly black-majority city and transferred all that money to the lily white city.

Manfred, with his move, took his predominantly white and Latino game out of that predominantly black city and moved it to his favored lily-white city.

Atlanta is much more poverty-ridden, too. Manfred isn’t punishing Georgia–or Atlanta, per se, with his move. He has (carefully, I say) punished Atlanta’s poor, and Atlanta’s minority-owned businesses. These are precisely the folks Manfred is pretending so piously to be helping.

Of course Manfred knew all this when he made his decision; he carefully vetted both cities before his decided. His decision: he didn’t even deign check with the baseball players union or the players. Again, I ask: why does Manfred seem to hate minorities so?

America isn’t fraught with systemic racism. But MLB management is hypocritical, dishonest, and no little bit racist under the Left’s disparate impact ideology. And MLB management, as illustrated by its All Star Game move, seems directly racist.

The Extreme Left and major league baseball [sic] are fit partners for each other. Major league baseball is no fit partner for Americans. At least not until there’s a complete turnover of baseball management from the commissioner on down through middle management and that turnover accompanied by a change in behavior toward more honest, less bigoted behavior.

On the other hand, I’ve heard from a reliable source familiar with the matter that major league baseball has considered that Atlanta simply has more voters to be suppressed than has Denver.