Tag Archives: economics

Law Be Damned

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The city of Seattle passed a law earlier this year that levied an income tax on the city’s wealthiest—all in the name of equality of outcome and so…fairness.

It turns out that tax was contrary to the State’s law, which said that only the State can levy an income tax and, explicitly, cities cannot.  The question also was raised regarding whether the Seattle law was even contrary to the State’s constitution—illegitimate—as well as illegal, but the judge avoided the constitutional question.

King County Superior Court Judge John Ruhl ruled in a Wednesday that Seattle did not have the authority to impose the tax because state law prohibits tax on net income.

Seattle’s City Attorney Pete Holmes and Mayor Tim Burgess demurred.

We are also living in a time of extreme income inequality that corrodes our social compact and causes many to wonder whether wealthy individuals are paying their fair share[.]

Because their goal is worthy, so the law should be disregarded.  And

Councilmember Kshama Sawant told Fox News in July that the need for the tax is “crystal clear.”

Again, goals, but let’s skip the inconvenience of law or of adjusting particular ones.

It just doesn’t matter what the law requires.  Never mind, either, that the State’s voters have repeatedly defeated such a tax on State referendums.  The Left demand to do what they want, when they want it, because that’s all that’s…just.

As an aside, it should be noted that Holmes and Burgess, in demanding the rich pay their fair share, carefully decline to say explicitly what level of wealth constitutes “the wealthy,” although the level is implied by the erstwhile tax’s threshold, and they carefully decline to say what that “fair share” would be: what per centage of the city’s taxes should be paid by “the wealthy,” especially in comparison with what the “fair share” of the city’s taxes paid by the various levels of the non-wealthy would be.

Competition

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The German Marshall Fund of the United States had a worried piece about net neutrality up shortly before Thanksgiving.  Ignoring the author’s opening paragraph, wherein she laid out the Left’s nonsense about how getting government out of the business of regulating the Internet as though it were an early- mid-20th century telephone utility, the main point is concern that the US won’t look like Europe if net neutrality isn’t enforced.

While the decision will not significantly impact European policies or consumers directly, it will exacerbate the gap between Washington, DC, and Brussels on law, values, and interests when it comes to the role technology plays in our society.

Of course, it’s differences that create competition, and it’s competition that stimulates innovation—even among nations.  Were we to imitate Europe—or Europe us—there could be no invention, no creativity.  It’s not just economic or technology competition, after all, that stimulates invention.  Policy differences—like net neutrality there, non-centrally controlled Internet here—also stimulate invention.  Policy differences give empirical evidence of what works and what does not, and in what environments economic and technology thises or thats work better or less well.

It never ceases to amaze me how so many so desperately seek to avoid the cacophony of difference, try to anxiously to snuggle into the false comfort of group think.

Soros Puts His Money in a Tax Shelter

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And Stephen Moore’s knickers are in a twist.

Congress is still scrambling to find ways to pay for its tax cut, so perhaps it should pay closer attention to last month’s news that George Soros had transferred $18 billion of his fortune to a private charity that he controls. There it will be sheltered from the Internal Revenue Service forever. This may be the single biggest tax dodge in US history, yet no one on the right or left seems to have raised an eyebrow.

How is it a tax dodge, exactly, to take legal steps to protect one’s assets from the taxman?  Why would anyone “on the right” object to a man moving to hang on to more of his money?

I don’t question these billionaires’ right to do with their money as they wish. I’m simply arguing that Congress shouldn’t let the rich and politically powerful use private foundations to escape taxation.

This is disingenuous. Private foundations are a completely legal way in which to shelter funds and to escape taxation.  I applaud Soros’ effort to keep his money, even as I decry his politics.  Had I billions of dollars—or even thousands—I’d try to protect it from the Revenooers, too.  Government doesn’t need as much of my money as it tries to claim; as long as it’s legal, there’s nothing wrong with keeping out of the Feds’ paws.

What Congress should be doing is finding ways to allow those of us with less money than Soros, or even less than the 20% or 30% or 50%, shelter more of our money, too.  One way to do that would be via a single low, flat income tax rate applied to all income regardless of source by a tax code devoid of carve-outs, deductions, credits, froo-froo.  Failing that, the tax reform plan on offer from the House and possibly (subject to the whims of three or four Republican Senators’ egos) on offer from the Senate would be a good start.

Obeying the Law

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In a piece about President Donald Trump’s domestic business policies—specifically, his administration’s lawsuit to block the merger of AT&T with Time Warner Inc and his parallel move to facilitate other kinds of close relationships between companies like AT&T and Time Warner, The Wall Street Journal described a rationale for these apparently conflicting moves: follow existing law, rather than piling on regulation after regulation to govern (new) behaviors.

[T]he actions reveal one consistency, and what might be viewed as an emerging Trump administration regulatory philosophy: instead of new bright-line rules, such as those put in place under the Obama administration, it is stressing the enforcement of longstanding laws and regulations.

Indeed.  A properly free, capitalist market will do its own regulation just fine, with customers voting—and enforcing—with their dollars.

And

The moves are a shift in emphasis from the approach taken by the Obama administration, which in 2015 adopted highly specific rules governing [for instance] internet providers….

Which were simply insulting to adult Americans.  We don’t need to be told, down to the veriest jot or tiddle, how to perform in the market.  We can operate just fine without Government’s micromanagement.  Better, even.

And there’s the illogic of new regulations: if current law or regulations are being disregarded (hence the push for new regulations), how is it possible to expect any new regulations to be followed?

The VA Still Fails

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The Veterans Administration is still creating waitlists and secret waitlists, even after all this time of reporting on and calling the VA out for its dishonesty and its disservice to our veterans.  Now a Colorado VA facility is—still—doing secret waitlists.

Investigators with the VA Office of Inspector General confirmed whistleblower and former VA employee Brian Smother’s claim that staff kept unauthorized lists instead of using the department’s official wait list system.

That made it impossible to know if veterans who needed referrals for group therapy and other mental health care were getting timely assistance, according to the report. The internal investigation also criticized record-keeping in PTSD cases at the VA’s facility in Colorado Springs.

Senator Cory Gardener (R, CO):

It [the secret waitlists] highlights even more VA mismanagement and lack of accountability in Colorado. This cannot happen again, and it’s time for the VA to finally wake up and ensure our men and women are getting the best care possible.

No.  The VA is not going to clean itself up.  Outside agencies cannot clean this sewage pit.  The VA must be disbanded and its budget and nominal future budgets passed to our veterans as vouchers so they can get the medical help they deserve—and in too many cases, desperately need—from the doctors of their choice and the medical facilities of their choice.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.