From a Washington Times editorial:
In a December presidential memorandum, Mr. Obama claimed that “by substantially reducing emissions of pollutants that contribute to neurological damage, cancer, respiratory illnesses and other health risks, the MATS Rule will produce major health benefits for millions of Americans -including children, older Americans and other vulnerable populations.” MATS is the most expensive EPA rule revision in history, and compliance will cost power plants $10-18 billion a year. These costs will be passed directly to consumers.
Removing mercury from power plant emissions is, of course, a worthy goal. But that is self-evident. It is not even worth discussing. Here’s what is worth discussing: is it worth $10-18 billion?
You might agree with the EPA that it is worth it, or you might not. But it doesn’t really matter either way, because they didn’t ask you, they just decided for you that no matter what the cost, this was going to happen.
So a few very powerful political appointees tell an entire nation of 325 million people that they need to cough up 10 billion dollars, or maybe it’s 18 billion, and it’ll totally be worth it, don’t you worry!
And if it just so happens the Friends of Obama and other politically-connected cronies are first in line to sell systems that remove mercury from power plant emissions, hey what a lucky break!
Mitt Romney and others who ostensibly care about growing the economy need to grab hold of a teachable moment, right now, and have a frank conversation with the American public about taxation.
From the WSJ:
The former Bain Capital CEO and Massachusetts governor caused a brouhaha last week when he estimated the tax rate on his investment income at 15%. “How unfair!” pundits exclaimed, noting that the top marginal rate for wage income is more than 30%. The tax rate on investors is unfair, but for the opposite reason. Our tax code layers taxation of dividends and capital gains on top of a top corporate tax rate of 35%—which even President Obama acknowledges is one of the highest in the world. …This double taxation brings the effective tax rate on investment income to as much as 44.75%. In other words, after the combined top tax rates hit $100 of corporate income, $55.25 remains for the investor. And this figure doesn’t even include various state and local taxes, or the death tax. Moreover, like the rest of us, Mr. Romney paid income taxes before investing… Mr. Romney and other presidential candidates should use the opportunity of releasing their tax returns to make an important policy statement. They should include not only their individual returns, but information about the taxes their corporations pay. …In this way the candidates can help explode the myth of the U.S. as a low-tax nation.
Some people actually think that an effective tax rate of 44.75% on investment income — before state, local, and other taxes — is not high enough.
These people do not comprehend, or just ignore, the proven fact that higher tax rates discourage investment and therefore, jobs and economic growth.
They view taxes as first and foremost a way to punish wealth, not as the proper way to provide incentives for efficiently allocating capital to drive growth and jobs. This is a very clear divide in our country on this point, and the president is on the wrong side of it, with his class warfare rhetoric.
Ponder the irony: by erring in this way, the president and other class-warfare true believers indirectly advocate for poor economic health, fewer jobs, and a dismal future, which affects the very working people they claim to support much more than it affects the rich, who remain rich even during down economic times.
Regular folks like me, who rely on jobs and steady incomes to pay the mortgage and feed the family, need a functioning economy to do so. Rich people do not. And I have found, to my chagrin, that lots of rich folks who talk about taxes and economics don’t really understand what they’re talking about. Or, they’re just regular old partisan windbags who happen to be rich.
The Key Point to Understand here is this: tax revenue tends to rise and fall with the economy, not with tax rates.
To be more specific, tax revenue tracks with GDP, at around 18-20% through good times and bad.
So — tax policies that grow the economy and therefore create jobs also increase tax revenue.
And the tax policies that grow the economy? Lower tax rates.
The most basic reason it works this way is because incremental changes in taxation rates change our behavior. Tax rates are a signal from the government to those with capital to invest on whether right now is a good time to invest, or not.
If you run a business and have, say, $2M that you are thinking about investing in your business to grow it by, say, 10% per year, but you’re not too sure what new taxes Washington is going to cook up because of a constant tax-and-spend drumbeat, you may decide it isn’t worth the risk. Maybe the higher costs to your business, from the new taxes, will eat up all of your 10%, or so much of it that it isn’t worth the investment any more. Who knows? This is the problem, nobody knows. Investment requires pretty careful analysis, and when the risk of future costs becomes essentially unknowable, which is true today, the investment itself becomes too risky in the short term. The prudent course, the fiscally conservative course, is to sit on cash or some safe financial instrument, rather than to invest.
So, to sum up, no matter what your thoughts on government spending, the smart tax policy is the one that grows GDP and creates jobs: lower tax rates. Pushing for higher tax rates accomplishes only one thing: punishing those who work for a living.
