Rolling taxes onto the middle class

Today as I was shelling out $450 to have my tires replaced I thought of a pledge President Barack Obama made over and over again not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.




Notice the detail where he said there will not be an increase in "any" form of a tax increase.

So then how do you explain the 25 percent tariff he put on imported Chinese tires?

Dylan Matthews of the Washington Post reveals the policy was a massive failure:

The best evaluation of the program comes from Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowry at the Peterson Institute. Theirstudy found that after Obama imposed the tariffs, employment in the U.S. tire industry grew by 1,200 jobs. Hufbauer and Lowry figure that this is the maximum number of jobs the tariffs could have created or saved, a generous assumption given that tire employment was already trending upward. 

How much did those 1,200 jobs cost? About $1.1 billion, Hufbauer and Lowry found, all borne by consumers who were forced to pay higher American prices for tires, prices which shot up still higher when freed from competition with China.

As Milton Friedman often reminded us, the person who writes the check is not always the one who pays the tax. Consumers like me who make far less than $250,000 annually are the ones that paid that tax. It is likely I personally did not, as the program expired in September and I bought mine today, but that's just because my timing was fortunate. The president's promises to make our overwhelmingly progressive tax system more progressive are flawed as long as he continues to intervene in the economy and impose stealth taxes.
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More living fossil controllers

Back in June I wrote about how the evolution of video game controller designs may have ended like it did for crocodiles with the Xbox 360 controller, as can be seen by the almost duplicate WiiU controller.

I recently saw two Android controllers that went the same route, the Moga Pro and the Project Shield. There is more supporting evidence here.

This two handed, two thumbstick, two trigger, two bumper, four face button and directional pad design may be with us for a long time.
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Local-washing in Kentucky

While I was queuing up some 80's rock music on YouTube this week an advertisement from Goldman Sachs started playing that brags about how they helped create local jobs in Louisville by financing a new NCAA arena. There was a lot of talk about putting local people back to work and revitalizing the downtown area, which were of course red flags that something is very wrong here.

The most obvious criticism is that this is an approach called local-washing where a large national company will try to piggybank onto the silly "Buy Local" fad by presenting itself as a savior of the local economy. Since most companies need workers to perform labor near their home, any company can argue it has a local impact on some community somewhere.

The second one is, what do I care about the local economy in Louisville? The local purchasing preference movement is all about putting your own community above all the others, so as a resident of Massachusetts shouldn't I be hostile to Goldman Sachs for helping one of our many rival communities?

The third is that arenas are a horrible use of taxpayer money. Sports economist Roger Noll said mixed-use arenas like this one will break even at best, as they mow down a lot of property that can no longer be used for other purposes, and that's if the arena sees constant use. This one doesn't.

The Goldman Sachs video never reveals the name of the arena, which is understandable as it has the unfortunate moniker of the KFC Yum! Center. Like clockwork observations started pouring out about how great the arena is for the city, but the financial figures tell a different story.

The official price tag was $238 million, but critics put it at $348 million by focusing on the municipal bonds the city had to take out to pay for it. The annual profits can't even clear $1 million a year, the city may have to kick in $9.8 million annually to help it makes its mortgages and the arena's managing authority just had its credit rating kicked down the stairs.

Sorry Goldman Sachs, but this Yum! center just made me lose my appetite.
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Let's not play that game

An NPR reporter tonight said that gun control proponents are trying to re brand their position as "gun violence prevention." The New York Times confirms it, giving Nancy Pelosi credit for the new spin.

On gun rights, Ms. Pelosi said Democrats are no longer talking about gun control but refer instead to what she calls gun violence prevention — an effort by Democrats and their allies to find a less politically charged term, one that suggests a broader range of approaches beyond simply gun regulation. She called it challenging to balance the rights of gun ownership with public safety and security but said Congress needed to find a way to reach consensus. “We have to prioritize, get the votes and do something,” said Ms. Pelosi, who identified limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines as one area that Democrats would explore.

If "gun control" was too politically charged a term then it is because gun control advocates gave it a bad reputation.

There's a reason that the Associated Press uses the terms "abortion rights" and "anti-abortion" instead of "pro-choice" and "pro-life." Groups will try to re brand themselves for a marketing spin, or give their opponents a disadvantage if the term becomes mainstream.

George W. Bush's administration swapped "tax cut" out for "tax relief" to make Democrats have to say they oppose "tax relief." It's a cheap trick, and the only solution is to refuse to use those terms.

Do they think for a minute people like me will declare themselves opposed to "gun violence prevention" when that's something we value as well? It's not going to happen. Why don't they put a little more work into making their position something they can wear with pride instead of playing word games with journalists. Shame on any reporter who goes along with this nonsense.
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How did I miss that one?

Each year I chose a story I never blogged about but should have. My selection for 2012 is now ready for public consumption.

