An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile,
hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
They'll Tax You, Even on Tax Holidays
(Hidden Import Taxes)
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| Courtesy of Heritage HT Cafe Hayek |
Cigarettes, luxuries, gas... I'm sure that Professor Carden has a follow-up video in mind. Playing legislator here. None of these, especially if the purpose is general revenue. (You can argue that you have a behavioral motivation, e.g., to reduce smoking by raising the costs of cigarettes--but by increasing the cost of cigarettes, the result is fewer sales--and lower-than-expected tax collection. But as a general tax source, why should smokers have to subsidize the government expenses of non-smokers? I would argue it's fairer to assess a low flat tax rate against all consumption of goods and services than merely politically unpopular ones. In fact, I suspect a large percentage of smokers are in lower-income groups, which means that healthy-living, higher-earning yuppies would simply avoid the tax burden, making this a particularly odious regressive tax.) We have a similar reflection on gas taxes; consider, for instance, maybe 16% of the gas tax revenues are used for mass transit, less affluent drivers drive less fuel-efficient, older cars, thus being taxed more per mile, and drivers of hybrid or electric vehicles do not pay their fair share of highway maintenance costs. (This discussion assumes lock box tax revenues for gas taxes, but if the government entity decided to impose tax increases for general revenue purposes, note that as in the case for cigarette taxes, you would see a shift of tax burden from non-drivers (say, urban residents not owning a car) to drivers.)
What about excise taxes on luxury goods? First of all, consider that there aren't that many wealthy people--and wealthy people don't have to buy luxury goods and/or can buy them in other countries with more friendly tax policies. Second, been there, done that. In 1990 there was a federal excise tax on yachts/boats over $100K. After the surcharge passed, higher-end boat sales crashed--and along with them, good-paying jobs in the shipbuilding industry: a clear case of the need to be careful of what you wish for. Not only did the Congress find revenues dried up, but they had to pay unemployment for people losing their jobs. The tax was subsequently repealed...
Unconstitutional Restrictions on Business Speech
A Rock Star Gets It: Public Policy/Charity is Stop-Gap; the Real Solution is Economic Liberty
The poster child of what happens when government liberalizes the economy can be seen in the following chart where per-capita income has increased by nearly a factor of 10 since the Chinese government started economic reforms in the late 1970's.
“Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.” - Bono
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| Courtesy of James Pethokoukis and AEI |
Via a Breitbart interview, Jesse Jackson had this to say comparing this incident (a 13-year-old white boy was viciously attacked by 3 older black male teens on a bus after earlier identifying to school officials a couple of them had offered to sell him marijuana) to the Trayvon Martin tragedy:
In one case a man was unarmed, killed by another man...Last year, 135 blacks were killed, black men, unarmed, killed by vigilantes, police, killed by security guards, so whether it’s the case of Oakland, Calif., or the case in New York, it’s just too much of it. Wherever it occurs, it must always be discouraged; there must be a deterrent from it occurring. We must urge people to live in civilized ways.Jackson conveniently forgets to mention Martin assaulted Zimmerman and had Zimmerman pinned to the ground when Zimmerman shot him and he ignores the fact of far more prevalent black-on-black crime because it doesn't fit his black victimization viewpoint. Regardless of whether there are unrelated issues which merit separate consideration, my impression is that Jackson is simply paying lip service to juvenile criminal behavior. What Jackson must frankly come to grips with is the fact that black criminal behavior is significantly higher than the black percentage of the population; I have quoted Jason Riley's WSJ column on multiple occasions quoting Martin Luther King facing the issue squarely in 1961 with black arrest rates at multiples of their 13% of the population; he admitted that there had been a failure in black moral leadership. Now 50 years later Jackson has nothing to say on the five decades since: despite massive public expenditures, preferential admissions, employment, housing, and government contracting set-asides, despite record high black voter registration, black elected officeholders, police chiefs, and mayors, we see sky-high illegitimacy rates, one-parent households, high young black male incarceration rates, high school dropout rates and low urban school performance, high poverty, crime, unemployment rates, etc.
When Jackson is dismissive of criticisms of black leadership (for obvious reasons), he ignores the fact that these problems have exacerbated over the past half-century; attempts to deflect criticism by arguing other racial/ethnic groups also experience challenges are transparent. Now, granted, I understand that Jackson, after focusing on an alleged white Latino adult male murder of an innocent black teen, doesn't want to be called to comment after any particularly egregious black-on-white teen violence, but the fact is that the race issue was interjected into the Trayvon Martin tragedy, even after the FBI investigated and found no relevant evidence. One might think that Jackson, of all people, would be interested in seeing Zimmerman's rights to a fair trial protected just as he would like to see black defendants' rights respected; how would he feel if local police failed to find evidence against a black defendant arguing self-defense, but the governor appointed a special prosecutor, the Justice Department was involved in rallies against the defendant, and the prosecution delayed turning over evidence to the defense for several months? Where is Rev. Jackson's caution for young men to keep their emotions in check, that initiating violence is never the answer?
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Michael Ramirez and Townhall |
The Beatles, "Something". My favorite Harrison tune and one of the greatest love ballads ever. It has special meaning for me (along with the Carpenter's song "Close to You") because it came on the radio one evening with a former girlfriend and I spontaneously sang along, serenading her. It was one of life's perfect moments.
