“Severely Disabled Man Suffers Consequences of Paying Americans Not to Work”

_______________

This morning I pointed out the similarities of Rolling Stones song HANG FIRE to what President Biden is doing by incentivizing staying home and being a lazy slob!

Liberals Should Learn From Weak Jobs Report That Incentives Matter

Larry Elder / /

President Joe Biden rejects the notion that generous COVID-19 relief provisions, and state and local aid, create disincentives for work. Pictured: Biden addresses a joint session of Congress, with Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., on the dais behind him, April 28, in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Melina Mara-Pool/Getty Images)

“Experts” predicted 1 million jobs would be created in April. The actual number fell far short, at 266,000. Republicans warned that overly generous COVID-19 relief benefits create a disincentive to work.

The day before this disappointing jobs report, Bloomberg wrote:

In earnings calls and business surveys, executives often blame stimulus checks and generous unemployment benefits for hampering hiring efforts. …

Friday’s employment report, which is projected to show the economy added 1 million jobs in April, should offer new insight into this mismatch and whether it’s deterring growth.

Want to keep up with the 24/7 news cycle? Want to know the most important stories of the day for conservatives? Need news you can trust? Subscribe to The Daily Signal’s email newsletter. Learn more >>

When the numbers came in, Biden administration officials lacked no shortage of excuses. Some potential workers, they argued, feared going back to work because of COVID-19; many schools had still yet to resume in-school learning, particularly burdensome for single parents; we’re still early in the bounce back from the COVID-19-stricken economy; one month’s worth of numbers does not a story tell; and employers just need to raise wages.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh urged perspective: “Well, you know, under normal circumstances, and certainly we’re not living in normal circumstances, the 266,000 job gain a month is a good number. Unfortunately, we’re still in the midst of a pandemic.”

President Joe Biden rejected the elephant-in-the-room possible explanation for the disappointingly low April job numbers—that the generous provisions in the COVID-19 relief packages, coupled with state and local aid, create a disincentive for people to go back to work. Biden dismissed “loose talk that Americans just don’t want to work. … The data shows that more workers are looking for jobs, and many can’t find them.”

>> Watch “Severely Disabled Man Suffers Consequences of Paying Americans Not to Work”:

But Bloomberg wrote, “Anyone who previously made less than $32,000 per year is better off financially in the near term receiving unemployment benefits, according to economists at Bank of America.”

Blog writers for the libertarian Cato Institute wrote: “Combined with state unemployment benefits, around 37 percent of workers can currently make more unemployed than in work. A low-income worker in Massachusetts previously earning $535 per week faced a pre-pandemic replacement rate of unemployment insurance benefits to earnings of 48 percent ($257). Now, the same worker would obtain benefits worth 104 percent of their pre-recession earnings ($557).”

But not to worry because, writes The Washington Post, a Labor Department spokesperson says his office “has not seen evidence” that the COVID-19 relief benefits incentivize people not to work.

Since when does the Biden administration require “data” or “evidence”?

Where is the evidence that a $15 minimum wagewill do more good than harm, given that the overwhelming consensus among economists is that minimum wage loss hurt the unskilled?

Where is the evidence that a $2.4 trillion “infrastructure investment” plan will do more good than harm, given the necessary massive tax increases?

Where is the evidence that universal pre-K for the poor will improve results for K-12, given the “fade out” effect that shows no long-term benefit?

There is, however, a great deal of evidence that burdening the economy with more taxes and regulations hurt growth. Eight years into the New Deal plan designed to rescue the economy from the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of the treasury, Henry Morgenthau, wrote:

We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. … I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises. … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … and an enormous debt to boot!

But as long as politicians, in the name of compassion, take money from one party to give to another; borrow money to be paid later with interest; and print money that ultimately triggers inflation, who needs evidence?

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Many  academic studies show that extending unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness!!

Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money.

But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money.

The current debate about extending unemployment benefits is remarkable, though (at least from an economic perspective), because certain politicians want to give people money on the condition that they don’t get a job. Needless to say, that leads to a very perverse incentive structure.

There is a problem with joblessness, to be sure, but it’s misguided to think that extending unemployment benefits is the compassionate response.

Senator Paul and I wrote a column for USA Today about a better way of helping the unemployed. Looking at the empirical evidence, we argue that it’s time to unleash the private sector by reducing the burden of government.

We started with an assessment of the labor market, which has been dismal under Obama’s reign.

The nation is enduring the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, 11 million people remain unemployed, and millions more have dropped out of the labor force. For minorities, it’s even worse. The black unemployment rate is more than twice that of whites. And the weak job market means that even those who are employed are having a hard time climbing the economic ladder.

We explain that more unemployment benefits is a misguided approach.

There’s a lot of talk about helping those down on their luck, but there’s a big divide on the best approach. Our view is that America needs a growth agenda based on reducing the burden of government. The unemployed need a strong job market, not endless handouts that create dependency. …There’s an understandable desire in Washington to “do something,” and extending benefits once again certainly is the easy route for policy makers. But if we are serious about keeping workers out of the long-term unemployment trap, we must have a debate about which policies cause unemployment and which policies create jobs.

The column cites many of the academic studies showing that unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness.

I’ve made this point during television interviews, and this Michael Ramirez cartoon echoes our thinking in a more entertaining fashion.

And we definitely can’t overlook this superb Wizard-of-Id parody. It doesn’t focus specifically on unemployment benefits, but it makes a great point about labor supply incentives.

But let’s get back to the column. Our main goal is to identify the types of policies that would generate jobs and growth.

Simply stated, genuine compassion should be defined by helping people get back to work so they don’t need to be wards of the state.

And easing the burden of government is the best way to make that happen. Our column looks at some evidence – from both overseas and here at home – about the policies that are associated with better economic performance.

Big government is responsible for today’s unemployment situation. …Since President Obama was elected, we have spent $560 billion on unemployment benefits. It’s likely many more jobs would have been created had the government not diverted that money from the economy’s productive sector. …Instead of copying stagnant European nations with bigger public sectors, we should learn from countries that have achieved better performance by lowering the burden of government. Singapore and Hong Kong are examples of jurisdictions with small governments and free markets that enjoy strong and sustained growth with very low levels of joblessness. …look at Canada, which has significantly boosted its jobs market with pro-growth reforms, or Switzerland, which has cemented its traditionally strong labor markets with reforms to control the growth of government. This is not a partisan argument. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The United States enjoyed strong levels of job creation during both the Reagan and Clinton years. But in both cases, public policy was largely the same, featuring an increase in economic freedom.

Some people may wonder whether Reagan and Clinton belong in the same category.

Well, as illustrated by this chart, they both presided over periods with impressive job creation.

And they both presided over periods with generally good economic policy.

Reagan moved the country in the right direction on purpose. Clinton, by contrast, may have wanted to move the nation in the other direction, but he was unsuccessful.Indeed, the evidence is very strong that the overall burden of government fell during his tenure.

Whether by accident or design, America needs another period of free markets and shrinking government.

For further details on the recipe for good policy, here’s the video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which explains the conditions that lead to strong and sustained growth.

Free Markets and Small Government Produce Prosperity

Uploaded on Feb 17, 2009

Now that the so-called stimulus has been enacted, hopefully policy makers will turn their attention to policies that actually improve economic performance. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video reviews the key finding in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and explains that, contrary to the policies of Presidents Bush and Obama, smaller government and free markets are the way to boost economic growth. For more information: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

__________________

P.S. I’m obviously a fan of Senator Rand Paul. Not only does he choose good people as op-ed partners, he also gave me public credit for a good Obamacare joke.

P.P.S. On a separate topic, I wrote in December 2012 that the strongest evidence for media bias is which stories get covered. A perfect example is that journalists already have given 17 times as much coverage of the Chris Christie “bridgegate” scandal as they gave to the IRS scandal over the past six months

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Comparing Rolling Stones’ Song HANG FIRE to the Way People in USA are reacting to President Biden increasing Unemployment Benefits!

Rolling Stones – Hang Fire LIVE East Rutherford, New Jersey ’81

Comparing Rolling Stones’ Song HANG FIRE to the Way People in USA are reacting to President Biden increasing Unemployment  Benefits!

https://youtu.be/3xbtlW16Gts

Dan Henninger also opined for the WSJ. Here’s some of what he wrote.

By making unemployment insurance competitive with market wage rates in a pandemic, the Biden Democrats may have done long-term damage to the American work ethic. …The welfare reforms of the 1990s were based on the realization that transfer payments undermined the work ethic. The Biden-Sanders Democrats are dropping that work requirement for recipients of cash payments.

https://youtu.be/o-u81UnQ16Q

Reminds me of a Rolling Stones song HANG FIRE in which peoples’ desires are to sit around and be lazy and dream about winning a lot at the casino! Check out these lyrics:

In the sweet old country where I come from
Nobody ever works
Yeah nothing gets done
We hang fire, we hang fire
You know marrying money is a full time job
I don’t need the aggravation
I’m a lazy slob
I hang fire, I hang fire
Hang fire, put it on the wire baby
Hang fire, hang fire put it on the wire baby, go ahead
Hang fire
We’ve got nothing to eat
We got nowhere to work
Nothing to drink
We just lost our shirts
I’m on the dole
We ain’t for hire
Say what the hell
Say what the hell, hang fire
Hang fire, hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire, baby
Hang fire, hang fire, hang fire, hang fire
Hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire, baby
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo, hang fire, hang fire, hang fire
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo, hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire, baby
Doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo doo
Doo doo
Yeah ten thousand dollars, go have some fun
Put it all on at a hundred to one
Hang fire, hang fire, hang fire, put it on the wire, baby
Doo doo
Doo doo, hang fire, hang fire put it on the wire
Hang fire, hang fire, hang fire, hang fire
Put it on the wire, baby
Put it on the wire

 –

Subsidized Unemployment and the Work Ethic

I wrote two days ago about subsidized unemployment, followed later in the day by this interview.

https://youtu.be/cXfXpgVAefE

This controversy raises a fundamental economic issue.

I explained in the interview that employers only hire people when they expect a new worker will generate at least enough revenue to cover the cost of employment.

There’s a similar calculation on the part of individuals, as shown by this satirical cartoon strip.

People decide to take jobs when they expect the additional after-tax income they earn will compensate them for the loss of leisure and/or the unpleasantness of working.

Which is why many people are now choosing not to work since the government has increased the subsidies for idleness (a bad policy that began under Trump).

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about this issue a couple of days ago.

White House economists say there’s no “measurable” evidence that the $300 federal unemployment bonus is discouraging unemployed people from seeking work. They were rebutted by Tuesday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Jolts survey, which showed a record 8.1 million job openings in March.…But these jobs often pay less than what most workers could make on unemployment. That explains why the number of job openings in many industries increased more than the number of new hires in March. …The number of workers who quit their jobs also grew by 125,000. …some quitters may be leaving their jobs because they figure they can make more unemployed for the next six months after Democrats extended the bonus into September.

Dan Henninger also opined on the issue for the WSJ. Here’s some of what he wrote.

President Biden said, “People will come back to work if they’re paid a decent wage.” But what if he’s wrong? What if his $300 unemployment insurance bonus on top of the checks sent directly to millions of people (which began during the Trump presidency) turns out to be a big, long-term mistake? …Mr. Biden and the left expect these outlays effectively to raise the minimum wage by forcing employers to compete with Uncle Sam’s money. …Ideas have consequences. By making unemployment insurance competitive with market wage rates in a pandemic, the Biden Democrats may have done long-term damage to the American work ethic. …The welfare reforms of the 1990s were based on the realization that transfer payments undermined the work ethic. The Biden-Sanders Democrats are dropping that work requirement for recipients of cash payments.

Amen.

I made similar arguments about the erosion of the work ethic last year when discussing this issue.

And this concern applies to other forms of redistribution. Including, most notably, the foolish idea of big per-child handouts.

P.S. The WSJ editorial cited above mentioned the Labor Department’s JOLT data. Those numbers are also useful if you want proof that federal bureaucrats are overpaid, and you’ll also see that the same thing is true for state and local government employees.

The Upside-Down Morality and Economic Illiteracy of Class Warfare

My Eighth Theorem of Government is very simple.

If someone writes and talks about poverty, I generally assume that they care about poor people. They may have good ideas for helping the poor, or they may have bad ideas. But I usually don’t doubt their sincerity.

But when someone writes and talks about inequality, I worry that they don’t really care about the less fortunate and that they’re instead motivated by envy, resentment, and jealousy of rich people.

And this concern probably applies to a couple of law professors, Michael Heller of Columbia and James Salzman of UCLA. They recently wrote a column for the Washington Post on how the government should grab more money from the private sector when rich people die.

They seem particularly agitated that states such as South Dakota have strong asset-protection laws that limit the reach of the death tax.

Income inequality has widened. One…way to tackle the problem. Instead of focusing only on taxing wealth accumulation, we can address the hidden flip side — wealth transmission. …The place to start is South Dakota… The state has created…wealth-sheltering tools including the aptly named “dynasty trust.” …Congress can…plug holes in our leaky estate tax system. One step would be to tax trusts at the passage of each generation and limit generation-skipping tax-exempt trusts. A bigger step would be to ensure that appreciated stocks…are taxed… Better still, let’s start anew. Ditch the existing estate tax and replace it with an inheritance tax

There’s nothing remarkable in their proposals. Just a typical collection of tax-the-rich schemes one might expect from a couple of academics.

But I can’t resist commenting on their article because of two inadvertent admissions.

First, we have a passage that reveals a twisted sense of morality. They apparently think it’s a “heist” if people keep their own money.

America’s ultra-wealthy have pulled off a brilliantly designed heist, with a string of South Dakota governors as accomplices.

For all intents and purposes, the law professors are making an amazing claim that it’s stealing if you don’t meekly surrender your money to politicians.

Apparently they agree with Richard Murphy that all income belongs to the government and it’s akin to an entitlement program or “state aid” if politicians let you keep a slice.

Second, the law professors make the mistake of trying to be economists. They want readers to think the national economy suffers if money stays in the private sector.

Nearly no one in South Dakota complains, because the harm falls on the national economy… We all suffer high and hidden costs…getting less in government services. …South Dakota locks away resources that could spark entrepreneurial innovation.

According to their analysis, a nation such as Singapore must be very poor while a country such as Greece must be very rich.

