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Phil Magness explains why a carbon tax will not work as advertised in reality [2]. A slice:
First, even though the economists declare that their proposal will be revenue-neutral (i.e., it is offset by other tax and fee reductions so that it extracts no additional revenue from the public), they offer no guarantee but their word that politicians would adhere to this promise as opposed to treating carbon taxes as yet another lucrative revenue stream for public expenditures.
Indeed, several of the carbon tax’s most vocal proponents, such as the misnamed [3] Niskanen Center, openly extol its promised ability to fill the government’s coffers with additional revenue for an assortment of spending projects.
While the Niskanen Center’s own carbon-tax proposal also touts a claim of revenue neutrality, a perusal of its many essays and public comments on the topic reveals a pronounced enthusiasm [4] for tapping this new revenue stream for a multitude of other spending projects.
George Will calls Donald Trump the shabbiest of any number of shabby U.S. presidents [5]. A slice:
His childlike ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion — concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.
Undocumented immigration does not increase violent crime in the United States [6]. (HT David Levey)
Reps. Will Hurd (R-TX) and Justin Amash (R-MI) are Republicans who oppose Trump’s border wall [7].
Let’s ditch government’s monopoly control over commercial air safety [8].
Will Oregon adopt state-wide the idiocy of rent-control? [9]
Deirdre McCloskey reviews Alan Greenspan’s and Adrian Wooldridge’s Capitalism in America: A History [10]. A slice:
The better name for the book, then, would be Innovism in America. What matters for progress—never mind “capitalism”—is encouragement to innovation, which depends on the acceptance of an ideology of innovation. Though one would have liked in the book a little more attention to the birth of liberalism and innovism in Holland and especially Britain, America is indeed exceptional. And the success of government by the people, for the people, and for their pursuit of happiness, was certainly crucial to the Great Enrichment worldwide. But it was habits of the lip, not money and banking that mattered most. Greenspan and Wooldridge quote Tocqueville noting that Americans were willing to “put something heroic into their way of trading,” down to movies about Ray Kroc and Joy Mangano, warts and all. Yes.
Gary Galles reminds us that Montesquieu taught that commerce is peaceful, civilized, and civilizing [11].