Tag Archives: political economy

More Tax Credits?

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Now consumer companies are looking to get in on the Federal climate tax credit scam, this effort centering on “clean” energy claims.

More than 40 companies, including consumer brands such as Airbnb Inc, Lyft Inc, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co, and IKEA, are calling on Congress to adopt federal energy legislation to provide additional financial incentives for clean-energy projects such as wind turbine farms and solar installations.

And

They called for federal tax credits for developers and suppliers of major wind, solar, nuclear, and energy-storage projects, as well as for electric vehicles and charging-station tax credits, which could benefit company-run fleets.

Here’s a thought—work with me on this; it’s a concept new to politicians and to the Left generally: eliminate corporate taxes altogether (their customers are the ones paying those taxes anyway in the form of higher prices) and lower individual income tax rates to a single, low flat rate on all income regardless of source. Get our tax code completely out of the social engineering business, and tax credits (along with subsidies, deductions, the rest of the froo-froo) become irrelevant.

Businesses and people then could go about their decision-making based on what’s best for each of them without having to worry about what’s best for them from a Government taxing perspective.

Those decisions, naturally, would include businesses’ and citizens’ own assessment of the importance of such things as climate concerns, instead of having those concerns and their spending choices dictated to them by Know Betters.

Illegal Aliens and Endangered Plant Species

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Now President Joe Biden (D) is trying to block border enforcement by using his Interior Department’s Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the prostrate milkweed to be an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. In conjunction with this, he’s moving to declare some acreage along the border between two Texas counties and Mexico as “critical habitat” for the plant.

All of that is a naked move to try to prevent Texas from building a border wall using Texas resources, so that Biden-Harris can continue to flood our nation with illegal aliens (who aren’t required to be vaccinated against the Wuhan Virus, even though legitimate travelers and returnees to our nation are so required. See nearby).

This time, though, the Biden-Harris cynicism, though, can be used against him.

If he truly is concerned about the welfare of the prostrate milkweed, then Biden-Harris must take concrete steps to close those stretches of the border in order to keep the illegal aliens from trampling the plants as they come across.

Local Control vs Federal Funding

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Tennessee’s General Assembly is considering a bill that would indemnify teachers and all other employees of public schools and local education agencies against civil liability or “adverse job actions” if they refer to a student by pronouns consistent with his biological sex rather than by his preferred gender pronouns. The General Assembly’s Fiscal Review Committee noted that the bill

could violate Title IX and would put at risk the state’s federal funding, which for the current school year is more than $5 billion.

That’s the important aspect of this bill, and it has much broader implications for all State-level legislative actions. The $5 billion might seem like a lot of money for a State, but it pales against the long-term cost outcomes of a State accepting any Federal funds under any guise: the more money a State accepts from the Federal government, the more control over its own internal affairs the State surrenders to the Federal government.

The Feds are acting entirely legitimately when they attach strings to the money they provide the States, or to any non-State entity. Anyone providing money to anyone or anything else naturally gets to specify the manner and purpose for which the money is to be used. It’s the existence of those strings, not what they require, that should give States pause in the decision to accept any of the Federal government’s money.

In the end, States that want to retain control of their own intra-State affairs should reject Federal funds transfers—and join with other States in efforts across the legal spectrum to end Federal transfers of State tax remissions to other States altogether except in the event of an emergency declaration. Nor should any exceptions to the bar be allowed: once carve-outs are begun, in very short order, the bar will be so exception-ridden as to cease to exist in any meaningful form.

Corporate Tax Rate Cuts

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…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.

Skinflints

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President Joe Biden (D) and wife donated all of 2.8% of their income to charity in 2021. Average Americans in their income level donated 3.1% of their income to charity. Average Americans in the next lower income level donated 2.9% of their income—still more than the Bidens, despite their greater income.

Vice President Kamala Harris (D) and husband were just as tight. They donated 1.3% of their (higher than the Bidens’ by a factor greater than two) 2021 income to charity.

Just to emphasize how cheap these Progressive-Democrats are, average Americans with income under $50,000 and who still managed to itemize donated 8.4% of their income.

Keep in mind, too, the Bidens and the Harrises don’t have the expenses that us average Americans have. They get all expenses paid houses to live in, free transportation, and not only are their meals entirely free*, they’re catered by top drawer chefs.

But the Bidens, anyway, always have been chintzy with their charity. In 2007, while Joe was sitting in the Senate, he and Jill donated all of 0.3% of their income to charity.

*Free in this context means us American taxpayers are paying their expenses. And they’re still that chintzy.