Needless to say, the opposite is true. Larger burdens of government spending are associated with less prosperity and dynamism.

I’ll offer one final observation. Professors Heller and Salzman obviously want more and more taxes on the rich.

But I wonder what they would say if confronted with the data showing that the United States already collects a greater share of tax revenue from the rich than any other OECD country.

P.S. The reason the U.S. collects proportionately more taxes from the rich is that other developed countries have bigger welfare states, and that necessarily leads to much higher tax burdens on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers (as honest folks on the left acknowledge).


Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.4 (1/7) – From Cradle to Grave

File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in The East Room Congratulating Milton Friedman Receiving The Presidential Medal of Freedom.jpg

January 21, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

With the national debt increasing faster than ever we must make the hard decisions to balance the budget now. If we wait another decade to balance the budget then we will surely risk our economic collapse.

The first step is to remove all welfare programs and replace them with the negative income tax program that Milton Friedman first suggested.

Milton Friedman points out that though many government welfare programs are well intentioned, they tend to have pernicious side effects. In Dr. Friedman’s view, perhaps the most serious shortcoming of governmental welfare activities is their tendency to strip away individual independence and dignity. This is because bureaucrats in welfare agencies are placed in positions of tremendous power over welfare recipients, exercising great influence over their lives. In addition, welfare programs tend to be self-perpetuating because they destroy work incentives. Dr. Friedman suggests a negative income tax as a way of helping the poor. The government would pay money to people falling below a certain income level. As they obtained jobs and earned money, they would continue to receive some payments from the government until their outside income reached a certain ceiling. This system would make people better off who sought work and earned income.

Here is a transcript of a portion of the “Free to Choose” program called “From Cradle to Grave” (program #4 in the 10 part series):

Transcript:
Friedman: After the 2nd World War, New York City authorities retained rent control supposedly to help their poorer citizens. The intentions were good. This in the Bronx was one result.
By the 50′s the same authorities were taxing their citizens. Including those who lived in the Bronx and other devastated areas beyond the East River to subsidize public housing. Another idea with good intentions yet poor people are paying for this, subsidized apartments for the well-to-do. When government at city or federal level spends our money to help us, strange things happen.
The idea that government had to protect us came to be accepted during the terrible years of the Depression. Capitalism was said to have failed. And politicians were looking for a new approach.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a candidate for the presidency. He was governor of New York State. At the governor’s mansion in Albany, he met repeatedly with friends and colleagues to try to find some way out of the Depression. The problems of the day were to be solved by government action and government spending. The measures that FDR and his associates discussed here derived from a long line of past experience. Some of the roots of these measures go back to Bismark’s Germany at the end of the 19th Century. The first modern state to institute old age pensions and other similar measures on the part of government. In the early 20th Century Great Britain followed suit under Lloyd George and Churchill. It too instituted old age pensions and similar plans.
These precursors of the modern welfare state had little effect on practice in the United States. But they did have a very great effect on the intellectuals on the campus like those who gathered here with FDR. The people who met here had little personal experience of the horrors of the Depression but they were confident that they had the solution. In their long discussions as they sat around this fireplace trying to design programs to meet the problems raised by the worst Depression in the history of the United States, they quite naturally drew upon the ideas that were prevalent at the time. The intellectual climate had become one in which it was taken for granted that government had to play a major role in solving the problems in providing what came later to be called Security from Cradle to Grave.
Roosevelt’s first priority after his election was to deal with massive unemployment. A Public Works program was started. The government financed projects to build highways, bridges and dams. The National Recovery Administration was set up to revitalize industry. Roosevelt wanted to see America move into a new era. The Social Security Act was passed and other measures followed. Unemployment benefits, welfare payments, distribution of surplus food. With these measures, of course, came rules, regulations and red tape as familiar today as they were novel then. The government bureaucracy began to grow and it’s been growing ever since.
This is just a small part of the Social Security empire today. Their headquarters in Baltimore has 16 rooms this size. All these people are dispensing our money with the best possible intentions. But at what cost?
In the 50 years since the Albany meetings, we have given government more and more control over our lives and our income. In New York State alone, these government buildings house 11,000 bureaucrats. Administering government programs that cost New York taxpayers 22 billion dollars. At the federal level, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare alone has a budget larger than any government in the world except only Russia and the United States.
Yet these government measures often do not help the people they are supposed to. Richard Brown’s daughter, Helema, needs constant medical attention. She has a throat defect and has to be connected to a breathing machine so that she’ll survive the nights. It’s expensive treatment and you might expect the family to qualify for a Medicaid grant.
Richard Brown: No, I don’t get it, cause I’m not eligible for it. I make a few dollars too much and the salary that I make I can’t afford to really live and to save anything is out of the question. And I mean, I live, we live from payday to payday. I mean literally from payday to payday.
Friedman: His struggle isn’t made any easier by the fact that Mr. Brown knows that if he gave up his job as an orderly at the Harlem Hospital, he would qualify for a government handout. And he’d be better off financially.
Hospital Worker: Mr. Brown, do me a favor please? There is a section patient.
Friedman: It’s a terrible pressure on him. But he is proud of the work that he does here and he’s strong enough to resist the pressure.
Richard Brown: I’m Mr. Brown. Your fully dilated and I’m here to take you to the delivery. Try not to push, please. We want to have a nice sterile delivery.
Friedman: Mr. Brown has found out the hard way that welfare programs destroy an individual’s independence.
Richard Brown: We’ve considered welfare. We went to see, to apply for welfare but, we were told that we were only eligible for $5.00 a month. And, to receive this $5.00 we would have to cash in our son’s savings bonds. And that’s not even worth it. I don’t believe in something for nothing anyway.
Mrs. Brown: I think a lot of people are capable of working and are willing to work, but it’s just the way it is set up. It, the mother and the children are better off if the husband isn’t working or if the husband isn’t there. And this breaks up so many poor families.
Friedman: One of the saddest things is that many of the children whose parents are on welfare will in their turn end up in the welfare trap when they grow up. In this public housing project in the Bronx, New York, 3/4′s of the families are now receiving welfare payments.
Well Mr. Brown wanted to keep away from this kind of thing for a very good reason. The people who get on welfare lose their human independence and feeling of dignity. They become subject to the dictates and whims of their welfare supervisor who can tell them whether they can live here or there, whether they may put in a telephone, what they may do with their lives. They are treated like children, not like responsible adults and they are trapped in the system. Maybe a job comes up which looks better than welfare but they are afraid to take it because if they lose it after a few months it maybe six months or nine months before they can get back onto welfare. And as a result, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle rather than simply a temporary state of affairs.
Things have gone even further elsewhere. This is a huge mistake. A public housing project in Manchester, England.
Well we’re 3,000 miles away from the Bronx here but you’d never know it just by looking around. It looks as if we are at the same place. It’s the same kind of flats, the same kind of massive housing units, decrepit even though they were only built 7 or 8 years ago. Vandalism, graffiti, the same feeling about the place. Of people who don’t have a great deal of drive and energy because somebody else is taking care of their day to day needs because the state has deprived them of an incentive to find jobs to become responsible people to be the real support for themselves and their families.
_______________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733

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Six great economic crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries examined by Michael Reagan

May 2, 2013 – 12:43 am

I found this article very interesting. The Kennedy-Reagan Truth vs. the Obama Delusion by Jim Denney In his book The New Reagan Revolution, Michael Reagan examined six great economic crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries. These six critical junctures in the history of the United States serve as economic laboratories to test two contrasting economic […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan | Tagged | Edit|Comments (0)

Dumas:Lowering Capital Gains Tax Bad Idea

January 3, 2011 – 5:16 am

HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com This video clip gives 6 reasons why the Capital Gains Tax should be abolished Ernest Dumas in his article “Tax work not wealth,” (Arkansas Times, Nov 25, 2010) asserts, “The (capital gains) tax rate was raised in 1976 under President Gerald Ford and economic growth accelerated. President Jimmy Carter cut the top rate from 39 […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Cato Institute, Ernest Dumas, Taxes | Edit | Comments (0

May 15, 2021 – 8:30 am Categories: Milton Friedman, President Obama, spending out of control | Post a comment

Dan Mitchell points out “many voices in the establishment press are citing favorable polling data in hopes of creating an aura on inevitably for President Biden’s proposed tax hikes”

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Are Tax Increases Popular?

Tax increases are bad fiscal policy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are politically unpopular.

Indeed, many voices in the establishment press are citing favorable polling data in hopes of creating an aura on inevitably for President Biden’s proposed tax hikes.

That’s a very worrisome prospect. If Biden succeeds, the United States could wind up toppling Canada for the dubious honor of having the world’s highest tax burden on saving and investment.

That would be bad news for American workers.

But are Biden’s media cheerleaders correct? Are tax increases popular?

According to a new scholarly working paper from the Federal Reserve (authored by Andrew C. Chang, Linda R. Cohen, Amihai Glazer, and Urbashee Paul), the answer is no.

At least if we judge politicians by what they do in election years. Here’s part of the study’s abstract.

We use new annual data on gasoline taxes and corporate income taxes from U.S.states to analyze whether politicians avoid tax increases in election years. These data contain 3 useful attributes: (1) when state politicians enact tax laws, (2) when state politicians implement tax laws on consumers and firms, and (3) the size of tax changes.Using a pre-analysis research plan that includes regressions of tax rate changes and tax enactment years on time-to-gubernatorial election year indicators, we find that elections decrease the probability of politicians enacting increases in taxes and reduce the size of implemented tax changes relative to non-election years. We find some evidence that politicians are most likely to enact tax increases right after an election. These election effects are stronger for gasoline taxes than for corporate income taxes and depend on no other political, demographic, or macroeconomic conditions.

For wonkier readers, Figure 7 has some of the major results of their statistical analysis. I’ve highlighted (in red) the most important conclusion of the research.

For regular readers, the main takeaway is that politicians almost always want more tax revenue. That’s what gives them the ability to distribute goodies and buy votes.

But notwithstanding their never-ending hunger to grab more money, they are very likely to reject tax increases in election years. They even reject higher corporate taxes, which are supposed to be popular (at least according to some in the establishment media).

Yet if tax increases were politically popular, we should see the opposite result.

I’ll close with the somewhat depressing observation that these results do not imply that voters want libertarian policy. It’s probably more accurate to say that people want goodies from the government, but they don’t want to pay for them. Politicians simply respond to those preferences (which brings to mind Garett Jones’ hypothesis that we have too much democracy).

Which is how Greece became a basket case. Which is why Italy is in the process of becoming a basket case. And it’s why the United States may not be that far behind (with states such as Illinois serving as early-warning signs).

P.S. The above-cited research should be a reminder of why a no-tax-hike pledge is important. Voters seem to be on the right side on the big-picture question of “Should taxes be higher?”, but if they think tax increases are going to happen, it’s quite likely that they will support the most economically damaging types of class-warfare levies.

Bob Chitester, RIP

By David Boaz

Bob Chitester was managing a small public television station in Erie, PA, when he got the big idea to persuade Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to write and narrate a 10‐​part series on free markets for PBS. As unlikely as that prospect was, Bob made it happen. “Free to Choose” was broadcast on PBS beginning in January of 1980, and it made quite a splash just as Reagan and Thatcher were also starting to change the way people thought about markets and government. Milton and Rose Friedman wrote a book to accompany the series. But television helped take Friedman’s ideas from the pages of books to millions more people, and in the process Chitester made Friedman a bigger celebrity and a bigger influence than a mere Nobel Prize could accomplish.

Bob went on to create Free to Choose Media and produce hundreds of video products for public television, other networks, the internet, and home viewing. They included The Real Adam Smith, a two‐​hour series that gives particular attention to Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments; the Stossel in the Classroom series, which put John Stossel’s television reports into high school classrooms; and A More or Less Perfect Union, a three‐​part series with Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.

He made Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg a familiar face on public television with documentaries such as “Free & Equal,” an update of “Free to Choose”; “Sweden: Lessons for America?”; “India Awakes”; and “Work and Happiness: The Human Cost of Welfare.”

We at Cato were especially grateful that when our colleague Andrew Coulson died much too young before finishing his television project “School Inc.,” Bob and his Free to Choose team picked it up, finished the production, and got it on hundreds of public television stations in 2017.

For more than 40 years Bob Chitester focused like a laser to get free‐​market ideas on television in high‐​quality presentations. All of us who believe in the power of markets to liberate people are incredibly grateful and, frankly, astounded at his success in this.

Bob lost his seven‐​year battle with cancer this weekend. But his video projects can all be found on the web, and his Free to Choose team will continue his work with new documentaries and online programs.

Bob Chitester Discusses Milton Friedman and ‘Free to Choose’

Published on Jul 30, 2012 by

“There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.”

That is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman. But it is not for his technical work in monetary economics that Friedman is best known. Like mathematician Jacob Bronowski and astronomer Carl Sagan, Friedman had a gift for communicating complex ideas to a general audience.

It was this gift that brought him to the attention of filmmaker Bob Chitester. At Chitester’s urging, Friedman agreed to make a 10 part documentary series explaining the power of economic freedom. It was called “Free to Choose,” and became one of the most watched documentaries in history.

The series not only reached audiences in liberal democracies, but was smuggled behind the iron curtain where it played, in secret, to large audiences. Reflecting on its impact, Czech president Vaclav Klaus has said: “For us, who lived in the communist world, Milton Friedman was the greatest champion of freedom, of limited and unobtrusive government and of free markets. Because of him I became a true believer in the unrestricted market economy.”

July 31st, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Friedman’s birth. To commemorate that occasion, we’d like to share an interview with “Free to Choose” producer Bob Chitester. Like this interview, the entire series can now be viewed on-line at no cost at http://www.freetochoose.tv/, thanks to the incredible technological progress brought about by the economic freedom that Milton Friedman celebrated.

Produced by Andrew Coulson, Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg, and Lou Richards, with help from the Free to Choose Network

_______________

Celebrating Milton Friedman

by Andrew J. Coulson

Andrew Coulson directs the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and is the author of Market Education: The Unknown History.

Added to cato.org on July 31, 2012

This article appeared in Cato.org on July 31, 20

For us, who lived in the communist world, Milton Friedman was the greatest champion of freedom, of limited and unobtrusive government and of free markets. Because of him I became a true believer in the unrestricted market economy.