I must have been very busy in February with my underwater triathlon training regiment because I somehow missed the opposition to the Welfare Integrity Now for Children and Families Act, which would have prevented ATMs in casinos, strip clubs and liquor stores from dispensing cash from from welfare.

Seems like a no-brainer, right? Well, never underestimate the stories people will spin to protect the reputation of something they have devoted their life to. Enter Elizabeth Lower-Basch:

This is another example of setting policies based on attention-grabbing news stories with little connection to the underlying reality and that are designed to reinforce the 'unworthy poor' stereotype," said Elizabeth Lower-Basch, a senior analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a progressive D.C. think tank. "There's no evidence that this is a widespread problem. And even when funds are withdrawn in those locations, it doesn't mean that people are gambling away their benefits."

Good grief. Is one of her main arguments really that there's no way to tell if welfare money taken out of a strip club ATM is ending up in a stripper's G-string or a grocery store register? Ladies, if you bank history shows your husband withdrew $200 while he was at the Pole Cat Lounge, don't assume he just stopped in to get money to buy apples.

Welfare is sold to the public as a way to help impoverished families with children, but look at how feverishly the hard-core left responded to allow the parents of those families to waste that money. One Californian group said the amount spent at casinos and strip clubs is less than one half of one percent of the state's welfare spending. We are supposed to assume that's not enough money to care about.

So how much money is that, seeing as how the critics avoided naming the figure. Since California spent $6 billion on welfare spending in 2011, that would mean the amount is less than $30 million for that state alone. That ballpark is a lot higher than the $1.8 million reporter for casinos alone in an 8 month period in 2009 and 2010 in the state. Neither of these figures include liquor store purchases.

While the bill passed the House 395 to 27, it never came to a vote in the Senate. Too bad. It wouldn't have fixed a broken system, but it would have cleanly targeted abuse. It's so simple why wouldn't you do it?
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Didn't expect Sam Harris to pack a pistol

As someone who gets annoyed by the popular assumption that having a secular world view means one has to hold generic left-wing views as well, I thoroughly enjoyed Sam Harris's recent piece on the gun control fervor and why he is a gun owner.

As an outspoken atheist author and critic of religion, Harris receives a considerable number of death threats, and some of them need to be taken seriously. That's why he spends an entire day training with a qualified instructor about once a month. This is news to me, but when other critics of radical Islam like Theo van Gogh are murdered in the street it seems like a reasonable precaution.

What is comforting is that Harris makes the same points people like me have been making - mass shootings are rare, assault "weapons" bans are useless symbolism and concealed weapons allow people to fight back. Dysfunctional views tend to be all over the place, but informed views converge.

This is my favorite part, where he makes the same point as the gun is civilization essay.

Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade. The hesitation of bystanders in these situations makes perfect sense—and “diffusion of responsibility” has little to do with it. The fantasies of many martial artists aside, to go unarmed against a person with a knife is to put oneself in very real peril, regardless of one’s training. The same can be said of attacks involving multiple assailants. A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time. A world without guns, therefore, is one in which the advantages of youth, size, strength, aggression, and sheer numbers are almost always decisive. Who could be nostalgic for such a world?

Harris also says that limiting magazines to 10 rounds causes more frequent reloads and provide a slight help in mass shootings. I don't agree this would change much and he readily admits that this would require multiple people who happen to be in the right place to make a daring attack, but Harris is coming at this from his own perspective and I'm glad to see he really does think for himself.
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I wouldn't mind if they didn't call themselves journalists

I thought I was done with this subject, but they keep pulling me back in.

The self-important "Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting" released a report yesterday that was reprinted by Maine newspapers. The headline was States have subsidized makers of assault rifles to tune of $19 million.

However, I read it and found no subsidies or assault rifles. The sloppiness of this editorial masquerading as a news story is apparent just two paragraphs in.

Taxpayers across the country are subsidizing the manufacturers of assault rifles used in multiple mass killings, including the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last month.

A Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting examination of tax records shows that five companies that make semi-automatic rifles have received more than $19 million in tax breaks, most within with the past five years.

Semi-automatic rifles, by definition, are not assault rifles. Tax breaks are not subsidies, just as deciding not to punch someone in the face doesn't mean you healed them. The article repeatedly uses those terms interchangeably. As a journalist I know how crucial getting details right is for a story. This is something an intern would be embarrassed to turn in, and they're treating it like an opus.

The article finds every anti-gun source it can and makes a layer cake with them. This is what activists do, and that's acceptable for activists, but the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting insists on labeling itself "A nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that writes and distributes stories that uncover and explain the actions of state, local and federal government."

If you want to call yourselves journalists, expect to be judged like ones. Either the reporters and editors are so sloppy that they don't know the difference between a tax break and a subsidy or they just assume all wealth belongs to the government and anything not confiscated is a gift.

Well, if that's the case, I am going to continue to not steal money from the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting and call myself a donor.
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