The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Government Gone Wild, Taxation on Apr 14th, 2013
The EPA, rightly in my view, understands that storm water runoff is one of the major problems facing our waterways. But that’s about where their “rightness” ends. They’ve imposed yet another unfunded mandate, this time on states in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Read this piece to see how it all shakes out. state lawmakers exempted [...]
Posted in Health Care, Politics, Taxation, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 12th, 2013
The town and county portion of my property tax receipt came in the mail today. (This comprises about 1/3 of my total property tax bill – the government schools take the other 2/3). I found their new itemization of uses of tax funds to be interesting. Years ago I noticed that in my TOWN offices, [...]
Posted in ethical foundations, Government Gone Wild, Government Thuggery, Health Care, incentives, Price Controls, Socialism, Taxation, Unintended Consequences, Voluntary Society, Welfare State, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Apr 11th, 2013
I usually hate infographics and here is another one just littered with reasons to go crazy. But focus only on the very bottom: The changes Brill suggests would allow the US to provide better care at lower costs without substituting the kind of government-provider system typical in comparison countries. Holy smokes. This is the previous [...]
Posted in Politics, Special Privilege, Taxation, Unintended Consequences on Mar 15th, 2013
Assume our preference for redistribution is fixed and that there is an inherent and unchanging desire in the population to equalize incomes, for whatever reason you wish to believe we have that feeling. I for one do not share this belief, nor am I rich. In any case, I believe that one reason folks like [...]
Posted in Taxation on Feb 28th, 2013
Last I checked, there were roughly 4 million workers who “earned” the minimum wage in the US (or less). This is an overstatement in some aspects, since tips are not reported here, but just treat it as 4 million. Here’s a question: how much do we think these workers would have earned absent the minimum [...]
Posted in Taxation on Feb 13th, 2013
You can bet your sorry asses that the offsets will never be part of it. Nice to know that Bill McKibben is directing economic policy. Tip to the greenies, once you have the tax, the “in energy efficiency and sustainable energy technologies such as wind, solar, geothermal and biomass” are not part of the policy “solution.” [...]
Posted in Competition, Corporatism, Taxation on Jan 29th, 2013
Ford, like Exxon, is enjoying monster profits right now. But of course there are no calls for “excess profits taxes” on them. I hereby propose one. Here is a nice bit from the news story: Ford will pay profit-sharing checks of about $8,300 to its 45,000 hourly workers in the U.S. represented by the United [...]
Posted in If I Really Hated the Poor ..., Taxation on Jan 17th, 2013
JB asked in the comments to an earlier post what we know about who bears the burden of cigarette taxation. A brief exploration of the economic literature reveals the following: (1) The Heterogeneous Geographic and Socioeconomic Incidence of Cigarette Taxes: Evidence from Nielsen Homescan Data Author: Harding, Matthew; Leibtag, Ephraim; Lovenheim, Michael F. Author Affiliation: Stanford [...]
Posted in Central Planning, Taxation on Jan 16th, 2013
… is government transportation and infrastructure policy. We’ll delve into that shortly. For now, here is a little more dog-bites-man: According to an analysis based on Census data by transportation specialist Ron Utt, nine of 10 Virginia commutes are by car and fewer than one in 20 by mass transit. Yet he calculates that about [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Dec 24th, 2012
What would I like for Christmas? How about a little more intellectual consistency and honesty. We will keep our holiday observations short as we must get on with the serious Italian tradition of preparing out 7 fishes for Christmas Eve dinner. Please do share with me your tradition in the comments. In any case my [...]
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