Those are the words of Czech President Vaclav Klaus. Both Friedman’s writings and his landmark 1980 documentary series “Free to Choose”were smuggled into totalitarian communist states, inspiring a generation of future scholars, activists, and politicians.

July 31st, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Friedman’s birth. To commemorate that occasion, the Cato Institute has put together a video interview with Bob Chitester, producer of “Free to Choose,” recounting how it came to be, its impact, and what it was like working with Milton Friedman.

Aside from those who lived under communism, there is another group for whom Friedman was and is a colossal figure: advocates of educational freedom. At a time when state-run schooling had been the norm for nearly a century, and had long ceased to be questioned by America’s elites, Friedman offered a modest observation: there was no good reason for the government of a free society to actually run schools and many good reasons for it not to do so.

He made this case in his essay “On the Role of Government in Education,” first published in 1955. The idea had been floated by others, including Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, but Friedman eloquently and powerfully introduced it to the American policy debate. In so doing, he, more than any other individual, can be credited with giving rise to the modern school choice movement.

Not only did Friedman spark the creation of this movement, he helped to fan the flame of educational freedom, writing popular commentaries and book chapters, speaking with and encouraging activists, founding a leading school choice institution, and dedicating the entire sixth episode of “Free to Choose” to this subject.

I had the good fortune to speak and correspond with Milton occasionally, starting in the late 1990s, and what struck me most about him was his personal integrity. He once told me that he never said anything negative about a person in private that he would not be willing to say openly in that person’s presence. So far as I know, he never violated that principle. And while he staunchly defended his conclusions as long as he remained convinced of their correctness, he would amend them if the weight of evidence shifted.

Indeed the rigorous empiricism that Friedman applied in his scholarly work is generally regarded as one of his most influential contributions to the field of economics—for a long time controversial but eventually the norm, at least in principle. His view, published in the 1953 collection Essays in Positive Economics, was that

the ultimate test of the validity of a theory is… the ability to deduce facts that have not yet been observed, that are capable of being contradicted by observation, and that subsequent observation does not contradict. [p. 300]

Equally wise, though not yet as widely accepted, is the long time horizon against which Friedman measured policy outcomes. Economist and philosopher of science James R. Wible notes that Friedman’s greatest contribution “may be his constant reminder not to forget the long run consequences of short run policies.”

In the 1982 edition of his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman observed that scholars cannot single-handedly bring about change. Their real role, he wrote, is to “keep the lights on”—to remind us which policies work and which do not, and to show us how to advance our understanding even further. His own unfailing empiricism and concern for the long term remain valuable beacons today, both for advocates of educational freedom and the broader policy community.

_____________

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Quotes from Milton Friedman on his 100th birthday

Milton Friedman’s 100th: Exploring His Wisdom for the Ages (Part I: Worldview) by Robert Bradley Jr. July 31, 2012 [Ed. note: Milton Friedman’s views will be further explored in Part II on energy and Part III on political capitalism.] “Our central theme in public advocacy has been the promotion of human freedom … [It] underlies […]

Thomas Sowell remembers his former teacher Milton Friedman 100 years later

I was impacted in 1980 by the film series “Free to Choose” and I was very impressed by the performance by Thomas Sowell. Today he remembers his former teacher Milton Friedman.   Friedman could be a help today     By  Thomas Sowell Creators Syndicate Tuesday July 31, 2012 7:00 AM If Milton Friedman were alive […]

Milton Friedman destroys liberal student challenges

In the video above Milton Friedman takes on some liberal students with their challenges to capitalism.   Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld speaking at Tribute to Milton Friedman (transcript) As Delivered by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, White House, Washington, D.C., Thursday, May 09, 2002 Mr. President (George W. Bush), Rose and Milton […]

Every Friday you need to click on www.theDailyHatch.org for “Friedman Friday”

Every Friday you need to click on http://www.theDailyHatch.org if you would like to see a video clip of Milton Friedman as he shares his common sense conservative economic views. Many of his articles are posted too. I remember growing up and reading those great articles every week in Newsweek. They are just as relevant today as […]

Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 12

Milton Friedman videos and transcripts Part 12 On my blog http://www.thedailyhatch.org I have an extensive list of posts that have both videos and transcripts of MiltonFriedman’s interviews and speeches. Here below is just small list of those and more can be accessed by clicking on “Milton Friedman” on the side of this page or searching […]

Chattanooga Times Free Press comments on 100th year since Milton Friedman’s birth

published Tuesday, July 31st, 2012  Chattanooga Times Free Press Milton Friedman at 100   Milton Friedman Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press.   enlarge photo   One hundred years ago today, the most powerful defender of economic liberty in American history was born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish immigrants. Though he stood barely […]

Milton Friedman’s passion was to make a difference in the lives of young people

No one did more to advance the cause of school vouchers than Milton and Rose Friedman. Friedman made it clear in his film series “Free to Choose” how sad he was that young people who live in the inner cities did not have good education opportunities available to them. Remembering Milton Friedman’s School Choice Legacy […]

Milton Friedman remembered at 100 years from his birth (Part 5)

Testing Milton Friedman – Preview Uploaded by FreeToChooseNetwork on Feb 21, 2012 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Milton Friedman’s birth. His work and ideas continue to make the world a better place. As part of Milton Friedman’s Century, a revival of the ideas featured in the landmark television series Free To Choose are being […]

Defending Milton Friedman

What a great defense of Milton Friedman!!!!   Defaming Milton Friedman by Johan Norberg This article appeared in Reason Online on September 26, 2008  PRINT PAGE  CITE THIS      Sans Serif      Serif Share with your friends: ShareThis In the future, if you tell a student or a journalist that you favor free markets and limited government, there is […]

Milton and Rose Friedman “Two Lucky People”

Milton Friedman on Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” 1994 Interview 2 of 2 Uploaded by PenguinProseMedia on Oct 26, 2011 2nd half of 1994 interview. ________________ I have a lot of respect for the Friedmans.Two Lucky People by Milton and Rose Friedman reviewed by David Frum — October 1998. However, I liked this review below better. It […]

May 15, 2021 – 8:03 am Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

International Comparisons of Capital Tax Burdens by Dan Mitchell

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International Comparisons of Capital Tax Burdens

There are three important principles for sensible tax policy.

  1. Low marginal tax rates on productive behavior
  2. No tax bias against capital (i.e., saving and investment)
  3. No tax preferences that distort the economy

Today, let’s focus on #2.

I’ve written many times about why double taxation is a bad idea. This occurs when governments – thanks to capital gains taxes, dividend taxes, death taxes, etc – impose harsher tax burdens on income that is saved and invested compared to income that is immediately consumed.

Which is a bad idea since wages for workers are linked to productivity, which is linked to the amount of capital.

Which countries imposes the heaviest tax burdens on capital? According to a new report from the Tax Foundation, Canada is the worst of the worst (somewhat surprising), followed by Denmark (no surprise) and France (also no surprise).

The nations of Eastern Europe, along with Ireland, win the prize for the lowest tax burdens on capital.

The authors of the report, Jacob Lundberg and Johannes Nathell, make a much-needed point about why governments should not penalize saving and investment.

…capital should not be taxed at all. Taxing capital distorts individuals’ savings decisions. By reducing the return on savings, capital taxes penalize those who postpone their consumption rather than consuming their income as it is earned. Due to compounding interest, capital taxation penalizes saving more the longer the saving horizon is. For long saving horizons, the distortion is very large. This leads to lower saving, a lower capital stock, and lower GDP. Therefore, not taxing capital is in the interest of everyone, even those who spend everything they earn.

The report also contains this fascinating map comparing capital taxation in European nations.

At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s better to be a lighter-colored nation.

This is fascinating data for tax wonks, but it might not perfectly capture the relative attractiveness (or unattractiveness) of various countries. I think two caveats are warranted.

First, it’s quite likely that some Western European nations accumulated lots of capital and generated lots of wealth back in the 1800s and early 1900s when the burden of government was very small and taxes were very low. If some of the capital from that period is still generating returns (and thus tax revenue), it may overstate the tax burden on current saving and investment.

Second, the methodology looks at capital revenues as a percentage of capital income. This perfectly reasonable approach overlooks the fact that tax rates have an effect on the amount of income that is both earned and reported. This is the core insight of the Laffer Curve and it could mean that some countries show high levels of revenue in part because tax burdens are modest (and vice-versa).

That being said, I wouldn’t expect major changes in the rankings, even if there was a way to address these concerns.

The bottom line is that we know how to define good tax policy, but very few governments have an interest in maximizing liberty and prosperity. The challenge is that politicians 1) usually want more money so they can buy more votes, but 2) sometimes let envy trump their desire for more revenue.

Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1930s

The United States conducted an experiment in the 1980s. Reagan dramatically lowered the top tax rate on households, dropping it from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Folks on the left bitterly resisted Reagan’s “supply-side” agenda, arguing that “the rich won’t pay enough” and “the government will be starved of revenue.”

Fortunately, we can look at IRS data to see what happened to tax payments from those making more than $200,000 per year.

Lo and behold, it turns out that Reaganomics was a big success. Uncle Sam collected five times as much money when the rate was slashed.

As I’ve previously written, this was the Laffer Curve on steroids. Even when you consider other factors (population growth, inflation, other reforms, etc), there’s little doubt that we got a big “supply-side effect” from Reagan’s tax reforms.

Now Biden wants to run this experiment in reverse.

Based on basic economics, his approach won’t succeed. But let’s augment theory by examining what actually happened when Hoover and Roosevelt raised tax rates in the 1930s.

Alan Reynolds reviewed tax policy in the 1920s and 1930s, but let’s focus on what he wrote about the latter decade. He starts with some general observations.

Large increases in marginal tax rates on incomes above $50,000 in the 1930s were almost always matched by large reductions in the amount of high income reported and taxed…An earlier generation of economists found that raising tax rates on incomes, profits, and sales in the 1930s was inexcusably destructive. In 1956, MIT economist E. Cary Brown pointed to the “highly deflationary impact” of the Revenue Act of 1932, which pushed up rates virtually across the board, but notably on the lower‐​and middle‐​income groups.

He then gets to the all-important issue of higher tax rates leading to big reductions in taxable income.

In Figure 1, the average marginal tax rate is an unweighted average of statutory tax brackets applying to all income groups reporting more than $50,000 of income. After President Hoover’s June 1932 tax increase (retroactive to January) the number of tax brackets above $50,000 quadrupled from 8 to 32, ranging from 31 percent to 63 percent. The average of many marginal tax rates facing incomes higher than $50,000 increased from 21.5 percent in 1931 to 47 percent in 1932, and 61.9 percent in 1936. One of the most striking facts in Figure 1 is that the amount of reported income above $50,000 was almost cut in half in a single year—from $1.31 billion in 1931 to $776.7 million in 1932.

Here’s the aforementioned Figure 1. You can see that taxable income soared when tax rates were slashed in the 1920s.

But when tax rates were increased in the 1930s, taxable income collapsed and never recovered.

What’s the lesson from this chart? As Alan explained, the lesson is that high tax rates lead to rich people earning and declaring less taxable income (they still have that ability today).

In the eight years from 1932 to 1939, the economy was in cyclical contraction for only 28 months. Even in 1940, after two huge increases in income tax rates, individual income tax receipts remained lower ($1,014 million) than they had been in the 1930 slump ($1,045 million) when the top tax rate was 25 percent rather than 79 percent. Eight years of prolonged weakness in high incomes and personal tax revenue after tax rates were hugely increased in 1932 cannot be easily brushed away as merely cyclical, rather than a behavioral response to much higher tax rates on additional (marginal) income. Just as income (and tax revenue) from high‐​income taxpayers rose spectacularly after top tax rates fell from 1921 to 1928, high incomes and revenue fell just as spectacularly in 1932 when top tax rates rose.

One big takeaway is that Hoover and FDR were two peas in a pod.

Both imposed bad tax policy.

From 1930 to 1937, unlike 1923–25, virtually all federal and state tax rates on incomes and sales were repeatedly increased, and many new taxes were added, such as the Smoot‐​Hawley tariffs in 1930, taxes on alcoholic beverages in December 1933, and a Social Security payroll tax in 1937. Annual growth of per capita GDP from 1929 to 1939 was essentially zero. …To summarize: all the repeated increases in tax rates and reductions of exemptions enacted by presidents Hoover and Roosevelt in 1932–36 did not even manage to keep individual income tax collections as high in 1939–40 (in dollars or as a percent of GDP) as they had been in 1929–30. The experience of 1930 to 1940 decisively repudiated any pretense that doubling or tripling marginal tax rates on a much broader base proved to be a revenue‐​maximizing plan.

Alan closes with an observation that should raise alarm bells.

It turns out that the higher tax rates on the rich were simply the camel’s nose under the tent. The real agenda was extending the income tax to those with more modest incomes.

The most effective and sustained changes in personal taxes after 1931 were not the symbolic attempts to “soak the rich,” but rather the changes deliberately designed to convert the income tax from a class tax to a mass tax. The exemption for married couples was reduced from $3,500 to $2,500 in 1932, $2,000 in 1940, and $1,500 in 1941. Making more low incomes taxable quadrupled the number of tax returns from 3.7 million in 1930 to 14.7 million in 1940… The lowest tax rate was also raised from 1.1 percent to 4 percent in 1932, 4.4 percent in 1940, and 10 percent in 1941.

The same thing will happen today if Biden succeeds in raising taxes on the rich. Those tax hikes won’t collect much revenue, but politicians will increase spending anyhow. They’ll then use high deficits as an excuse for higher taxes on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers (some of the options include financial taxes, carbon taxes, and value-added taxes).

Lather, rinse, repeat. Until the United States is Europe. And that will definitely be bad news for ordinary people.

P.S. Here’s what we can learn about tax policy in the 1920s. And the 1950s.

P.P.S. The 1920s and 1930s also can teach us an important lesson about growth and inequality.

Sloppy or Dishonest Fiscal Analysis from the Washington Post

Good fiscal policy means low tax rates and spending restraint.

And that’s a big reason why I’m a fan of Reaganomics.

Unlike other modern presidents (including other Republicans), Reagan successfully reduced the tax burden while also limiting the burden of government spending.

President Biden wants to take the opposite approach.

