Category Archives: Economics

Miscellaneous economy stuff

Be Like Sweden

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That’s what the Progressive-Democrats say we should do, especially when it comes to taxes.  Here’s what the Swedish tax structure, that we’re supposed to emulate, looks like, pretty much straight from the horse’s mouth: Catherine Edwards, Europe Editor, for The Local, headquartered in Stockholm.

  • Property tax: virtually eliminated 10 years ago. Nationwide, property owners pay an annual tax of 0.75% of the property’s taxable value, capped at 7,412 kronor ($820).
  • Inheritance tax: abolished (not reduced to zero; this tax no longer exists) in 2005
  • Gift tax: abolished (not reduced to zero; this tax no longer exists) in 2005

Inheritance (estate) and gift taxes were eliminated by unanimous vote in Parliament

for reasons including improving conditions for running a business…, which will facilitate generational succession[.]
Taxes on inheritance and gifts…caused complications when the majority of an inherited estate’s value was tied up in a business or property, forcing many heirs to sell family homes or businesses to stump up the cash for the tax, in some cases leading to their bankruptcy.

Where have we heard that before?

On the matter of income tax, Sweden has a top national tax of 25% on income above 638,500 kronor ($70,400), with county and municipal tax rates running to and additional 11% and 21%, respectively.  A wage earner thus surrenders as much as 57% of his wages to the taxman—and he’s guaranteed to lose nearly a third of it to his local taxman.  On the table in Parliament, though, is a proposal to cut that national tax rate to 10%.

Oh, and Sweden has a corporate tax rate of 22%—which they’re also looking to lower further.

Understand, though: this is not an endorsement of the idea that we really should emulate the Swedish tax system (except for the inheritance and gift taxes part). It’s an indictment of the ignorance of the politicians of the Progressive-Democratic Party who demand high, and higher, taxes and use Sweden (among other nations) as justification (leaving aside the irrationality of the idea that one nation doing something makes it a good idea for other nations to do it, too).

All Your Prosperity Belong to Me

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Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT), who caucuses with the Progressive-Democrats, has joined the Progressive-Democratic Party’s race to the bottom.  The President wannabe has proposed his cynically named For the 99.8% Act, which is targeted explicitly against the 588 Americans he hates the most: the 588 most successful of us.  His bill would deny these few Americans their ability to pass on the outcome of their success to their heirs, their families; his bill would overtly punish these most successful—and their families—for their success.

It’s a bill that’s borne of personal animosity and rank envy.  It’s a bill that would

establish a 45% tax on the value of an estate between $3.5 million and $10 million; a 50% tax on the value of an estate between $10 million and $50 million; a 55% tax on the value of an estate in excess of $50 million; and a 77% tax on the value of an estate above $1 billion….

Sanders rationalized his punitively confiscatory tax by claiming that what’s really needed is

stronger investment in skills, higher paying jobs, and a more progressive tax system.

He is ignoring the fact that the more progressive our tax system, the more it and the purveyors of progressivism punish success.  He is ignoring the fact that folks like the Walton family, the Kochs, and Jeff Bezos—from whom alone he would confiscate some $304 billion—have created more jobs and more higher paying jobs and have done more investment in work skills than anything Government has done.

Sanders is ignoring the fact that that money doesn’t sit in some vault as cash or gold bullion.  It’s invested, plowed back into the economy to create innovation, businesses, jobs, philanthropy, educational opportunities—even health coverage plans—all things Government cannot do as well, if at all.

For all Sanders’ and his Progressive-Democrat cronies’ rationalizations to the contrary, this bill and its ilk are nothing but the actualization of their mindless resentment of the achievements of others.

The Party’s Core Philosophy

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And it even attacks its own.  In a Wall Street Journal article centered on Beto O’Rourke’s potential for a Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential campaign, there appeared this giveaway.

[S]ome Democrats have privately groused that he should have shared some of the $80 million he raised in 2018 with fellow candidates in the party.

There is the Progressive-Democratic Party’s core ideology: their demand to redistribute OPM, ideally to their own special interests.

“That’s not the O’Rourke campaign’s money.  He didn’t earn that.  He had help.”

Gimme, gimme, gimme.

