For practical reasons, Bill and Melinda Gates don't want lawmakers to get bogged down in arguments about the top marginal rate, which is currently 37 percent. "If you focus on that, you're missing the picture," Bill said in a recent interview with The Verge.
"In terms of revenue collection, you wouldn't want to just focus on the ordinary income rate, because people who are wealthy have a rounding error of ordinary income," he said. "They have income that just is the value of their stock, which if they don't sell it, it doesn't show up as income at all, or if it shows up, it shows over in the capital gains side. So the ability of hedge fund people, various people — they aren't paying that ordinary income rate."
Instead, he suggested, we should be more progressive with "the estate tax and the tax on capital, the way the FICA and Social Security taxes work. We can be more progressive without really threatening income generation." That idea might find favor with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has floated the idea of a wealth tax on households worth more than $50 million.
I still say, above a high threshold impose mark-to-market accounting to end the eternal deferral of unrealized capital gains taxes. But to avoid forced sales to pay the bill (and to create a buffer account against possible future losses) allow payment of the taxes over ten years.
Mark-to-market accounting is already part of the tax code (eg, futures and index options, not to mention the charitable deduction for appreciated assets with a long term gain.) This idea side-steps the Constitutional puzzle of Warren's wealth tax.
Vegan Cory Booker Says Meat Eaters’ Days Are Numbered
Geez, Booker with more raw tofu for his base. Team AOC already put a ten year "sell-by" on America's flatulent cows so I think these New Age progressives are serious. Serious, thoughtful, relatable, and totally in touch with Middle America. (Ooops, did I leave out "electable"?)
Cocaine Mitch brings the crowd to its feet with his plan to bring the Ocasio-Cortez/Markey Green New Deal resolution to the Senate for a floor vote. How far out is that "plan"? The NY Times today presents an "ambitious" plan to achieve half as much in three times as long. Whoa, that is quite a gap between AOC and her cheerleaders - next time they might want to agree to appear in the same stadium.
Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) of trying to “sabotage” and “silence” voters by bringing the Green New Deal, which was also proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), to the Senate floor to vote on.
Uh huh. Voting on the bill is "sabotage". And if Trump were to sign it Pelosi would probably view it as an impeachable offense (mental incapacity?!?). What's Markey's message, "Stop me before I speak again"?
Now, let me have a To Be Fair moment: Markey might have envisioned committee hearings, expert testimony, and a chance to build public support for his pandering left-wing dreamscape. After which the bill would die in committee, where only a few sacrificial lambs from the Democratic side would have to stand and be slaughtered counted. But, ooops - now they will all have a chance at Auto-beclownment.
So, a possible dodge - Markey and the Dem Senate leadership could pull a page from the Mitch-Fu playbook and filibuster their own bill. Would that be even more embarrassing? Do these guys (and gals!) even know what embarrassment is anymore?
WHEN YOU'VE LOST THE TIMES: To give a sense of the uphill battle Markey and AOC face on this, let's segue to the NY Times, which has an interactive display outlining seven "ambitious" plans that could, together, cut US greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by 2050. (50 by 50? That could soundbite! I'd give it a 50/50 chance... Now ask me about "Fifty-four Forty or fight"!)
First of all, 2050? The "goal" in the Markey/Ocasio-Cortez fantasy seems to be for the US to be net-zero at the end of their ten year plan, so maybe 2030 (my emphasis):
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that—
1. it is the duty of the Federal Government to create a Green New Deal—
A. to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers;
...
2. the goals described in subparagraphs (A) through (E) of paragraph (1) (referred to in this resolution as the ‘‘Green New Deal goals’’) should be accomplished through a 10-year national mobilization (referred to in this resolution as the ‘‘Green New Deal mobilization’’) that will require the following goals and projects—
A. building resiliency against climate change-related disasters, such as extreme weather, including by leveraging funding and providing investments for community-defined projects and strategies;
B. repairing and upgrading the infrastructure in the United States, including— by eliminating pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as much as technologically feasible; by guaranteeing universal access to clean water; by reducing the risks posed by flooding and other climate impacts; and by ensuring that any infrastructure bill considered by Congress addresses climate change;
C. meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources, including—
The first two steps of the NY Times plans include a carbon tax and a push for zero emissions power including nuclear. Carbon taxes are poo-poohed in the AOC FAQ. Nuclear is ducked in the resolution but is treated like a cow (a flatulent cow, not a sacred one) in the FAQs - kill 'em!
Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris admitted to marijuana use in college and then messed up her timeline, saying she toked up while listening to rappers who made the scene while she was a Deputy District Attorney in Oakland. Oops!
Most of the reporting came from the right but there was some possibility that lefties would take up the charge since there are already progressives who are skeptical of prosecutors. They are probably even more skeptical of hypocritical prosecutors. What, lock 'em up by day, light 'em up at night?
In any case, Team Harris's spokesperson is backpedaling to Newsweek, saying she was responding to a different question about which music she listens to. Eventually she may be asked by the progressive media whether she smoked marijuana after college and we may see more waltzing and tap-dancing.
Roll the tape! The "marijuana in college" is at about 34:10; The 'What music did you listen to, with a quick interruption to ask, what did you listen to while high' moment is at 38:00.
This incident is an interesting straw in the wind. Obviously the legacy media focuses on protecting the Democratic brand (When they write "Republicans pounce" I read "Lib media circle the wagons"). But this huge Democratic Presidential primary is going to be a festival of Blue-on-Blue. There will be times (this might have been one of them) where the media instinct to cover for their side can't work because some factions on their side want to discredit other factions. Fun, fun, fun!
Jeff Stein and Journolister David Weigel of the WaPo deliver a hard-hitting apologia for the botched roll-out of the New Green Deal and the accompanying FAQs from Team AOC. All that's missing is "Republican's pounced!" [Thanks to the NY Times, its no longer missing.]
Real journalists might have explored the ideological divergences on the left that led to obvious compromises on topics such as nuclear power and carbon capture (presumably views on farting cows are widely shared). Maybe even get quotes frim lefties ranging from moderate to Fully Delusional on those issues. Or don't bother. Better to pretend the Dems are on the same page.
And a careful read [of the actual resolution] revealed that, for all its ambition, the resolution actually represented a compromise of sorts between the new wave of socialism-embracing enviro-warriors, represented by Ocasio-Cortez, and establishment climate hawks like Markey, who co-authored a cap-and-trade bill that passed the House but died in the Senate during 2010. Far-left environmental groups such as the Sunrise Movement, which staged sit-ins in Spaker Nancy Pelosi’s office over the Green New Deal, have threatened to oppose climate legislation that relies on nuclear power, carbon-capture technology, or “market-based mechanisms” to limit carbon, such as cap-and-trade or a carbon tax. This absolutist stance has startled and frightened some more-moderate climate activists and scientists, who believe that power sources like nuclear will be necessary to prevent the planet from frying and are worried that the left might be stumbling into an environmental agenda that will inadvertently doom us by rejecting necessary tools. It’s OK, in their view, to be overly ambitious about taming capitalism; it is not OK to rule out technologies we might need to save ourselves.
The Green New Deal resolution avoided these messy fights simply by staying mum on them. Instead of saying yes or no on nuclear, for instance, it set out the goal of “Meeting 100 percent of the power demand in the United States through clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources.” The words carbon tax aren’t in the resolution, which means the idea isn’t being ruled out. The compromise worked. Even if every Democrat wasn’t quite on board, the resolution netted 60 house members and nine Senators, including a bunch of 2020 hopefuls, as co-sponsors.
But then there was the unofficial version...
Ahh, well.
Early in the day, Ocasio-Cortez’s office sent out a FAQ to reporters that read a bit like the Green New Deal Uncensored—as if the resolution had gotten drunk at an office party decided to tell its co-workers exactly what it thought of them. Nuclear? On its way out. “It’s unclear if we will be able to decommission every nuclear plant within 10 years, but the plan is to transition off of nuclear and all fossil fuels as soon as possible.” Carbon capture tech? Not a priority. “We believe the right way to capture carbon is to plant trees and restore our natural ecosystems. CCUS technology to date has not proven effective.” The document even seemed to set its sights on air travel and beef. “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.” To top everything off, the FAQ suggested Washington could pay for the plan essentially by printing money, thereby going full Modern Monetary Theory.
So why muddy the resolution by releasing this? Two ideas:
One obvious read is that the FAQ simply represents Ocasio-Cortez’s unfiltered views, and she will continue a push a version of climate policy along the lines it lays out.