A few days ago, Dan Balz of the Washington Post provided some “news analysis” about Biden’s fiscal agenda. Some of what he wrote was accurate, noting that the president wants to increase spending by an additional $6 trillion over the next 10 years.

…the scope and implications of his domestic agenda have come sharply into focus. Together they represent the most dramatic shift in federal economic and social welfare policy since Ronald Reagan was elected 40 years ago.…The politics of redistribution, which are at the heart of what Biden is proposing, could test decades of assumptions that Democrats should be afraid of being tagged as the party of big government. …Together, the already approved coronavirus relief plan, the infrastructure proposal that was unveiled a few weeks ago and the newly proposed plan to invest in social welfare programs would total roughly $6 trillion.

But Mr. Balz then decided to be either sloppy or dishonest, writing that we’ve had decades of Reagan-style policies that have squeezed domestic spending and disproportionately lowered tax burden for rich people.

Reagan’s small-government philosophy resulted in a decades-long squeeze on the federal government, especially domestic spending, and on tax policies that mainly benefited the wealthiest Americans. …Government spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced compared with previous years.

Balz is wrong, wildly wrong.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a chart, taken from an October 2020 report by the Congressional Budget Office. As you can see, people in the lowest income quintile have been the biggest winners,, with their average tax rate dropping from about 10 percent to about 2 percent..

Here’s a chart showing marginal tax rates from a January 2019 CBO report. As you can see, Reagan lowered marginal tax rates for everyone, but Balz’s assertion that the rich got the lion’s share of the benefits is hard to justify considering that people in the bottom quintile now have negative marginal tax rates.

Balz’s mistakes on tax policy are significant.

But his biggest error (or worst dishonesty) occurred when he wrote about a “decades-long squeeze” on domestic spending and asserted that “spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced.”

A quick visit to the Office of Management and Budget’s Historical Tables is all that’s needed to debunk this nonsense. Here’s a chart, based on Table 8.2, showing the inflation-adjusted growth of entitlements and domestic discretionary programs.

Call me crazy, but I’m seeing a rapid increase in domestic spending after Reagan left office.

P.S. There’s a pattern of lazy/dishonest fiscal reporting at the Washington Post.

P.P.S. I also can’t resist noting that Balz wrote how Biden wants to “invest” in social welfare programs, as if there’s some sort of positive return from creating more dependency. Reminds me of this Chuck Asay cartoon from the Obama years.

March 3, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

______________________________

Dan Mitchell shows how ignoring the Laffer Curve is like running a stop sign!!!!

I’m thinking of inventing a game, sort of a fiscal version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Only the way it will work is that there will be a map of the world and the winner will be the blindfolded person who puts their pin closest to a nation such asAustralia or Switzerland that has a relatively low risk of long-run fiscal collapse.

That won’t be an easy game to win since we have data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF showing that government is growing far too fast in the vast majority of nations.

We also know that many states and cities suffer from the same problems.

A handful of local governments already have hit the fiscal brick wall, with many of them (gee, what a surprise) from California.

The most spectacular mess, though, is about to happen in Michigan.

The Washington Post reports that Detroit is on the verge of fiscal collapse.

After decades of sad and spectacular decline, it has come to this for Detroit: The city is $19 billion in debt and on the edge of becoming the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy. An emergency manager says the city can make good on only a sliver of what it owes — in many cases just pennies on the dollar.

This is a dog-bites-man story. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece. And the problems of California. And the problems of Cyprus. And theproblems of Illinois.

I could continue with a long list of profligate governments, but you get the idea. Some of these governments are collapsing at a quicker pace and some at a slower pace. But all of them are in deep trouble because they don’t follow my Golden Rule about restraining the burden of government spending so that it grows slower than the private sector.

Detroit obviously is an example of a government that is collapsing sooner rather than later.

Why? Simply stated, as the size and scope of the public sector increased, that created very destructive economic and political dynamics.

More and more people got lured into the wagon of government dependency, which puts an ever-increasing burden on a shrinking pool of producers.

Meanwhile, organized interest groups such as government bureaucrats used their political muscle to extract absurdly excessive compensation packages, putting an even larger burden of the dwindling supply of taxpayers.

But that’s not the main focus of this post. Instead, I want to highlight a particular excerpt from the article and make a point about how too many people are blindly – perhaps willfully – ignorant of the Laffer Curve.

Check out this sentence.

Property tax collections are down 20 percent and income tax collections are down by more than a third in just the past five years — despite some of the highest tax rates in the state.

This is a classic “Fox Butterfield mistake,” which occurs when someone fails to recognize a cause-effect relationship. In this case, the reporter should have recognized that tax collections are down because Detroit has very high tax rates.

The city has a lot more problems than just high tax rates, of course, but can there be any doubt that productive people have very little incentive to earn and report taxable income in Detroit?

And that’s the essential insight of the Laffer Curve. Politicians can’t – or at least shouldn’t – assume that a 20 percent increase in tax rates will lead to a 20 percent increase in tax revenue. They also have to consider the degree to which a higher tax rate will cause a change in taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from earning more taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from reporting all the income they earn.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage people to utilize tax loopholes to shrink their taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage migration, thus causing taxable income to disappear.

Here’s my three-part video series on the Laffer Curve. Much of this is common sense, though it needs to be mandatory viewing for elected officials (as well as the bureaucrats at the Joint Committee on Taxation).

The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory

Uploaded by  on Jan 28, 2008

The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows the middle ground between those who claim “all tax cuts pay for themselves” and those who claim tax policy has no impact on economic performance. This video, focusing on the theory of the Laffer Curve, is Part I of a three-part series. Part II reviews evidence of Laffer-Curve responses. Part III discusses how the revenue-estimating process in Washington can be improved. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

Part 2

Part 3

P.S. Just in case it’s not clear from the videos, we don’t want to be at the revenue-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve.

P.P.S. Amazingly, even the bureaucrats at the IMF recognize that there’s a point when taxes are so onerous that further increases don’t generate revenue.

P.P.P.S. At least CPAs understand the Laffer Curve, probably because they help their clients reduce their tax exposure to greedy governments.

P.P.P.P.S. I offered a Laffer Curve lesson to President Obama, but I doubt it had any impact.

___________________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

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By WALTER WILLIAMS

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Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

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May 14, 2021 – 8:40 pm Categories: President Obama | Post a comment

6 Charts Highlight Troubling Trends Driven by Growing Nondefense Spending

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6 Charts Highlight Troubling Trends Driven by Growing Nondefense Spending

David Ditch / /

Nondefense spending

Despite claims by the Biden administration, nondefense federal spending is rapidly growing, while spending on national defense is getting shortchanged. (Photo: Douglas Sacha/Getty Images)

If you listen to the narrative being promoted by President Joe Biden and his allies on the left, it would be easy to think that the federal government spends more than enough on the military and little on nondefense social programs.

Yet the reality is exactly the opposite. The federal government has become home to an ever-expanding assortment of benefit and subsidy programs (and bureaucrats to administer them), while shortchanging constitutional priorities such as national security.

The growth of the federal budget and the debt has been driven by an unsustainable growth in nondefense spending.

These charts illustrate how we got here and the long-term consequences to our nation’s financial health.

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nondefense spending

The 1960s were a key inflection point for federal priorities.

Nondefense domestic spending spiked in the wake of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” agenda, which included Medicare, Medicaid, and a variety of welfare programs.

Since the 1960s, nondefense spending has risen significantly and steadily in inflation-adjusted terms, driven by the growth of entitlement programs. Even before the massive spike in spending during the pandemic, nondefense spending was nine times higher in 2019 than it was in 1965, and more than five times as much on a per-person basis.

Meanwhile, the level of inflation-adjusted defense spending has remained relatively consistent. Defense spending began trending downwards once the U.S. began its withdrawal from Vietnam. President Ronald Reagan’s commitment to bolstering the armed services reversed the downward trend during the 1980s, but the decline returned following the end of the Cold War.

After 9/11, defense spending has seen a gradual increase in real terms.

nondefense spending

Looking at the ratio of nondefense to defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product is instructive. While national defense was bigger in 1962, by 1974 nondefense spending was twice as large, then four times as large in 1996, and was nearly eight times as large in 2020.

The gap between defense and nondefense spending became a gaping chasm during the Obama administration. A combination of stimulusspending and Obamacare sent nondefense spending to record heights.

Biden’s big government agenda seeks to retain as much of the sky-high 2020 spending level as possible by massively expanding the federal government.

nondefense spending

Unfortunately, America faces a serious financial reckoning even if Congress rejects Biden’s spending increase proposals. That’s because most federal spending is already on autopilot, growing year after year based on benefit formulas.

By 2036, every penny of tax revenue will be needed just to pay for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and interest on the debt. Amazingly, this chart assumes that Congress would allow much of the 2017 tax cuts to expire, meaning that spending in these categories would outpace revenue even after a tax hike.

nondefense spending

Health care is already the largest federal spending category. Amazingly, federal health spending is projected to more than double between 2019 and 2031 despite low expected levels of inflation and population growth.

The single most important thing Congress can do to prevent this from happening is to reform Medicare in a way that gives more choices and lower costs for beneficiaries and slows the growth of spending, which would help keep the program from going bankrupt (or bankrupting the country).

nondefense spending

The unsustainable growth of nondefense spending is the driving force behind outsized budget gaps. While tax revenue is expected to remain around its historical average, spending (driven by benefit programs) will surge far above normal levels.

Some on the left claim that we shouldn’t be concerned about the national debt since interest rates are so low.

The problem with this line of thinking is that with $28 trillion in debt on the books today (over $210,000 per U.S. household), and trillions more being added every year, even a small bump in interest rates would cause economic distress. We should not put the nation’s future at risk by assuming an infinite supply of cheap credit.

nondefense spending

The Highway Trust Fund is a perfect example of Washington’s dysfunction. While gas tax revenue provides more than enough money to cover core federal priorities, lawmakers have intentionally spent more than what the tax brings in, causing a deficit in the Highway Trust Fund and requiring a series of bailouts.

Unfortunately, big spenders are eyeing a new tax on vehicle miles traveled to boost revenue. While they claim this hike is necessary to fund key infrastructure, the reality is that billions of dollars are wasted every year on excessive compensation for government workers and counterproductive federal regulations.

Juicing the trust fund with more tax dollars would help maintain the spending, but it would also enable legislators to keep ignoring the need for serious reforms. Americans would be better off if the federal government got out of the way and allowed state governments and the private sector to do the important work faster and cheaper.

A common thread linking these six charts is the relentless growth of federal spending, driven both by congressional failure to reform unsustainable programs and by political incentives to create new ones.

Unfortunately, Biden wants to make these problems worse by adding trillions more to nondefense spending, adding to the national debt, and hiking taxes in a way that would put us on a path to national decline.

It is vital that Congress wakes up to reality and puts us back on a path to solvency.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

 Sadly last night the Democrats won control of Senate!

2021 Democrats control Government but has our National Debt reached a Tipping Point?

Is America Approaching the Tipping Point of Too Much Debt?

Yesterday, the Congressional Budget Office released updated budget projections. The most important numbers in that report show what’s happening with the overall fiscal burden of government – measured by both taxes and spending.

As you can see, there’s a big one-time spike in coronavirus-related spending this year. That’s not good news, but more worrisome is the the longer-run trend of government spending gradually climbing as a share of economic output (and the numbers are significantly worse if you look at CBO’s 30-year projection).

Most reporters and fiscal wonks overlooked the spending data, however, and instead focused on the CBO’s projection for government debt.

Since government spending is the problem and borrowing is merely a symptom of that problem, I think it’s a mistake to fixate on red ink.

That being said, Figure 3 from the CBO report shows that there’s also an upward-spike in federal debt.

And it is true (remember Greece) that high levels of debt can, by themselves, produce a crisis. This happens when investors suddenly stop buying government bonds because they think there’s a risk of default (which happens when a government is incapable or unwilling to make promised payments to lenders).

I think some nations are on the verge of having that kind of crisis, most notably Italy.

But what about the United States? Or Japan? And how’s the outlook for Europe’s welfare states?

In other words, what nations are approaching a tipping point?

A new study from the European Central Bank may help answer these questions. Authored by Pablo Burriel, Cristina Checherita-Westphal, Pascal Jacquinot, Matthias Schön, and Nikolai Stähler, it uses several economic models to measure the downside risks of excessive debt.

The 2009 global financial and economic crisis left a legacy of historically high levels of public debt in advanced economies, at a scale unseen during modern peace time. …The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is a different type of shock that has dramatically affected global economic activity… Fiscal positions are projected to be strongly hit by the crisis…once the crisis is over and the recovery firmly sets in, keeping public debt at high levels over the medium term is a source of vulnerability… The main objective of this paper is to contribute to the stabilisation vs. sustainability debate in the euro area by reviewing through the lens of large scale DSGE models the economic risks associated with regimes of high public debt.

Here’s what they found, none of which should be a surprise.

…we evaluate the economic consequences of high public debt using simulations with three DSGE models… Our DSGE simulations also suggest that high-debt economies…can lose more output in a crisis…have less scope for counter-cyclical fiscal policy and…are adversely affected in terms of potential (long-term) output, with a significant impairment in case of large sovereign risk premia reaction and use of most distortionary type of taxation to finance the additional public debt burden in the future.

Here’s a useful chart from the study. It shows some sort of shock on the left (2008 financial crisis or coronavirus being obvious examples), which then produces a recession (lower GDP) and rising debt.

That outcome isn’t good for nations with “low” levels of debt, but it can be really bad for nations with “high” debt burdens because they have to deal with much higher interest payments, much bigger tax increases, and much bigger reductions in economic output.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think the study actually gives us any way of determining which nations are near the tipping point. That’s because “low” and “high” are subjective. Japan has an enormous amount of debt, yet investors don’t think there’s any meaningful risk that Japan’s government will default, so it is a “low” debt nation for purposes of the above illustration.

By contrast, there’s a much lower level of debt in Argentina, but investors have almost no trust in that nation’s especially venal politicians, so it’s a “high” debt nation for purposes of this analysis.

The United States, in my humble opinion, is more like Japan. As I wrote last year, “We probably won’t even have a crisis in the next 10 years or 20 years.” And that’s still my view, even after all the spending and debt for coronavirus.

The study concludes with some common-sense advice about using spending restraint and pro-market reforms to create buffers (some people refer to this as “fiscal space“).