As Daniel J. Mitchell notes:
I’ve had to correct Warren Buffett when he makes this mistake. One would think, though, that GOP presidential candidates would have a better understanding of taxation.
In addition to being wrong on policy, Romney also is politically tone deaf. By demagoguing against Gingrich’s tax plan, he lends credibility to the dishonest claims that his personal tax rate is “too low.”
As Ari Fleischer wrote on his Twitter recently (re-tweeted by me), “This tax return nonsense is one reason why a lot of good business people don’t run for office. And why we have the gvt we have.”.
Quote of the Week, Oil Reserves Edition
Under American law (other countries record as “reserves” whatever is in the ground), oil isn’t counted as part of our “reserves” unless it can legally be developed under current regulations, and it would be economic to develop at current prices. So when Obama says we only have two percent of the world’s oil “reserves,” he is documenting the extent to which the Democratic Party, by blocking energy development, is destroying jobs and making us all poorer.
via Of the Ignorant, By the Ignorant, For the Ignorant | Power Line.
“Clean Tech Boom” Goes !!KA-BOOM!!
See wired.com: Why the Clean Tech Boom Went Bust.
The article is good, I guess, but doesn’t go nearly far enough into the true causes of such boom/bust cycles with government-funded business ventures.
It skips or glosses over several key points, like:
(1) You cannot create market demand with investment or technology or even a product. To be successful, there must be existing but unsatisfied (“latent”) demand, and a price point that will push people off of existing technology. And today, if any such demand exists at all, it isn’t big enough, and/or the price point is too high. This is Economics 101.
(2) Government funding of risky ventures creates too many opportunities for graft and fiscal mismanagement because hey, it’s not their money! Especially when competing with government-subsidized products from countries where labor is cheap. Competition that would cause private investors to bail instead encourages government to throw good money after bad because, hey, it’s not their money!
(3) Remaking energy infrastructure is nearly impossible because of built-in inertia to keep things as they are, until prices force a change.
That’s the short version. What follows is my further thoughts on it. I’m no expert on energy, but I understand a little bit about markets and economics, and that’s really what this is about.
Stat of the Week, Energy Subsidies Edition
“… in 2010, subsidies per megawatt-hour were 63 cents for natural gas, 64 cents for coal, over $52 for wind power, and $968 for solar generation.”
Bruins goalie Tim Thomas decides to skip the official team visit to the White House to celebrate their 2011 Stanley Cup victory, and hoo boy does the fur begin to fly!
Here’s Thomas’ statement on his Facebook, from ProHockeyTalk:
I believe the Federal government has grown out of control, threatening the Rights, Liberties, and Property of the People.
This is being done at the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial level. This is in direct opposition to the Constitution and the Founding Fathers vision for the Federal government.
Because I believe this, today I exercised my right as a Free Citizen, and did not visit the White House. This was not about politics or party, as in my opinion both parties are responsible for the situation we are in as a country. This was about a choice I had to make as an INDIVIDUAL.
This is the only public statement I will be making on this topic.
First of all, I agree with every word there, and so do an increasingly large number of Americans, who consistently rate out-of-control Federal spending and power grabs as one of the top three issues they worry about today. But I also understand that refusing an invitation to the White House is always risky and can be seen as disrespectful, and criticized on decorum reasons alone. I get that, although I find it a bit too deferential to power for my tastes.
But let’s remember this: it’s an invitation, not a demand to appear in court. He is not required to like the president, or to shake his hand, or even to pretend that he is impressed by the invitation. He is free to skip it for his reasons, and we are free to criticize or support him as the case may be.
And THAT is far more important than whether you or I agree with his decision.
Lefty nutters and Obamabots can criticize Tim Thomas all they want – and they do (check out the comments here and here). Reasonable people can differ, but notice the strong hint of intolerance for differing opinions shown by the Obama supporters. As usual, the way people react to somebody speaking their mind tells us a lot more about them than about the one who speaks his mind in the first place. Thomas had a reasonable point that he wanted to make, and he did it without impugning anybody’s reputation or character, and he closed the door and walked away.
At least Thomas believes in something strongly enough to do something he knew would be unpopular, which is the very definition of leadership. The Democratic leadership in the Senate, which has failed to even draft a Federal budget for almost three years now, cannot even say that.
And the increasingly ridiculous drumbeat of partisan politics goes on.
See my Thoughts on Electric Cars and Energy in General.
Of course, Your Mileage May Vary™.
All my essays can be found on my Essays page.