Or, the Keep Hope Alive scenario:
Another way to look at the situation, though, is that the FAQ is essentially just a list of points that Ocasio-Cortez and her office lost on while negotiating the resolution with Markey. Most of the things that raised an uproar on Twitter—like wiping out America’s flatulent steer population—were not included in the resolution, after all. If you keep that in mind, the side-documents look more like an attempt to save face with left-wing activists, a promise that Ocasio-Cortez will keep fighting for their priorities even if the vast majority of Democrats won’t ever embrace them. As Markey suggested, the resolution is canon; the FAQs are fanfic.
The folks worried that democracy dies in darkness won't be shedding light on this.
I gave up on my Thunder when they were flat on their backs and playing no defense in the third. Don't stop believing!
On a more serious topic, polling from Virginia on whether Governor Northam should moonwalk down shows that voters aren't nearly as woke as the posturing politicians. And the obvious partisan divides (Democrats, African-Americans favor him staying, Republicans say "out") does not reassure us that this is first and foremost a moral issue.
Lt. Governor Fairfax has a second accuser who gave contemporaneous accounts to her friends o fa sexual assault at Duke in 2000.
I don't see how Fairfax survives the two allegations. This situation is just like the Kavanaugh mess, except for being totally different. Each woman is clear about the time and place and the Duke accuser identified friends in who she had confided at the time. At least one has come forward:
A college friend of Ms. Watson’s, Kaneedreck Adams, said in an interview that Ms. Watson told her she was raped the day after she said it happened, and named Mr. Fairfax as her assailant.
“She was upset, she was kind of crying quietly and she said that she had been raped” by Mr. Fairfax, Ms. Adams said.
“I said, ‘Did you say no?’ and she said, no she couldn’t say no,” Ms. Adams said. “And she said she was trying to get out of there, get away, remove herself from the situation, and she said Justin kept pushing her down.”
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez launches her Intersectional Environmentalism proposal to de-carbonize the US economy and solve every social problem within ten years.
‘We’re nuts!’ isn’t a great pitch for a Green New Deal
But this proposal, and especially the accompanying (and withdrawn) fact sheet isn't merely ludicrously ambitious and devoid of common sense (Eliminate air travel?!? Retrofit "every" building in America?!?). It also reveals a stunning absence of basic knowledge of history and public finance.
One wonders whether Ms. AOC actually has the time and temperament to collaborate with experts and study an issue (yet another reason she is the Trump of the left!). Or did Democratic leadership cut her loose and send the real Washington hands off on other projects? Let her primary herself!
On to specifics. This passage on how the extreme environmental makeover might be financed may have sounded great in a college dorm. A freshman dorm. But this is a frightening level of ignorance about the structure, legal authorities, independence and role of the Federal Reserve when it comes from a Congressperson as part of a legislative package (my emphasis):
How will you pay for it?
The same way we paid for the New Deal, the 2008 bank bailout and extended quantitative easing programs. The same way we paid for World War II and all our current wars. The Federal Reserve can extend credit to power these projects and investments and new public banks can be created to extend credit. There is also space for the government to take an equity stake in projects to get a return on investment. At the end of the day, this is an investment in our economy that should grow our wealth as a nation, so the question isn’t how will we pay for it, but what will we do with our new shared prosperity.
Ah, well, what? The Federal Reserve is an independent entity - it won't be financing this green agenda just because AOC thinks it ought to. As to their legal authority, well, it is widely agreed the Fed can purchase government backed debt. They crept beyond that during the 2008 financial meltdown and used their lending authority to finance parts of the AIG bailout in what was widely perceived as an dire, backs against the wall, emergency meltdown scenario. But it is not at all obvious why an independent Fed would choose to finance these green projects or whether it would be within their legal scope.
Back on the history front, this JFK/Ike/FDR nostalgia is ahistorical nonsense:
Americans love a challenge. This is our moonshot.
When JFK said we’d go to the by the end of the decade, people said impossible.
If Eisenhower wanted to build the interstate highway system today, people would ask how we’d pay for it.
When FDR called on America to build 185,000 planes to fight World War 2, every business leader, CEO, and general laughed at him... At the time, the U.S. had produced 3,000 planes in the last year. By the end of the war, we produced 300,000 planes. That’s what we are capable of if we have real leadership.
One at a time: Kennedy first laid out the man-on-the-moon vision in May 1961. The US was losing the space race to the Soviet Union, which had the first satellite and the first man in space (their legacy rocket program from WWII gave them a head start).