Overall, once the COVID-19 crisis is over and the economic recovery firmly re-established, further efforts to build fiscal buffers in good times and mitigate fiscal risks over the medium term are needed at the national level. Such efforts should be guided by risks to debt sustainability. High debt countries, in particular, should implement a mix of fiscal discipline and wide-ranging growth-enhancing reforms.

Needless to say, there’s an obvious and successful way of achieving this goal.

P.S. Here’s another chart from the ECB study that is worth sharing because it confirms that not all tax increases do the same amount of economic damage.

We see that consumption taxes (red line) are bad, but income taxes on workers (green line) are even worse.

And if the study included an estimate of what would happen if there were higher income taxes on saving and investment, there would be another line showing even more economic damage.

P.P.S. History shows that nations can reduce very large debt burdens if they follow my Golden Rule.

P.P.P.S. There’s a related study from the IMF that shows how excessive spending is a major warning sign that nations will be vulnerable to fiscal crisis.

Great article below from Daniel Mitchell!!

Positive Rights vs Negative Rights

Back in 2017, I compared the welfare state vision of “positive rights” with the classical liberal vision of “negative rights.”

To elaborate, here’s a video from Learn Liberty that compares these visions.

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For what it’s worth, I don’t like the terms “positive rights” and “negative rights” for the simple reason that an uninformed person understandably might conclude that “positive” is good and “negative” is bad.

Needless to say, I don’t think it’s good for people to think they have a right to other people’s money.

That’s why I prefer Professor Skoble’s use of the terms “liberties” and “entitlements,” which we also find in this slide from Professor Imran Ahmad Sajid of the University of Pakistan.

As you might expect, there are plenty of politicians who try to buy votes with an agenda of “positive rights.” Bernie Sanders, for instance, constantly argued that people have a “right” to all sorts of goodies.

But he wasn’t the first to make the case for unlimited entitlements.

Franklin Roosevelt was one of America’s worst presidents, in part because his policies deepened and lengthened the Great Depression. But also because he pushed the idea that people have the right to get all sorts of taxpayer-financed handouts.

Let’s see what some other people have to say about this topic.

In his National Review column, Kevin Williamson looks at the logical fallacy of positive rights.

Positive rights run into some pretty obvious problems if you think about them for a minute, which is why so much of our political discourse is dedicated to moralistic thundering specifically designed to prevent such thinking. Consider, in the American context, the notion that health care is a right. Declaring a right in a scarce good such as health care is intellectually void, because moral declarations about rights do not change material facts.If you have five children and three apples and then declare that every child has a right to an apple of his own, then you have five children and three apples and some meaningless posturing — i.e., nothing in reality has changed, and you have added only rhetoric instead of adding apples. In the United States, we have so many doctors, so many hospitals and clinics, so many MRI machines, etc. This imposes real constraints on the provision of health care. If my doctor works 40 hours a week, does my right to health care mean that a judge can order him to work extra hours to accommodate my rights? For free? If I have a right to health care, how can a clinic or a physician charge me for exercising my right? If doctors and hospitals have rights of their own — for example, property rights in their labor and facilities — how is it that my rights supersede those rights?

And here’s what he says about “negative rights.”

A negative right is a right to not be constrained. The right to free speech, for example, implies only non-interference. The right to freedom of the press doesn’t mean the government has to give you a press. The good of negative freedom is, in the economic sense, not rivalrous — your exercise of free speech doesn’t leave less freedom of speech out there for others to enjoy

And Larry Reed opines on the issue for the Foundation for Economic Education.

America is a nation founded on the notion of rights. …Despite the centrality of rights in American history, it’s readily apparent todaythat Americans are of widely different views on what a right is, how many we have, where rights come from, or why we have any in the first place. …if you need something, does that mean you have a right to it? If I require a kidney, do I have a right to one of yours? Is a right something that can or should be granted or denied by majority vote?

He helpfully provides a list of negative rights (a.k.a., liberties).

And he argues that positive rights (a.k.a., entitlements) are not real rights.

The bottom line, he explains, is that so-called positive rights impose obligations on other people.

Indeed, they can only be provided by coercion.

The first list comprises what are often called both “natural rights” and “negative rights”—natural because they derive from our essential nature as unique, sensate individuals and negative because they don’t impose obligations on others beyond a commitment to not violate them. The items in the second are called “positive rights” because others must give them to you or be coerced into doing so if they decline. …while I believe neither you nor I have a right to any of those disparate things in the second list, I hasten to add that we certainly have the right to seek them, to create them, to receive them as gifts from willing benefactors, or to trade for them. We just don’t have a right to compel anyone to give them to us or pay for them.

There’s not much I can add to this issue, given the wisdom contained in the video and in the articles by Williamson and Reed.

So I’ll close with the should-be-obvious point that a system based on entitlements only works if there are enough people pulling the wagon to support all the people riding in the wagon.

But that kind of society contains the seeds of its own downfall(think Greece or Venezuela) because it subsidizes dependency and penalizes production.

Which means, as Margaret Thatcher warned us, that positive rights can’t be provided when politicians run out of other people’s money.

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Free-market economics meets free-market policies at The Heritage Foundation’s Tenth Anniversary dinner in 1983. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose with President Ronald Reagan and Heritage President Ed Feulner.

Free-market economics meets free-market policies at The Heritage Foundation’s Tenth Anniversary dinner in 1983. Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and his wife Rose with President Ronald Reagan and Heritage President Ed Feulner.

Since the passing of Milton Friedman who was my favorite economist, I have been reading the works of Daniel Mitchell and he quotes Milton Friedman a lot, and you can reach Dan’s website here.

Mitchell in February 2011.
Wikipedia noted concerning Dan:

Mitchell’s career as an economist began in the United States Senate, working for Oregon Senator Bob Packwood and the Senate Finance Committee. He also served on the transition team of President-Elect Bush and Vice President-Elect Quayle in 1988. In 1990, he began work at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Mitchell worked on tax policy issues and began advocating for income tax reform.[1]

In 2007, Mitchell left the Heritage Foundation, and joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow. Mitchell continues to work in tax policy, and deals with issues such as the flat tax and international tax competition.[2]

In addition to his Cato Institute responsibilities, Mitchell co-founded the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, an organization formed to protect international tax competition.[1]

January 29, 2020

President Biden, c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

The FOUNDERS never intended the government to get into the welfare business!!!!

The federal government debt is growing so much that it is endangering us because if things keep going like they are now we will not have any money left for the national defense because we are so far in debt as a nation. We have been spending so much on our welfare state through food stamps and other programs that I am worrying that many of our citizens are becoming more dependent on government and in many cases they are losing their incentive to work hard because of the welfare trap the government has put in place. Other nations in Europe have gone down this road and we see what mess this has gotten them in. People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes you made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control. Also raising taxes on the job creators is a very bad idea too. The Laffer Curve clearly demonstrates that when the tax rates are raised many individuals will move their investments to places where they will not get taxed as much.

______________________

One is the growing welfare state. I have posted an article below about what the welfare state is doing to England because we need to learn from their mistakes.

Welfare state may drag England down the tubes!!!!

Very Funny but Very Un-PC British Video on Welfare and Immigration

May 19, 2013 by Dan Mitchell

I’ve shared this bit of political incorrect terrorism humor from England, as well asthis somewhat un-PC bit of tax humor.

But perhaps motivated by the scandal of giving welfare to terrorists, this new video is the most amusing thing I’ve seen from across the ocean.

I almost didn’t post this because it singles out immigrants from the developing world, but since I’ve shared horror stories from home-grown moochers in the U.K., as well as examples of scroungers from Europe who are robbing British taxpayers, I think I’ve covered all the bases.

But in the spirit of inclusiveness, here are other satirical videos worth sharing.

My all-time favorite video satire is from Iowahawk, featuring the Pelosimobile.

And I’ve always thought this left-wing attack against libertarianism is very funny.

And this Tim Hawkins video on the government Candyman is great, as isanother version of the song.

Speaking of Tim Hawkins, his home-schooling video is superb.

This spoof of the Chevy Volt also is extremely well done.

Last but not least, here are two brutal Obama teleprompter videos.

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Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733, everettehatcher@gmail.com

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Washington is lecturing us about eating too much when they are spending addicts!!!!

May 12, 2013 – 2:51 pm

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute:HUD has to go!!!! (includes political cartoon)

March 19, 2013 – 6:00 am

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Open letter to President Obama (Part 138 B)

September 11, 2012 – 4:10 pm

Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients in NYC Published on Mar 18, 2012 by vclubscenedotcom Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients __________ President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Are conservatives generous or are liberals?

May 21, 2012 – 4:03 pm

Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients in NYC Published on Mar 18, 2012 by vclubscenedotcom Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients __________ Liberals like the idea of the welfare state while conservatives suggest charity through private organizations serve the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Democrats lied about spending cuts in 1982 and 1990

August 21, 2011 – 7:53 am

Washington Could Learn a Lot from a Drug Addict What kind of intervention does Congress need to get it to spend with its spending addiction? Back in 1982 Reagan was promised $3 in cuts for every $1 in tax increases but the cuts never came. In 1990 Bush was promised 2 for 1 but they […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in President Obama, Ronald Reagan, spending out of control | Edit | Comments (0)

Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 1) (Al Green, Famous Arkansan)

April 7, 2011 – 4:04 pm

  Senator Mark Pryor wants our ideas on how to cut federal spending. Take a look at this video clip below: Senator Pryor has asked us to send our ideas to him at cutspending@pryor.senate.gov and I have done so (at 4:04 pm CST on April 7th, 2011, and will continue to do so in the […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Cato Institute, Famous Arkansans, Mark Pryor | Edit | Comments (0)
May 13, 2021 – 10:10 pm Categories: President Donald J. Trump | Post a comment

Subsidized Unemployment and the Work Ethic by Daniel Mitchell

 

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Subsidized Unemployment and the Work Ethic

I wrote two days ago about subsidized unemployment, followed later in the day by this interview.

https://youtu.be/cXfXpgVAefE

This controversy raises a fundamental economic issue.

I explained in the interview that employers only hire people when they expect a new worker will generate at least enough revenue to cover the cost of employment.

There’s a similar calculation on the part of individuals, as shown by this satirical cartoon strip.

People decide to take jobs when they expect the additional after-tax income they earn will compensate them for the loss of leisure and/or the unpleasantness of working.

Which is why many people are now choosing not to work since the government has increased the subsidies for idleness (a bad policy that began under Trump).

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about this issue a couple of days ago.

White House economists say there’s no “measurable” evidence that the $300 federal unemployment bonus is discouraging unemployed people from seeking work. They were rebutted by Tuesday’s Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Jolts survey, which showed a record 8.1 million job openings in March.…But these jobs often pay less than what most workers could make on unemployment. That explains why the number of job openings in many industries increased more than the number of new hires in March. …The number of workers who quit their jobs also grew by 125,000. …some quitters may be leaving their jobs because they figure they can make more unemployed for the next six months after Democrats extended the bonus into September.

Dan Henninger also opined on the issue for the WSJ. Here’s some of what he wrote.

President Biden said, “People will come back to work if they’re paid a decent wage.” But what if he’s wrong? What if his $300 unemployment insurance bonus on top of the checks sent directly to millions of people (which began during the Trump presidency) turns out to be a big, long-term mistake? …Mr. Biden and the left expect these outlays effectively to raise the minimum wage by forcing employers to compete with Uncle Sam’s money. …Ideas have consequences. By making unemployment insurance competitive with market wage rates in a pandemic, the Biden Democrats may have done long-term damage to the American work ethic. …The welfare reforms of the 1990s were based on the realization that transfer payments undermined the work ethic. The Biden-Sanders Democrats are dropping that work requirement for recipients of cash payments.

Amen.

I made similar arguments about the erosion of the work ethic last year when discussing this issue.

And this concern applies to other forms of redistribution. Including, most notably, the foolish idea of big per-child handouts.

P.S. The WSJ editorial cited above mentioned the Labor Department’s JOLT data. Those numbers are also useful if you want proof that federal bureaucrats are overpaid, and you’ll also see that the same thing is true for state and local government employees.

The Upside-Down Morality and Economic Illiteracy of Class Warfare

My Eighth Theorem of Government is very simple.

If someone writes and talks about poverty, I generally assume that they care about poor people. They may have good ideas for helping the poor, or they may have bad ideas. But I usually don’t doubt their sincerity.

But when someone writes and talks about inequality, I worry that they don’t really care about the less fortunate and that they’re instead motivated by envy, resentment, and jealousy of rich people.

And this concern probably applies to a couple of law professors, Michael Heller of Columbia and James Salzman of UCLA. They recently wrote a column for the Washington Post on how the government should grab more money from the private sector when rich people die.

They seem particularly agitated that states such as South Dakota have strong asset-protection laws that limit the reach of the death tax.

Income inequality has widened. One…way to tackle the problem. Instead of focusing only on taxing wealth accumulation, we can address the hidden flip side — wealth transmission. …The place to start is South Dakota… The state has created…wealth-sheltering tools including the aptly named “dynasty trust.” …Congress can…plug holes in our leaky estate tax system. One step would be to tax trusts at the passage of each generation and limit generation-skipping tax-exempt trusts. A bigger step would be to ensure that appreciated stocks…are taxed… Better still, let’s start anew. Ditch the existing estate tax and replace it with an inheritance tax

There’s nothing remarkable in their proposals. Just a typical collection of tax-the-rich schemes one might expect from a couple of academics.

But I can’t resist commenting on their article because of two inadvertent admissions.

First, we have a passage that reveals a twisted sense of morality. They apparently think it’s a “heist” if people keep their own money.

America’s ultra-wealthy have pulled off a brilliantly designed heist, with a string of South Dakota governors as accomplices.

For all intents and purposes, the law professors are making an amazing claim that it’s stealing if you don’t meekly surrender your money to politicians.

Apparently they agree with Richard Murphy that all income belongs to the government and it’s akin to an entitlement program or “state aid” if politicians let you keep a slice.

Second, the law professors make the mistake of trying to be economists. They want readers to think the national economy suffers if money stays in the private sector.

Nearly no one in South Dakota complains, because the harm falls on the national economy… We all suffer high and hidden costs…getting less in government services. …South Dakota locks away resources that could spark entrepreneurial innovation.