From Book Depicts Cranky Obama On Baghdad Visit at Buzzfeed.com:
After the talk, out of earshot from the soldiers and diplomats, he starts to complain. He starts to act very un-Obamalike, according to a U.S. embassy official who helped organize the trip in Baghdad.
He’s asked to go out to take a few more pictures with soldiers and embassy staffers. He’s asked to sign copies of his book. “He didn’t want to take pictures with any more soldiers; he was complaining about it,” a State Department official tells me. “Look, I was excited to meet him. I wanted to like him. Let’s just say the scales fell from my eyes after I did. These are people over here who’ve been fighting the war, or working every day for the war effort, and he didn’t want to take f*cking pictures with them?”
No big deal. It’s not like they risk life and limb for you, Barry. No, they don’t really need encouragement or an ‘attaboy’ or anything like that from the President and CINC of the Armed Forces.
The current president is not only a petulant and self-involved jackass, he is both unqualified to lead men into battle, and unworthy of shaking their hands.
I don’t happen to agree with the 43 percent that think God intervenes in sports events to help Tim Tebow, but it doesn’t really bother me, either. Does not affect me in any way, and I’m fine with it.
Who knows? Maybe He does intervene in sports events for true believers. I don’t pretend to have answers to unknowable questions, and actually find such mysteries very comforting. I don’t WANT to know everything. Some people do, though. To them, I would ask, does it really matter to you what others believe in order to get them through the night? If so, why? Because you think they’re wrong? Well, guess what, they think you’re wrong too!
(also posted at my Facebook)
From Fake! Fake! Fake! Fake! at American Thinker, in which S. Fred Singer nicely summarizes the reasons to dismiss claims that our planet has warmed from 1978-2000, which is accepted as fact by so many:
Specifically, ocean data (from 71% of the earth’s surface) and global atmospheric data (as recorded by satellites and independent balloon-borne radiosondes) do not show such a warming at all. In addition, most proxy data, from non-thermometer sources such as tree rings, ocean sediments, ice cores, stalagmites, etc., show no warming during this same crucial period. (One has to be careful in this analysis since the year 1998 shows a major warming spike caused by a Super-El Niño. But by 1999 and 2000, temperatures had returned to pre-1998 values.)
Now, I am well aware of the fact that the recent release of the temperature data from the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project does show a warming trend from 1978 to 2000. Many would jump to the conclusion that this represents confirmation of the existence of global warming — or even of anthropogenic global warming (AGW). However, that would be an error in logic.
What the BEST result shows is that surface thermometers from the land area of the globe (about 29% of the earth’s surface) show a warming trend. But this is not global warming. And BEST director Professor Rich Muller explicitly disclaims that his trend results indicate a human cause.
He also correctly points out that many of the weather stations used are badly distributed, mostly in the U.S. and western Europe, and possibly subject to local heating effects, such as urban heat islands. He cautions that a third of his monitoring stations show a cooling, not a warming. And that 70% of the U.S. stations are poorly situated and don’t satisfy the requirements of the U.S. Weather Service. It is likely that stations elsewhere have similar problems.
Other than that, though, the evidence is really, really solid! They promise!
In list form for your enjoyment, all quoted from the above, except for text within []:
- Ocean data (from 71% of the earth’s surface) and global atmospheric data (as recorded by satellites and independent balloon-borne radiosondes) do not show such a warming at all
- Most proxy data, from non-thermometer sources such as tree rings, ocean sediments, ice cores, stalagmites, etc., show no warming during this same crucial period
- [Even the BEST project results show only] that surface thermometers from the land area of the globe (about 29% of the earth’s surface) show a warming trend [which is a problem because ...]
- Many of the weather stations used are badly distributed, mostly in the U.S. and western Europe, and possibly subject to local heating effects, such as urban heat islands
- [One] third of [BEST] monitoring stations show a cooling, not a warming
- 70% of the U.S. stations are poorly situated and don’t satisfy the requirements of the U.S. Weather Service
The burden of proof is on those making claims that (1) global warming is occurring at all, and then that (2) mankind is a factor at all, then that (3) mankind is the main cause, then that (4) we could actually do anything about it.
Which is an awful lot to prove, and they are stuck on Step One. Still. After decades of arguing about this.
The Sun, the oceans, the atmospheric wind patterns like the jet stream, these are all pretty powerful forces, you know? Think for a minute about the amount of energy that hits our planet every second of every day. Are we really so powerful that we can affect that? Are you SURE about that? Where is the evidence? We don’t even fully understand how this immensely complex system works, yet.