Did people say "impossible"? The relevant Senate Committee unanimously approved funding a few weeks later. Polling was scattered: per Forbes, in 1959 52% thought a man on the moon was doable within 20 years; in early 1961, 65% approved of the attempt. Well, until the price tag was announced: per Wikipedia, 58% opposed the use of funds for that purpose. But "impossible"? Notseeing it.
And Ike? Well, he didn't wait for people to ask how we'd pay for the highway program - he asked Congress to extend the gasoline tax in his original proposal. No, fiscal conservatism wasn't invented last weekend to thwart Green Dreams.
As to FDR, my goodness: his speech calling for a massive rearmament effort was delivered on May 15, 1940, five days after Germany began their invasion of France. The French collapse along the Meuse was well underway, although the public (and possibly Allied military leadership) may not have been fully aware. The Times front page, with the Roosevelt speech in the upper left:
Although AOC is surely hearing laughter today, people were not laughing in May of 1940 (Geez, did she see "Churchill"? "Dunkirk"? How about "Avengers - Infinity War"?). In fact, FDR pressed into service William Knudsen, the head of General Motors, to dial up America's industrial base. Here is how historian Arthur Herman described Knudsen's approach:
“I’m no soldier,” Knudsen told Roosevelt when he got to Washington that May, “But I know if we get into war, the winning of it will be purely a question of material production.” He persuaded FDR that three steps were needed to get America’s businesses and factories ready for getting back to work, and getting ready for war.
The first was to rethink Roosevelt’s own anti-business instincts, and to bring industry leaders into the administration to deal with the production crisis.
The second was to scrap many of the New Deal’s anti-business regulations and tax policies, in order to give businesses an incentive to switch to wartime production and hire workers, retool, and expand their plants.
The third was to take control of the war mobilization process away from Washington bureaucrats and give it to America’s most innovative and productive companies.
That sounds sort of the opposite of the AOC plan to put the government in charge of everything.
Well. Other than showing no grasp of common sense, history or public finance I would say AOC is good to go.
Trump is targeting Socialist Creep in American politics, or maybe just socialist creeps. While we wait for confirmation of the rumor that Putin's Twitter-bots are behind the amplification of AOC, let me toss this NY Times think piece from tech writer Farhood Manjoo into the mix:
Abolish Billionaires
A radical idea is gaining adherents on the left. It’s the perfect way to blunt tech-driven inequality.
I'll let you read it, or guess the rest.
And because there is nothing so satisfying as talking to the wind (possible exception - shouting "Get off my lawn!), I posted this comment among the hundreds there. Yup, my free content is helping the Times thrive.
First, the notion that all billionaires equal a policy failure is a call-back to the zero-sum notion that wealth is the result of exploitation.
Sometimes that is correct - Aldrich Rockefeller monopolized oil, driving up prices for everyone who used it directly or indirectly (ie, everyone). That IS exploitative, and is also barred by antitrust law. Break 'em up!
On the other hand, some people have breakthrough ideas that enrich us all. Who did JK Rowling exploit with her Harry Potter monopoly? (Then again, George Lucas is also a billionaire and if social policy had made him stop already with the Star Wars films after "Return of the Jedi" I'd have been a backer).
As a tech writer Mr. Manjoo is well positioned to understand this, as is every New Yorker who ever bought a lottery ticket or went to a restaurant staffed by aspiring Broadway stars. People line up for a chance to win $500 million in the lottery. Do they stand in line for $50,000? The prospect of an Gyneth Paltrow/Hugh Jackman type payday inspires hundreds who never make it. Would capping a media star's pay enrich or diminish our cultural life?
Tech is like Hollywood. Venture capital is looking for the NEXT Facebook success. However, most of The Next Big Things won't be. Tut-tutting at Zuckerberg's payday overlooks the huge number of ideas (a few of them good!) that got funding based on his example.
If there are antitrust problems with Big Tech, apply the law. Don't trash the whole process.
They have a character limit so I was mercifully brought up short. Left unremarked: The Times is likely to be a Last Man Standing in media, and will stay alive based on a mini-monopoly as one of a very few sources of "real" journalism (rather than clickbait aggregation). Whether the billionaire Sulzberger family is OK with this is left unexplored, but my guess is they consider themselves to be "good" billionaires.
MORE RUMORS: Bernie was compromised by his Soviet spymasters during his honeymoon in Russia. They knew his day would come! That is why they tried so hard to sandbag Hillary in 2016, but their timing was off. Still, defeating her kept the door open for Bernie 2020. Yes, it did!