According to their analysis, a nation such as Singapore must be very poor while a country such as Greece must be very rich.

Needless to say, the opposite is true. Larger burdens of government spending are associated with less prosperity and dynamism.

I’ll offer one final observation. Professors Heller and Salzman obviously want more and more taxes on the rich.

But I wonder what they would say if confronted with the data showing that the United States already collects a greater share of tax revenue from the rich than any other OECD country.

P.S. The reason the U.S. collects proportionately more taxes from the rich is that other developed countries have bigger welfare states, and that necessarily leads to much higher tax burdens on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers (as honest folks on the left acknowledge).


Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose – Ep.4 (1/7) – From Cradle to Grave

File:President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan in The East Room Congratulating Milton Friedman Receiving The Presidential Medal of Freedom.jpg

January 21, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

With the national debt increasing faster than ever we must make the hard decisions to balance the budget now. If we wait another decade to balance the budget then we will surely risk our economic collapse.

The first step is to remove all welfare programs and replace them with the negative income tax program that Milton Friedman first suggested.

Milton Friedman points out that though many government welfare programs are well intentioned, they tend to have pernicious side effects. In Dr. Friedman’s view, perhaps the most serious shortcoming of governmental welfare activities is their tendency to strip away individual independence and dignity. This is because bureaucrats in welfare agencies are placed in positions of tremendous power over welfare recipients, exercising great influence over their lives. In addition, welfare programs tend to be self-perpetuating because they destroy work incentives. Dr. Friedman suggests a negative income tax as a way of helping the poor. The government would pay money to people falling below a certain income level. As they obtained jobs and earned money, they would continue to receive some payments from the government until their outside income reached a certain ceiling. This system would make people better off who sought work and earned income.

Here is a transcript of a portion of the “Free to Choose” program called “From Cradle to Grave” (program #4 in the 10 part series):

Transcript:
Friedman: After the 2nd World War, New York City authorities retained rent control supposedly to help their poorer citizens. The intentions were good. This in the Bronx was one result.
By the 50′s the same authorities were taxing their citizens. Including those who lived in the Bronx and other devastated areas beyond the East River to subsidize public housing. Another idea with good intentions yet poor people are paying for this, subsidized apartments for the well-to-do. When government at city or federal level spends our money to help us, strange things happen.
The idea that government had to protect us came to be accepted during the terrible years of the Depression. Capitalism was said to have failed. And politicians were looking for a new approach.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a candidate for the presidency. He was governor of New York State. At the governor’s mansion in Albany, he met repeatedly with friends and colleagues to try to find some way out of the Depression. The problems of the day were to be solved by government action and government spending. The measures that FDR and his associates discussed here derived from a long line of past experience. Some of the roots of these measures go back to Bismark’s Germany at the end of the 19th Century. The first modern state to institute old age pensions and other similar measures on the part of government. In the early 20th Century Great Britain followed suit under Lloyd George and Churchill. It too instituted old age pensions and similar plans.
These precursors of the modern welfare state had little effect on practice in the United States. But they did have a very great effect on the intellectuals on the campus like those who gathered here with FDR. The people who met here had little personal experience of the horrors of the Depression but they were confident that they had the solution. In their long discussions as they sat around this fireplace trying to design programs to meet the problems raised by the worst Depression in the history of the United States, they quite naturally drew upon the ideas that were prevalent at the time. The intellectual climate had become one in which it was taken for granted that government had to play a major role in solving the problems in providing what came later to be called Security from Cradle to Grave.
Roosevelt’s first priority after his election was to deal with massive unemployment. A Public Works program was started. The government financed projects to build highways, bridges and dams. The National Recovery Administration was set up to revitalize industry. Roosevelt wanted to see America move into a new era. The Social Security Act was passed and other measures followed. Unemployment benefits, welfare payments, distribution of surplus food. With these measures, of course, came rules, regulations and red tape as familiar today as they were novel then. The government bureaucracy began to grow and it’s been growing ever since.
This is just a small part of the Social Security empire today. Their headquarters in Baltimore has 16 rooms this size. All these people are dispensing our money with the best possible intentions. But at what cost?
In the 50 years since the Albany meetings, we have given government more and more control over our lives and our income. In New York State alone, these government buildings house 11,000 bureaucrats. Administering government programs that cost New York taxpayers 22 billion dollars. At the federal level, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare alone has a budget larger than any government in the world except only Russia and the United States.
Yet these government measures often do not help the people they are supposed to. Richard Brown’s daughter, Helema, needs constant medical attention. She has a throat defect and has to be connected to a breathing machine so that she’ll survive the nights. It’s expensive treatment and you might expect the family to qualify for a Medicaid grant.
Richard Brown: No, I don’t get it, cause I’m not eligible for it. I make a few dollars too much and the salary that I make I can’t afford to really live and to save anything is out of the question. And I mean, I live, we live from payday to payday. I mean literally from payday to payday.
Friedman: His struggle isn’t made any easier by the fact that Mr. Brown knows that if he gave up his job as an orderly at the Harlem Hospital, he would qualify for a government handout. And he’d be better off financially.
Hospital Worker: Mr. Brown, do me a favor please? There is a section patient.
Friedman: It’s a terrible pressure on him. But he is proud of the work that he does here and he’s strong enough to resist the pressure.
Richard Brown: I’m Mr. Brown. Your fully dilated and I’m here to take you to the delivery. Try not to push, please. We want to have a nice sterile delivery.
Friedman: Mr. Brown has found out the hard way that welfare programs destroy an individual’s independence.
Richard Brown: We’ve considered welfare. We went to see, to apply for welfare but, we were told that we were only eligible for $5.00 a month. And, to receive this $5.00 we would have to cash in our son’s savings bonds. And that’s not even worth it. I don’t believe in something for nothing anyway.
Mrs. Brown: I think a lot of people are capable of working and are willing to work, but it’s just the way it is set up. It, the mother and the children are better off if the husband isn’t working or if the husband isn’t there. And this breaks up so many poor families.
Friedman: One of the saddest things is that many of the children whose parents are on welfare will in their turn end up in the welfare trap when they grow up. In this public housing project in the Bronx, New York, 3/4′s of the families are now receiving welfare payments.
Well Mr. Brown wanted to keep away from this kind of thing for a very good reason. The people who get on welfare lose their human independence and feeling of dignity. They become subject to the dictates and whims of their welfare supervisor who can tell them whether they can live here or there, whether they may put in a telephone, what they may do with their lives. They are treated like children, not like responsible adults and they are trapped in the system. Maybe a job comes up which looks better than welfare but they are afraid to take it because if they lose it after a few months it maybe six months or nine months before they can get back onto welfare. And as a result, this becomes a self-perpetuating cycle rather than simply a temporary state of affairs.
Things have gone even further elsewhere. This is a huge mistake. A public housing project in Manchester, England.
Well we’re 3,000 miles away from the Bronx here but you’d never know it just by looking around. It looks as if we are at the same place. It’s the same kind of flats, the same kind of massive housing units, decrepit even though they were only built 7 or 8 years ago. Vandalism, graffiti, the same feeling about the place. Of people who don’t have a great deal of drive and energy because somebody else is taking care of their day to day needs because the state has deprived them of an incentive to find jobs to become responsible people to be the real support for themselves and their families.
_______________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733

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Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute:HUD has to go!!!! (includes political cartoon)

March 19, 2013 – 6:00 am

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Coldplay the documentary with pictures and videos (Part 6 )

March 14, 2013 – 1:33 am

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Open letter to President Obama (Part 138 B)

September 11, 2012 – 4:10 pm

Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients in NYC Published on Mar 18, 2012 by vclubscenedotcom Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients __________ President Obama c/o The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear Mr. President, I […]

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Are conservatives generous or are liberals?

May 21, 2012 – 4:03 pm

Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients in NYC Published on Mar 18, 2012 by vclubscenedotcom Real Time with Bill Maher March 16 2012 – Alexandra Pelosi Interviews Welfare Recipients __________ Liberals like the idea of the welfare state while conservatives suggest charity through private organizations serve the […]

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Democrats lied about spending cuts in 1982 and 1990

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Transcript and video of Republican Debate June 13, 2011 New Hampshire (Part 4)

June 15, 2011 – 9:42 am

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Senator Pryor asks for Spending Cut Suggestions! Here are a few!(Part 1) (Al Green, Famous Arkansan)

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Six great economic crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries examined by Michael Reagan

May 2, 2013 – 12:43 am

I found this article very interesting. The Kennedy-Reagan Truth vs. the Obama Delusion by Jim Denney In his book The New Reagan Revolution, Michael Reagan examined six great economic crossroads of the 20th and 21st centuries. These six critical junctures in the history of the United States serve as economic laboratories to test two contrasting economic […]

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Dumas:Lowering Capital Gains Tax Bad Idea

January 3, 2011 – 5:16 am

HALT:HaltingArkansasLiberalswithTruth.com This video clip gives 6 reasons why the Capital Gains Tax should be abolished Ernest Dumas in his article “Tax work not wealth,” (Arkansas Times, Nov 25, 2010) asserts, “The (capital gains) tax rate was raised in 1976 under President Gerald Ford and economic growth accelerated. President Jimmy Carter cut the top rate from 39 […]

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May 13, 2021 – 8:20 pm Categories: Milton Friedman, President Obama, spending out of control | Post a comment

The Upside-Down Economics of Subsidized Unemployment by Dan Mitchell

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—

The Upside-Down Economics of Subsidized Unemployment

 

Back in 2010, I applauded Paul Krugman for acknowledging that government unemployment benefits can encourage joblessness.

And I even cited Krugman in this 2012 debate on the topic.

We’re debating this issue again today, but it’s an even bigger problem because politicians in Washington have added a special bonus payment for people who stay unemployed.

So we’re naturally finding that people are more reluctant to work, which is a rational choice for many of them since they’re getting more money for sitting on their butts.

So if Krugman recognized back in 2009 that regular-sized unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness, he must be even more worried about today’s super-sized unemployment benefits.

But there’s a catch. Krugman made his sensible observations on this issue in a textbook when he was still an academic economist, back when he felt some professional obligation to be rational and pay attention to the academic evidence and empirical research.

Today, he’s an ideologue and polemicist. So we get nonsense like this column in the New York Times.

…the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced that the U.S. economy added only 266,000 jobs in April, far short of consensus expectations that we’d gain around a million new jobs. Was this evidence that the economy really is being held back because we’re “paying people not to work”?No. For one thing, you should never make much of one month’s numbers, especially in an economy still distorted by the pandemic. …Also, if unemployment benefits were holding job growth back, you’d expect the worst performance in low-wage industries, where benefits are large relative to wages. …on the face of it the data don’t support an unemployment-benefits story. So what actually happened? We don’t know. Maybe it was a statistical aberration.

For what it’s worth, I prefer the sober-minded analysis available in editorials from the Wall Street Journal.

Such as this one.

Employers nationwide have complained for months that Washington’s $300-a-week bonus has made it harder to find willing workers. Yet Mr. Biden brushed aside the complaints, saying he and his staff “don’t see much evidence” that the payments are a “major factor.” …The perverse incentive of the bonus is clear, and the evidence goes beyond the anecdotes from tens of thousands of employers. …Bank of America economist Joseph Song notes that any worker earning less than $32,000 annually would get a raise by going on unemployment… The President intended his remarks to depict his Administration as the driver of job growth instead of its main hindrance. It was a tall order. But the bright side is that his urgent appearance showed that more Americans are figuring out that when the government pays people not to work, millions choose not to.

The good news is that some governors are opting out.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Washington Post.

An unexpected slowdown in hiring nationwide has prompted some Republican governors to start slashing jobless benefits in their states, hoping that the loss of generous federal aid might force more people to try to return to work. …Arkansas on Friday became the latest to announce plans to cancel the extra benefits, joining Montana and South Carolina earlier in the week… Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signaled to local reporters that the state could soon follow suit, while Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is considering the same.

I’m tempted to comment about the Post‘s usual bias (saying GOP governors want to “slash” when they’re simply proposing to return to regular-sized benefits).

But let’s stick to the topic.

Here’s another interview on the issue, but it’s about the current fight rather than the Obama-era fight.

I’m especially concerned, as I noted in the interview, that bad government policy may erode the work ethic.

I’ll close with a comment about the fight we had during the Obama years. Back then, the battle revolved around extended unemployment benefits rather than turbo-charged benefits.

Republicans eventually prevailed in blocking the extended benefits. So what happened? As you might expect, there was an increase in employment.

P.S. I imagine this story from Michigan and this example from Ohio will ring a bell with many people because they have some relative or buddy who also has used government benefits as an excuse to stay unemployed.

P.P.S. Senator Rand Paul and I wrote about this issue back in 2014.

P.P.P.S. For some unintentional humor, Nancy Pelosi actually argued that the economy is stronger when people are paid not to work.

 

 

Many  academic studies show that extending unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness!!

Washington is in the middle of another debate about redistributing money.

But that’s hardly newsworthy. Politics, after all, is basically a never-ending racket in which insiders buy votes and accumulate power with other people’s money.

The current debate about extending unemployment benefits is remarkable, though (at least from an economic perspective), because certain politicians want to give people money on the condition that they don’t get a job. Needless to say, that leads to a very perverse incentive structure.

There is a problem with joblessness, to be sure, but it’s misguided to think that extending unemployment benefits is the compassionate response.

Senator Paul and I wrote a column for USA Today about a better way of helping the unemployed. Looking at the empirical evidence, we argue that it’s time to unleash the private sector by reducing the burden of government.

We started with an assessment of the labor market, which has been dismal under Obama’s reign.

The nation is enduring the weakest recovery since the Great Depression, 11 million people remain unemployed, and millions more have dropped out of the labor force. For minorities, it’s even worse. The black unemployment rate is more than twice that of whites. And the weak job market means that even those who are employed are having a hard time climbing the economic ladder.

We explain that more unemployment benefits is a misguided approach.

There’s a lot of talk about helping those down on their luck, but there’s a big divide on the best approach. Our view is that America needs a growth agenda based on reducing the burden of government. The unemployed need a strong job market, not endless handouts that create dependency. …There’s an understandable desire in Washington to “do something,” and extending benefits once again certainly is the easy route for policy makers. But if we are serious about keeping workers out of the long-term unemployment trap, we must have a debate about which policies cause unemployment and which policies create jobs.

