The Unbroken Window

Coyote tells us what he is almost required to do as a campground manager:

I was navigating around the Kentucky property tax forms site (one of the really tedious tasks for our company this year is to fill out zillions of personal property tax forms listing virtually every pencil we own in any number of counties [...]

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The CEO of the largest union in America (the SEIU), Andy Stern, was appointed to the President’s deficit reduction commission. As if that were not strange enough, we learn today that his union is $85 million in debt … and is … laying off workers.
Update: The state of California’s pension is now $500 billion underfunded. [...]

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Elected officials would never use their political power to make themselves rich at others’ expense, would they? And if so, it must only be the bourgeois capitalist pigs that do it. So here I retell a story told by David Henderson in his excellent, The Joy of Freedom.
Interestingly, one of the clearest documented instances in [...]

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This AP Headline just hit my desk:
Obama: US would go bankrupt without health changes
Right, I agree. So double down on an already bad bed. See here and here for a tiny little reminder of just how bankrupt government health care has and will make us. Or see here for how small government has become. Here [...]

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Here is Zhong Shan, the Vice Minister of Commerce in the People’s Republic of China:
The government protects the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors in accordance with laws.
This is true – no foreign company has had assets expropriated since Mao was in office. And the US, you know, just has a wonderful record of [...]

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Kim Strassel seems to illustrate a devastating feature of the Democrats’ preferred way of ramming “health care” reform down our throats:
Here’s why: reconciliation allowed Republicans to bring up unlimited amendments. Because Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) could not allow the reconciliation bill to be changed in any way—which would send it back to the [...]

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… that’s how much more the Build America Bond program is costing in its first year than it was anticipated in budgeting:
Build America Bonds are also expanding federal costs much faster than expected. Over the life of the up to 30-year bonds, Uncle Sam could owe up to $90 billion in interest. The program’s first-year [...]

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In What is Viewed as the Crown Jewel of Government Success Stories:

Oh yummy!

Cost to taxpayers for each extra car sold because of Cash for Clunkers:  $20,000
Number of clunkers turned in (and taken out of the market):  677,081
Price increase for used cars since CfC:  13.7%
Change in car sales from July 2009 to February 2010:  -0.6%

I’m [...]

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In tomorrow’s WSJ:
Mission Accomplished

“Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics. We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests.”–Barack Obama, celebrating the House’s passage of ObamaCare, March 21
“Gordon Witman of PICO, Richard Kirsch of Health Care for America Now, Robert Hall [...]

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Per capita GDP in the United States is roughly $47,000.
Per capita personal income is about $39,880.

Let’s think about the kind of tax system we have in the U.S.
What kind of effective marginal tax rates do you think a family faces that has per capita income below half of per capita GDP in the country or [...]

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