Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree.
Steven Malanga writing in RealClearMarkets. Go check and see if your state is one of the ones that has captured his attention. Mine is barely mentioned. Yeah, that’s right…California is barely worth a mention. Our state laboratories are giving us that many lessons on how to govern stupidly.
The pain might not be so intense if residents of these states were getting something for all of this extra taxation. But in fact the state motto in some of these places could be “High taxes, lousy government.” Jersey, with the highest state and local taxes, has one of the worst performing governments in the country, according to Governing Magazine, and it invests so little in its infrastructure its roads have been rated the worst in the nation. New York, which spends much of its state budget on a Medicaid program that is twice as large as any other, doesn’t have a healthier, better-cared for low-income population. California, which spent billions of dollars to lower public school class-sizes, has seen no payoff in higher test scores or graduation results.
The really bad news, however, is that there is no easy way out of this for many of these states. Their budget problems are structural and long-term and can’t be fixed merely by trimming a little waste and pork here and there. Most of these states have wracked up huge debts, for instance, so that bond payments are now weighing down their balance sheets. Their bondholders must be fed or chaos will ensue.
These states also suffer from huge public employee pension and benefits obligations that are often guaranteed by law. In fact, the pension funds of these states are so underfunded they make the Social Security Trust Fund look solvent by comparison.
These long-term structure problems are one reason why prospects for local tax revolts of the type we saw in the late 1970s and early 1990s have been slow to materialize. Any reformer who looks closely at these budgets understands that the only way out are service cuts that will be felt by virtually everyone in the state.
Faced with unpalatable choices, these states sit and hope that the answer comes in the former of even more stimulus money from the Obama administration given directly to states to spend on government operations. But rising anger from politicians and citizens in states that have been fiscally responsible will make that harder.
In the next few years, it seems, we will truly test the notion of whether people will get up and move simply because of high taxes. Oh, and bad government.
Hat tip to Sister Toldjah.
I’m afraid when my grandchildren are in college they’ll be asking me “but back in 2009, before that awful thing that happened right afterward, you said the Laffer Curve was controversial and some people called it all-but-discredited; how’s that??” And I’ll have to tell them, “I don’t know.”
The idea isn’t a terribly complicated one. Taxes may be compulsory, but they aren’t so compulsory that you can just raise them and raise them and sit back and wait for the money to roll in. People always have the option to cease & desist. That is, unless you want to pass a Directive 10-289…
…well anyway. Here’s one for the “tax the rich” states. Perhaps the only glimmer of hope they’ll be getting for a long, long time:
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I live in one of those low tax, pro-business states, you know, a red state full of conservatives driving large trucks and packing heat. We don’t have too many economic problems down here, but then we only allow the legislature to convene every two years. We’d like to see them meet less, the place might be perfect if we could get them on a five year schedule.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 04:13OT – I just opened drudge and almost vomited. Obama won the Nobel Peace prize, how disgusting is that? I thought drudge was running a joke at first, no such luck.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 04:15We’re the opposite. The rules about car seats and kids change each and every January, and each and every July. As for what the weight limit is on any given day, nobody knows. Even the cops don’t know. The kid’s twelve now, but back when we had to worry about it, the question was never really settled.
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 04:17You are up early!! Good morning.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 04:20Regarding the other thing, He should be enjoying this kind of life. It’s to be expected. He’s offering people exactly what they’ve always wanted: A way to pretend they’re solving all the problems, while engaging in exactly the mindset that caused them in the first place.
History will record it that He won the Nobel first, and that is what inspired us to elect Him as our new President. And then he did all kinds of wonderful things to fix our economy, but something got in the way and kept it from working as well as it should have…although His Nobel-Prizey ideas did stop things from getting much, much worse. Just like LBJ’s Great Society, FDR’s New Deal and Wilson’s Fourteen-Point Peace Plan.
That is the litany. You read it here first.
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 04:22Yup, can’t sleep alone. By 3:30 I’m up for the day.
She’s coming back tomorrow night.
- mkfreeberg | 10/09/2009 @ 04:24That’s good.
I think you’re dead on in your assessment about that twit we elected and the coming historical whitewash.
I have to go cook breakfast and get the kids up, see you later.
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 04:33[…] to quote myself again. Daphne’s news item is fast-becoming the big 72-point font headline of the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/09/2009 @ 04:59On the Tax issue collectivists make it clear they are entirely ignorant about how to make wealth and only know how to take it. Like bank robber Willie Sutton, they tax the rich because they think that’s where the money is.
- DirtCrashr | 10/09/2009 @ 10:47If she’d been reading me, she’d have vomited an hour before Drudge. But I wouldn’t have wanted to be responsible.
- vanderleun | 10/09/2009 @ 11:27I was still sleeping off a bottle of wine when you beat the press to the punch, Gerard.
Nice scoop!
- Daphne | 10/09/2009 @ 11:31