The column cites many of the academic studies showing that unemployment benefits lead to more joblessness.

I’ve made this point during television interviews, and this Michael Ramirez cartoon echoes our thinking in a more entertaining fashion.

And we definitely can’t overlook this superb Wizard-of-Id parody. It doesn’t focus specifically on unemployment benefits, but it makes a great point about labor supply incentives.

But let’s get back to the column. Our main goal is to identify the types of policies that would generate jobs and growth.

Simply stated, genuine compassion should be defined by helping people get back to work so they don’t need to be wards of the state.

And easing the burden of government is the best way to make that happen. Our column looks at some evidence – from both overseas and here at home – about the policies that are associated with better economic performance.

Big government is responsible for today’s unemployment situation. …Since President Obama was elected, we have spent $560 billion on unemployment benefits. It’s likely many more jobs would have been created had the government not diverted that money from the economy’s productive sector. …Instead of copying stagnant European nations with bigger public sectors, we should learn from countries that have achieved better performance by lowering the burden of government. Singapore and Hong Kong are examples of jurisdictions with small governments and free markets that enjoy strong and sustained growth with very low levels of joblessness. …look at Canada, which has significantly boosted its jobs market with pro-growth reforms, or Switzerland, which has cemented its traditionally strong labor markets with reforms to control the growth of government. This is not a partisan argument. Or at least it shouldn’t be. The United States enjoyed strong levels of job creation during both the Reagan and Clinton years. But in both cases, public policy was largely the same, featuring an increase in economic freedom.

Some people may wonder whether Reagan and Clinton belong in the same category.

Well, as illustrated by this chart, they both presided over periods with impressive job creation.

And they both presided over periods with generally good economic policy.

Reagan moved the country in the right direction on purpose. Clinton, by contrast, may have wanted to move the nation in the other direction, but he was unsuccessful.Indeed, the evidence is very strong that the overall burden of government fell during his tenure.

Whether by accident or design, America needs another period of free markets and shrinking government.

For further details on the recipe for good policy, here’s the video I narrated for the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, which explains the conditions that lead to strong and sustained growth.

Free Markets and Small Government Produce Prosperity

Uploaded on Feb 17, 2009

Now that the so-called stimulus has been enacted, hopefully policy makers will turn their attention to policies that actually improve economic performance. This Center for Freedom and Prosperity Foundation video reviews the key finding in the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World and explains that, contrary to the policies of Presidents Bush and Obama, smaller government and free markets are the way to boost economic growth. For more information: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

 

__________________

P.S. I’m obviously a fan of Senator Rand Paul. Not only does he choose good people as op-ed partners, he also gave me public credit for a good Obamacare joke.

P.P.S. On a separate topic, I wrote in December 2012 that the strongest evidence for media bias is which stories get covered. A perfect example is that journalists already have given 17 times as much coverage of the Chris Christie “bridgegate” scandal as they gave to the IRS scandal over the past six months

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Bob Chitester, RIP The man who put together the film series FREE TO CHOOSE!

Bob Chitester, RIP

By David Boaz

Bob Chitester was managing a small public television station in Erie, PA, when he got the big idea to persuade Nobel laureate Milton Friedman to write and narrate a 10‐​part series on free markets for PBS. As unlikely as that prospect was, Bob made it happen. “Free to Choose” was broadcast on PBS beginning in January of 1980, and it made quite a splash just as Reagan and Thatcher were also starting to change the way people thought about markets and government. Milton and Rose Friedman wrote a book to accompany the series. But television helped take Friedman’s ideas from the pages of books to millions more people, and in the process Chitester made Friedman a bigger celebrity and a bigger influence than a mere Nobel Prize could accomplish.

Bob went on to create Free to Choose Media and produce hundreds of video products for public television, other networks, the internet, and home viewing. They included The Real Adam Smith, a two‐​hour series that gives particular attention to Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments; the Stossel in the Classroom series, which put John Stossel’s television reports into high school classrooms; and A More or Less Perfect Union, a three‐​part series with Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg.

He made Cato senior fellow Johan Norberg a familiar face on public television with documentaries such as “Free & Equal,” an update of “Free to Choose”; “Sweden: Lessons for America?”; “India Awakes”; and “Work and Happiness: The Human Cost of Welfare.”

We at Cato were especially grateful that when our colleague Andrew Coulson died much too young before finishing his television project “School Inc.,” Bob and his Free to Choose team picked it up, finished the production, and got it on hundreds of public television stations in 2017.

For more than 40 years Bob Chitester focused like a laser to get free‐​market ideas on television in high‐​quality presentations. All of us who believe in the power of markets to liberate people are incredibly grateful and, frankly, astounded at his success in this.

Bob lost his seven‐​year battle with cancer this weekend. But his video projects can all be found on the web, and his Free to Choose team will continue his work with new documentaries and online programs.

Bob Chitester Discusses Milton Friedman and ‘Free to Choose’

Published on Jul 30, 2012 by

“There are very few people over the generations who have ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.”

That is how former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan described the Nobel laureate economist Milton Friedman. But it is not for his technical work in monetary economics that Friedman is best known. Like mathematician Jacob Bronowski and astronomer Carl Sagan, Friedman had a gift for communicating complex ideas to a general audience.

It was this gift that brought him to the attention of filmmaker Bob Chitester. At Chitester’s urging, Friedman agreed to make a 10 part documentary series explaining the power of economic freedom. It was called “Free to Choose,” and became one of the most watched documentaries in history.

The series not only reached audiences in liberal democracies, but was smuggled behind the iron curtain where it played, in secret, to large audiences. Reflecting on its impact, Czech president Vaclav Klaus has said: “For us, who lived in the communist world, Milton Friedman was the greatest champion of freedom, of limited and unobtrusive government and of free markets. Because of him I became a true believer in the unrestricted market economy.”

July 31st, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Friedman’s birth. To commemorate that occasion, we’d like to share an interview with “Free to Choose” producer Bob Chitester. Like this interview, the entire series can now be viewed on-line at no cost at http://www.freetochoose.tv/, thanks to the incredible technological progress brought about by the economic freedom that Milton Friedman celebrated.

Produced by Andrew Coulson, Caleb O. Brown, Austin Bragg, and Lou Richards, with help from the Free to Choose Network

_______________

Celebrating Milton Friedman

by Andrew J. Coulson

Andrew Coulson directs the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and is the author of Market Education: The Unknown History.

Added to cato.org on July 31, 2012

This article appeared in Cato.org on July 31, 20

For us, who lived in the communist world, Milton Friedman was the greatest champion of freedom, of limited and unobtrusive government and of free markets. Because of him I became a true believer in the unrestricted market economy.

Those are the words of Czech President Vaclav Klaus. Both Friedman’s writings and his landmark 1980 documentary series “Free to Choose”were smuggled into totalitarian communist states, inspiring a generation of future scholars, activists, and politicians.

July 31st, 2012 is the 100th anniversary of Friedman’s birth. To commemorate that occasion, the Cato Institute has put together a video interview with Bob Chitester, producer of “Free to Choose,” recounting how it came to be, its impact, and what it was like working with Milton Friedman.

Aside from those who lived under communism, there is another group for whom Friedman was and is a colossal figure: advocates of educational freedom. At a time when state-run schooling had been the norm for nearly a century, and had long ceased to be questioned by America’s elites, Friedman offered a modest observation: there was no good reason for the government of a free society to actually run schools and many good reasons for it not to do so.

He made this case in his essay “On the Role of Government in Education,” first published in 1955. The idea had been floated by others, including Adam Smith and Thomas Paine, but Friedman eloquently and powerfully introduced it to the American policy debate. In so doing, he, more than any other individual, can be credited with giving rise to the modern school choice movement.

Not only did Friedman spark the creation of this movement, he helped to fan the flame of educational freedom, writing popular commentaries and book chapters, speaking with and encouraging activists, founding a leading school choice institution, and dedicating the entire sixth episode of “Free to Choose” to this subject.

I had the good fortune to speak and correspond with Milton occasionally, starting in the late 1990s, and what struck me most about him was his personal integrity. He once told me that he never said anything negative about a person in private that he would not be willing to say openly in that person’s presence. So far as I know, he never violated that principle. And while he staunchly defended his conclusions as long as he remained convinced of their correctness, he would amend them if the weight of evidence shifted.

Indeed the rigorous empiricism that Friedman applied in his scholarly work is generally regarded as one of his most influential contributions to the field of economics—for a long time controversial but eventually the norm, at least in principle. His view, published in the 1953 collection Essays in Positive Economics, was that

the ultimate test of the validity of a theory is… the ability to deduce facts that have not yet been observed, that are capable of being contradicted by observation, and that subsequent observation does not contradict. [p. 300]

Equally wise, though not yet as widely accepted, is the long time horizon against which Friedman measured policy outcomes. Economist and philosopher of science James R. Wible notes that Friedman’s greatest contribution “may be his constant reminder not to forget the long run consequences of short run policies.”

In the 1982 edition of his book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman observed that scholars cannot single-handedly bring about change. Their real role, he wrote, is to “keep the lights on”—to remind us which policies work and which do not, and to show us how to advance our understanding even further. His own unfailing empiricism and concern for the long term remain valuable beacons today, both for advocates of educational freedom and the broader policy community.

_____________

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May 10, 2021 – 10:23 pm Categories: Milton Friedman | Post a comment

Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1930s by Dan Mitchell

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Prosperity and Taxation: What Can We Learn from the 1930s

The United States conducted an experiment in the 1980s. Reagan dramatically lowered the top tax rate on households, dropping it from 70 percent to 28 percent.

Folks on the left bitterly resisted Reagan’s “supply-side” agenda, arguing that “the rich won’t pay enough” and “the government will be starved of revenue.”

Fortunately, we can look at IRS data to see what happened to tax payments from those making more than $200,000 per year.

Lo and behold, it turns out that Reaganomics was a big success. Uncle Sam collected five times as much money when the rate was slashed.

As I’ve previously written, this was the Laffer Curve on steroids. Even when you consider other factors (population growth, inflation, other reforms, etc), there’s little doubt that we got a big “supply-side effect” from Reagan’s tax reforms.

Now Biden wants to run this experiment in reverse.

Based on basic economics, his approach won’t succeed. But let’s augment theory by examining what actually happened when Hoover and Roosevelt raised tax rates in the 1930s.

Alan Reynolds reviewed tax policy in the 1920s and 1930s, but let’s focus on what he wrote about the latter decade. He starts with some general observations.

Large increases in marginal tax rates on incomes above $50,000 in the 1930s were almost always matched by large reductions in the amount of high income reported and taxed…An earlier generation of economists found that raising tax rates on incomes, profits, and sales in the 1930s was inexcusably destructive. In 1956, MIT economist E. Cary Brown pointed to the “highly deflationary impact” of the Revenue Act of 1932, which pushed up rates virtually across the board, but notably on the lower‐​and middle‐​income groups.

He then gets to the all-important issue of higher tax rates leading to big reductions in taxable income.

In Figure 1, the average marginal tax rate is an unweighted average of statutory tax brackets applying to all income groups reporting more than $50,000 of income. After President Hoover’s June 1932 tax increase (retroactive to January) the number of tax brackets above $50,000 quadrupled from 8 to 32, ranging from 31 percent to 63 percent. The average of many marginal tax rates facing incomes higher than $50,000 increased from 21.5 percent in 1931 to 47 percent in 1932, and 61.9 percent in 1936. One of the most striking facts in Figure 1 is that the amount of reported income above $50,000 was almost cut in half in a single year—from $1.31 billion in 1931 to $776.7 million in 1932.

Here’s the aforementioned Figure 1. You can see that taxable income soared when tax rates were slashed in the 1920s.

But when tax rates were increased in the 1930s, taxable income collapsed and never recovered.

What’s the lesson from this chart? As Alan explained, the lesson is that high tax rates lead to rich people earning and declaring less taxable income (they still have that ability today).

In the eight years from 1932 to 1939, the economy was in cyclical contraction for only 28 months. Even in 1940, after two huge increases in income tax rates, individual income tax receipts remained lower ($1,014 million) than they had been in the 1930 slump ($1,045 million) when the top tax rate was 25 percent rather than 79 percent. Eight years of prolonged weakness in high incomes and personal tax revenue after tax rates were hugely increased in 1932 cannot be easily brushed away as merely cyclical, rather than a behavioral response to much higher tax rates on additional (marginal) income. Just as income (and tax revenue) from high‐​income taxpayers rose spectacularly after top tax rates fell from 1921 to 1928, high incomes and revenue fell just as spectacularly in 1932 when top tax rates rose.

One big takeaway is that Hoover and FDR were two peas in a pod.

Both imposed bad tax policy.

From 1930 to 1937, unlike 1923–25, virtually all federal and state tax rates on incomes and sales were repeatedly increased, and many new taxes were added, such as the Smoot‐​Hawley tariffs in 1930, taxes on alcoholic beverages in December 1933, and a Social Security payroll tax in 1937. Annual growth of per capita GDP from 1929 to 1939 was essentially zero. …To summarize: all the repeated increases in tax rates and reductions of exemptions enacted by presidents Hoover and Roosevelt in 1932–36 did not even manage to keep individual income tax collections as high in 1939–40 (in dollars or as a percent of GDP) as they had been in 1929–30. The experience of 1930 to 1940 decisively repudiated any pretense that doubling or tripling marginal tax rates on a much broader base proved to be a revenue‐​maximizing plan.

Alan closes with an observation that should raise alarm bells.

It turns out that the higher tax rates on the rich were simply the camel’s nose under the tent. The real agenda was extending the income tax to those with more modest incomes.

The most effective and sustained changes in personal taxes after 1931 were not the symbolic attempts to “soak the rich,” but rather the changes deliberately designed to convert the income tax from a class tax to a mass tax. The exemption for married couples was reduced from $3,500 to $2,500 in 1932, $2,000 in 1940, and $1,500 in 1941. Making more low incomes taxable quadrupled the number of tax returns from 3.7 million in 1930 to 14.7 million in 1940… The lowest tax rate was also raised from 1.1 percent to 4 percent in 1932, 4.4 percent in 1940, and 10 percent in 1941.