German Intransigence

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Last Tuesday, the British Parliament voted to send Prime Minister Theresa May back to Brussels to renegotiate the status of Great Britain’s Northern Ireland border with the Republic of Ireland, which is part of the Brit-EU exit agreement that the Parliament had earlier rejected.  The same day, the Parliament also rejected an attempt by Labour to delay by nine months the actual departure of Great Britain from the EU, leaving the date set at 29 March.

European Council President Donald Tusk said through his spokesman

The backstop is part of the Withdrawal Agreement, and the Withdrawal Agreement is not open for renegotiation.

That’s standard fare for the EU, which never has negotiated in good faith and which has all along faced a negotiator, in May, whose heart never has been in leaving the EU.

It’s Germany, though, that not only refuses outright to renegotiate a small aspect of that failed departure agreement, now is directly interfering in the domestic affairs of Great Britain.  The nature of the current “agreement” would

keep Northern Ireland (and by extension the UK) in the EU customs union in order to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

A hard departure would take all of Great Britain (and by extension Northern Ireland) out of the EU and its internal free trade/free movement of goods and people zone altogether.  That might necessitate customs checks and border entry stations.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Heiko Mass:

We will not allow Ireland to be isolated on this issue.

Never mind that the only ones isolating the Republic of Ireland on this issue are Germany and the EU.  It gets worse, though.  Jürgen Trittin, Co-Chairman of Germany’s Green Party’:

It’s clear that we won’t accept a militarized border in Ireland[.]

Leaving aside the cynically constructed straw man nature of this claim—no one is talking about militarizing any border, only of the possibility of setting up customs stations—whether Great Britain chooses to “militarize” any of its borders is strictly a domestic matter for the Brits to decide.  They cannot, after all, station troops anywhere along any of their borders except on their side of them.  Trittin knows this.  (Beyond that, this ban also is a blatant interference in the internal affairs of the Republic of Ireland for the same reason.)

Aside from that, Trittin’s bar would result in…what, exactly?  What does Germany, or the EU, propose to do were the Brits to decide to “militarize” its border with the Republic of Ireland?  What concrete steps is Germany implying it, or the EU, would take to enforce its bar on the “militarization?”

Plainly, it’s an empty threat, intended only to intimidate and, worse, to meddle in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation—and so vindicating that nation’s decision to leave such an entity as the EU.

Germany’s Cost of Going “Green”

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Germany is moving decisively to eliminate coal-fired plants as a source for its economy’s energy.

Germany has already banned nuclear power, which was a singularly stupid thing to do—that source of energy already had no CO2 emissions. Nevertheless, the destruction of that industry already is ongoingly expensive.

Merkel’s decision in 2011 to dump nuclear energy by 2022 and to accelerate the build-out of renewable sources such as wind and solar power is already costing them €27 billion [$31.8 billion] each year in the form of a renewable-energy tax.

Despite that, Germany’s Commission on Growth, Structural Change and Employment has laid out the requirement, and the Merkel government seems willing to take it up.

[T]he coal commission advised the government to pay around €50 billion [$57 billion] to the three regions hit by the shutdown of lignite mines to make sure new jobs are created. It also recommended that the government should pay €32 billion [$36.5 billon] to compensate consumers and business for higher electricity prices [annually] and an unspecified amount to indemnify coal power plant operators for the lost value of their assets.

That’s just the inner bound of the cost of “green.”  With black coal mining already shut down—at a cost of €240 billion ($273.7 billion)—this will put coal-fired energy plants out of business.  It’s not just the immediate coal-based energy industry that will suffer.

Biblis, in the Hesse State, used to have a nuclear power plant.  The closure of that plant cost the city 50% of its corporate tax base.  That cascades up the political jurisdiction hierarchy and across the nation.  The increased cost of energy also is hammering German industries that are users, not producers, of energy.

Manufacturing companies, from chemicals maker BASF to carbon fiber producer SGL Carbon, have shifted investments abroad, where energy costs are often a fraction of Germany’s.

Consumers have to pay the higher energy prices, too, and that’s money they can’t spend on other goods and services—which hurts producers of those other goods and services.  All of that is lost revenue for Government, and it’s lost jobs and German prosperity.

What’s the value of changing energy sources if the energy becomes prohibitively expensive and so stunts economic growth and development?