Non-economists focus on who gets taxed. Is it the rich? The middle class? The poor?
Economists focus on what behavior gets taxed. We notice that means-tested benefits penalize low-income people who work, because they lose eligibility as they earn incomes. They also are penalized for getting married. We notice that the payroll tax penalizes employment. We notice that the corporate income tax and other forms of capital taxation penalize thrift. We notice that the income tax penalizes risk-taking in investment. If you want to see people punished for working, getting married, saving, and undertaking risky investments, then you should love our tax system.
For a few years, I have sounded the alarm that a growing wave of conservatives are working to make Republicans indistinguishable from Democrats on social spending. Some say that to win elections, Republicans need to pay more attention to families — by which they mean dole out ever more money to families like the Democrats do. Exhibit A for this development is the newly reintroduced New Parents Act.
The Act was recently reintroduced by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Mitt Romney, R-Utah. It’s a massive handout to parents, pretty much regardless of income level. If adopted, it would significantly expand the role of the federal government as it further swells the deficit and national debt.
Ron Bailey reports that a new green revolution is on the way.
Certainly, when we look at the ruins of the Roman Coliseum or Pompeii or indeed read about Cicero’s property investments, it looks like a sophisticated economy and one that generated considerable amounts of prosperity. And in some sense this impression is right. The work of scholars like Kyle Harper, Peter Temin, and Willem Jongman does indicate that the Roman economy was highly commercialized and urbanized (for preindustrial standards).
But this impression is also misleading. The Roman world was extremely unequal, so we can’t infer much about average living standards from reading about the consumption patterns of senators. And as Kyle Harper summarizes in his book The Fate of Rome, commercial prosperity brought with it disease, and all the evidence suggests that ordinary Romans, perhaps living in the tenement flats or insulae, died young, had bad nutrition, and high levels of exposure to epidemic disease.
Whole Foods’s CEO John Mackey tells Nick Gillespie that he feels “like socialists are taking over.”
Bruce Yandle sings the praises of market prices. A slice:
The price system unrelentingly and continuously delivered a scarcity alert worldwide. Whether it was motorized-rickshaw operators in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Uber drivers in Baltimore, mothers picking up children after school in Savannah, Ga., operators of truck fleets and police departments or managers of large manufacturing plants, the signal was the same. It said to consumers, “Energy has gotten scarcer; it is time to conserve.” And to suppliers, it said, “This stuff has gotten a lot more profitable to produce; see if you can find ways to provide more.”
That’s why, though it may sound cruel, some have said that the cure for high prices is high prices.
Here’s some good covid news from Denmark.
And here’s some bad covid news from my hometown of New Orleans, as tweeted by Clay Travis: (HT Jay Bhattacharya)
New Orleans is requiring kids ages 5 and up have the covid shot or not allowing them to attend school. Right now half of kids haven’t gotten the covid shot and won’t be able to attend school. This is absolute madness.
Molly Kingsley rightly criticizes those who wrongly criticize parents for resisting vaccinating their children against covid. Here’s her conclusion:
It is dangerously naive to dismiss this spike in vaccine hesitancy as the deluded actions of an indoctrinated minority of crackpots who must be brought to their senses. Denouncing parents who raise reasonable questions and challenges about risk/benefit for their children as heretic anti-vaxxers, as the public health machine in the US and UK has done repeatedly, is proving equally self-defeating.