The same thing will happen today if Biden succeeds in raising taxes on the rich. Those tax hikes won’t collect much revenue, but politicians will increase spending anyhow. They’ll then use high deficits as an excuse for higher taxes on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers (some of the options include financial taxes, carbon taxes, and value-added taxes).

Lather, rinse, repeat. Until the United States is Europe. And that will definitely be bad news for ordinary people.

P.S. Here’s what we can learn about tax policy in the 1920s. And the 1950s.

P.P.S. The 1920s and 1930s also can teach us an important lesson about growth and inequality.

Sloppy or Dishonest Fiscal Analysis from the Washington Post

Good fiscal policy means low tax rates and spending restraint.

And that’s a big reason why I’m a fan of Reaganomics.

Unlike other modern presidents (including other Republicans), Reagan successfully reduced the tax burden while also limiting the burden of government spending.

President Biden wants to take the opposite approach.

A few days ago, Dan Balz of the Washington Post provided some “news analysis” about Biden’s fiscal agenda. Some of what he wrote was accurate, noting that the president wants to increase spending by an additional $6 trillion over the next 10 years.

…the scope and implications of his domestic agenda have come sharply into focus. Together they represent the most dramatic shift in federal economic and social welfare policy since Ronald Reagan was elected 40 years ago.…The politics of redistribution, which are at the heart of what Biden is proposing, could test decades of assumptions that Democrats should be afraid of being tagged as the party of big government. …Together, the already approved coronavirus relief plan, the infrastructure proposal that was unveiled a few weeks ago and the newly proposed plan to invest in social welfare programs would total roughly $6 trillion.

But Mr. Balz then decided to be either sloppy or dishonest, writing that we’ve had decades of Reagan-style policies that have squeezed domestic spending and disproportionately lowered tax burden for rich people.

Reagan’s small-government philosophy resulted in a decades-long squeeze on the federal government, especially domestic spending, and on tax policies that mainly benefited the wealthiest Americans. …Government spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced compared with previous years.

Balz is wrong, wildly wrong.

You don’t have to take my word for it. Here’s a chart, taken from an October 2020 report by the Congressional Budget Office. As you can see, people in the lowest income quintile have been the biggest winners,, with their average tax rate dropping from about 10 percent to about 2 percent..

Here’s a chart showing marginal tax rates from a January 2019 CBO report. As you can see, Reagan lowered marginal tax rates for everyone, but Balz’s assertion that the rich got the lion’s share of the benefits is hard to justify considering that people in the bottom quintile now have negative marginal tax rates.

Balz’s mistakes on tax policy are significant.

But his biggest error (or worst dishonesty) occurred when he wrote about a “decades-long squeeze” on domestic spending and asserted that “spending on social safety-net programs has been reduced.”

A quick visit to the Office of Management and Budget’s Historical Tables is all that’s needed to debunk this nonsense. Here’s a chart, based on Table 8.2, showing the inflation-adjusted growth of entitlements and domestic discretionary programs.

Call me crazy, but I’m seeing a rapid increase in domestic spending after Reagan left office.

P.S. There’s a pattern of lazy/dishonest fiscal reporting at the Washington Post.

P.P.S. I also can’t resist noting that Balz wrote how Biden wants to “invest” in social welfare programs, as if there’s some sort of positive return from creating more dependency. Reminds me of this Chuck Asay cartoon from the Obama years.

March 3, 2021

President Biden c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

______________________________

Dan Mitchell shows how ignoring the Laffer Curve is like running a stop sign!!!!

I’m thinking of inventing a game, sort of a fiscal version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Only the way it will work is that there will be a map of the world and the winner will be the blindfolded person who puts their pin closest to a nation such asAustralia or Switzerland that has a relatively low risk of long-run fiscal collapse.

That won’t be an easy game to win since we have data from the BIS, OECD, and IMF showing that government is growing far too fast in the vast majority of nations.

We also know that many states and cities suffer from the same problems.

A handful of local governments already have hit the fiscal brick wall, with many of them (gee, what a surprise) from California.

The most spectacular mess, though, is about to happen in Michigan.

The Washington Post reports that Detroit is on the verge of fiscal collapse.

After decades of sad and spectacular decline, it has come to this for Detroit: The city is $19 billion in debt and on the edge of becoming the nation’s largest municipal bankruptcy. An emergency manager says the city can make good on only a sliver of what it owes — in many cases just pennies on the dollar.

This is a dog-bites-man story. Detroit’s problems are the completely predictable result of excessive government. Just as statism explains the problems of Greece. And the problems of California. And the problems of Cyprus. And theproblems of Illinois.

I could continue with a long list of profligate governments, but you get the idea. Some of these governments are collapsing at a quicker pace and some at a slower pace. But all of them are in deep trouble because they don’t follow my Golden Rule about restraining the burden of government spending so that it grows slower than the private sector.

Detroit obviously is an example of a government that is collapsing sooner rather than later.

Why? Simply stated, as the size and scope of the public sector increased, that created very destructive economic and political dynamics.

More and more people got lured into the wagon of government dependency, which puts an ever-increasing burden on a shrinking pool of producers.

Meanwhile, organized interest groups such as government bureaucrats used their political muscle to extract absurdly excessive compensation packages, putting an even larger burden of the dwindling supply of taxpayers.

But that’s not the main focus of this post. Instead, I want to highlight a particular excerpt from the article and make a point about how too many people are blindly – perhaps willfully – ignorant of the Laffer Curve.

Check out this sentence.

Property tax collections are down 20 percent and income tax collections are down by more than a third in just the past five years — despite some of the highest tax rates in the state.

This is a classic “Fox Butterfield mistake,” which occurs when someone fails to recognize a cause-effect relationship. In this case, the reporter should have recognized that tax collections are down because Detroit has very high tax rates.

The city has a lot more problems than just high tax rates, of course, but can there be any doubt that productive people have very little incentive to earn and report taxable income in Detroit?

And that’s the essential insight of the Laffer Curve. Politicians can’t – or at least shouldn’t – assume that a 20 percent increase in tax rates will lead to a 20 percent increase in tax revenue. They also have to consider the degree to which a higher tax rate will cause a change in taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from earning more taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will discourage people from reporting all the income they earn.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage people to utilize tax loopholes to shrink their taxable income.

In some cases, higher tax rates will encourage migration, thus causing taxable income to disappear.

Here’s my three-part video series on the Laffer Curve. Much of this is common sense, though it needs to be mandatory viewing for elected officials (as well as the bureaucrats at the Joint Committee on Taxation).

The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory

Uploaded by  on Jan 28, 2008

The Laffer Curve charts a relationship between tax rates and tax revenue. While the theory behind the Laffer Curve is widely accepted, the concept has become very controversial because politicians on both sides of the debate exaggerate. This video shows the middle ground between those who claim “all tax cuts pay for themselves” and those who claim tax policy has no impact on economic performance. This video, focusing on the theory of the Laffer Curve, is Part I of a three-part series. Part II reviews evidence of Laffer-Curve responses. Part III discusses how the revenue-estimating process in Washington can be improved. For more information please visit the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s web site: http://www.freedomandprosperity.org

Part 2

Part 3

P.S. Just in case it’s not clear from the videos, we don’t want to be at the revenue-maximizing point on the Laffer Curve.

P.P.S. Amazingly, even the bureaucrats at the IMF recognize that there’s a point when taxes are so onerous that further increases don’t generate revenue.

P.P.P.S. At least CPAs understand the Laffer Curve, probably because they help their clients reduce their tax exposure to greedy governments.

P.P.P.P.S. I offered a Laffer Curve lesson to President Obama, but I doubt it had any impact.

___________________________

Thank you so much for your time. I know how valuable it is. I also appreciate the fine family that you have and your commitment as a father and a husband.

Sincerely,

Everette Hatcher III, 13900 Cottontail Lane, Alexander, AR 72002, ph 501-920-5733,

Williams with Sowell – Minimum Wage

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell – Reducing Black Unemployment

By WALTER WILLIAMS

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Ronald Reagan with Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman The Power of the Market 2-5

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MUSIC MONDAY Did the Beatles Really Say They Were More Popular than Jesus?

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Come Together – John Lennon (Live In New York City)

George Harrison – Here comes the sun Subtitulada en Español

LET IT BE

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The Beatles – Yellow Submarine

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Did the Beatles Really Say They Were More Popular than Jesus?

WRITTEN BYMeg MatthiasMeg Matthias is Assistant Digital Editor and Producer at Encyclopædia Britannica. She graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in English.British rock group The Beatles, waving to screaming fans en route to Boston, Massachusetts airport (from l to r) George Harrison, Ringo Starr, John Lennon, and Paul McCartney, on August 12, 1966.Daily Express/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

In March 1966 Maureen Cleave, a reporter and friend of Beatles member John Lennon, published a profile in the London Evening Standard: “How does a Beatle live? John Lennon lives like this.” In the profile the 25-year-old Lennon discussed his strained relationship with his father, the toys he bought with his still relatively new wealth, including a gorilla suit and five television sets, and the fact that sex was the only physical exercise that interested him anymore. (It was rumored, though never confirmed, that Lennon and Cleave were having an affair.) Lennon’s comments about Christianity, which were to become so sensational in a few months, did not seem especially notable in such a mix.


“Christianity will go,” Lennon said, according to Cleave’s article. “It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first—rock ’n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.” As Cleave noted in the profile, Lennon had been using his time off from Beatles commitments to read about religion. 

The remarks proved uncontroversial upon their publication in England, where the term “Christianity” was highly associated with the Church of England, a denomination many felt had become antiquated and outdated. When the profile was republished by other global newspapers, including The New York Times, the quote was again largely ignored.

It was not until Lennon’s comments were reprinted in a July issue of Datebook, a U.S. teen magazine with a political edge, that it began to gain attention. Birmingham, Alabama, radio hosts Tommy Charles and Doug Layton derided the comment on-air as “blasphemous” and proposed a “Ban the Beatles” campaign, refusing to play the band’s music in response. Likely attempting to portray himself as a moral arbiter rather than a shock jock, Charles said, “Because of their tremendous popularity throughout the world, especially with the younger set, [the Beatles] have been able to say what they wanted to without any regard for judgment, maturity, or the meaning of it, and no one has challenged them to any degree.”

From there, the manager of the Birmingham office of United Press International, Al Benn, published a story about the Beatles Boycott, shocking Evangelical Southern audiences. Dozens of radio hosts joined Charles and Layton in refusing to play the Beatles’ music, some even going so far as to smash the band’s records on-air—a stunt that escalated when other Southern radio stations began to conduct mass burnings of the albums. The South Carolina Ku Klux Klan even became involved, nailing the Beatles’ records to a cross before setting it on fire. 

Lennon initially refused to comment on the controversy, though others, such as Cleave and Beatles manager Brian Epstein, did so for him. “John was certainly not comparing the Beatles to Christ,” Cleave clarified in a statement to the press. “He was simply observing that, so weak was the state of Christianity, the Beatles was, to many people, better known.” Epstein considered canceling the band’s upcoming United States tour if it might put them in danger from angry audiences, even offering to cover the $1 million loss himself. 

Though Epstein extended the opportunity for American venues to cancel upcoming appearances by the Beatles, none did. When the band arrived in Chicago in August 1966, Lennon held a press conference to publicly apologize. “I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing,” Lennon said. “I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don’t know quite what I’ve done. I’ve tried to tell you what I did do, but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then—okay, I’m sorry.” 

Though Lennon’s apology put much of the blame on those who had misinterpreted his remarks rather than himself, they still resulted in the desired outcome: most of the anti-Beatles fervor across the country died down. Small crowds of religious protestors and members of the Ku Klux Klan still greeted the band at Southern shows, however, and the tour proved to be the Beatles’ last. The realization that even a beloved band could be met with controversy and violence, combined with the band’s fatigue after three years of Beatlemania, signaled a turning point. With the exception of a few live performances, the Beatles were a studio unit only from then on.

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9474 words

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“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 5 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part D, A LOOK AT T.S. Eliot’s DESPAIR AND THEN HIS SOLUTION)

December 9, 2015 – 4:41 am

In MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Gil Pender ponders the advice he gets from his literary heroes from the 1920’s. King Solomon in Ecclesiastes painted a dismal situation for modern man in life UNDER THE SUN  and many modern artists, poets, and philosophers have agreed. In the 1920’s T.S.Eliot and his  house guest Bertrand Russell were two of […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 4 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part C, IS THE ANSWER TO FINDING SATISFACTION FOUND IN WINE, WOMEN AND SONG?)

December 2, 2015 – 4:50 am

Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald left the prohibitionist America for wet Paris in the 1920’s and they both drank a lot. WINE, WOMEN AND SONG  was their motto and I am afraid ultimately wine got the best of Fitzgerald and shortened his career. Woody Allen pictures this culture in the first few clips in the […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 3 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part B, THE SURREALISTS Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and Luis Bunuel try to break out of cycle!!!)

November 25, 2015 – 4:32 am

In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen the best scene of the movie is when Gil Pender encounters the SURREALISTS!!!  This series deals with the Book of Ecclesiastes and Woody Allen films.  The first post  dealt with MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT and it dealt with the fact that in the Book of Ecclesiastes Solomon does contend […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 2 MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Part A, When was the greatest time to live in Paris? 1920’s or La Belle Époque [1873-1914] )

November 18, 2015 – 5:36 am

In the film MIDNIGHT IN PARIS Woody Allen is really looking at one main question through the pursuits of his main character GIL PENDER. That question is WAS THERE EVER A GOLDEN AGE AND DID THE MOST TALENTED UNIVERSAL MEN OF THAT TIME FIND TRUE SATISFACTION DURING IT? This is the second post I have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

“Woody Wednesday” ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” (Part 1 MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT)

November 11, 2015 – 12:02 am

I am starting a series of posts called ECCLESIASTES AND WOODY ALLEN’S FILMS: SOLOMON “WOULD GOT ALONG WELL WITH WOODY!” The quote from the title is actually taken from the film MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT where Stanley derides the belief that life has meaning, saying it’s instead “nasty, brutish, and short. Is that Hobbes? I would have […]By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Woody Allen | Edit|Comments (0)

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 20, King Louis XVI of France)

June 28, 2011 – 5:44 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (1)

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 19,Marie Antoinette)

June 27, 2011 – 12:16 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit|Comments (0)

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 18, Claude Monet)

June 26, 2011 – 5:41 amBy Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit|

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