A Connecticut state representative is proposing a 50-percent tax increase on ammunition, breaking new ground in the gun control debate.
...
“Currently ammunition is taxed at the same rate as other products,” Gilchrest says. “We want to increase it by 50 percent because we see it as a prevention measure.”
Gilchrest also said that her tax wouldn’t apply to law enforcement or members of the military, but claims it’s necessary for civilians. Gilchrest compares her ammunition tax to conventional “sin taxes” like those implemented on cigarettes and tobacco.
“We see this as a public health measure,” Gilchrest. “When we [increased taxes on cigarettes], we’ve seen a reduction in use. We want to continue Connecticut’s legacy of being the leader in preventing and addressing gun violence and we see this as another step forward in that direction.”
I’m hearing push back about the need to protect one's home... but how much ammunition does someone really need to do that?
How many bullets does a typical armed citizen use in a typical year shooting at would-be perps? For the vast majority, the number is zero, or close to it. And even those unlucky enough to actually need to fire their weapon aren't normally spraying the landscape (this Houston home invasion was an outlier.)
This is a tax on practice, not "gun violence". I am not sure how much time street thugs spend at the practice range, but this bill may reduce it. I doubt it will change the economics of armed robbery and I have a hard time picturing a would-be suicide thinking "I'd shoot myself but the taxes would kill me".
The NRA response seems to grasp the "Don't tax practice" issue:
“This dreadful legislation punishes law-abiding citizens and makes it harder to learn how to safely use firearms,” the NRA said on Twitter Tuesday morning.
There is also a Constitutional "infringement" question, a good discussion of which I cannot seem to find right now. The theme is that end runs around a Constitutional right are not allowed. For example, an exorbitant tax on ink is not really censorship but it would be an infringement of the free press. Similarly, allowing guns but banning ammunition would not (or should not) be acceptable under Heller.
Russian Navy has new weapon that makes targets hallucinate, vomit: report
Wow! Who knew they could weaponize the Super Bowl game film so quickly?!?
BONUS: Ross Douthat on his arc of fandom for the Red Sox and Patriots.
First, the Lost Years of shared sorrow and self-pity, aka the Lovable Losers era:
How I Learned to Love the Patriots (Again)
The underdoggery and romance of my childhood are out. Dynastic rule and the creation of a great new American institution are in.
I became a besotted baseball fan at the age of 6, watching the Boston Red Sox, my mother’s ancestral team, march to the World Series against the New York Mets. My parents woke me up near midnight on Oct. 25, 1986, to come downstairs with them and “watch the Red Sox win” — an eventuality that was, at that moment, just a single out away. It remained one out away through three singles, a devastating wild pitch and an incident that shall not be described involving one William Joseph Buckner. I wept, slept and awoke a gloomy pessimist, forever haunted by the fall of man.
...
This combination of Red Sox tragedy and Patriot futility defined my relationship to professional sports until adulthood, at which point (as you may have heard) absolutely everything changed for both teams and they became insufferably dominant. And my fandom, forged in suffering and melodrama and “wait ’till next year” rue, never quite recovered from my favorite teams’ success.
Yeah, yeah - everybody loves a loser until they experience winning. And the Boston fans! Back in the day an ardent Red Sox follower offered his take: In the Stadium, when the Yankees are down by three in the ninth the fans cheer and roar as if they can will the victory to which they are entitled. In Fenway if the Red Sox were leading by three in the ninth but the other team got a man on first, the place would go silent, as if thirty-three thousand turkeys had just been told about Thanksgiving.
Ahh, that's changed. Ross describes his bumpy transition into the glory years:
I remember that person, but I can’t remember how he felt. And trying to raise my children to be New England sports fans in an age of constant New England winning has given me real sympathy with the lukewarmly religious, the Christmas-and-Easter sort of believer who wants to impart some measure of piety to their children without really experiencing the flame of faith themselves.
...
But the frequent triumphs of the Sox and Pats have been crucial to my loss of ardor. In the old days I was always mystified about how Yankee fans stirred up the same excitement year after year despite their constant winning, and as my teams became increasingly Yankee-like the mystification remained. Indeed, I missed the thirst enough to seek the feeling elsewhere — adopting long-suffering franchises temporarily (until the Kansas City Royals ruined our affair by winning the World Series) to remind myself of what it was like to nourish long-unrequited hopes.
Today? He's nearing a breakthrough:
And now that the Patriots have ground their way, in a terrible-to-watch game highlighted by punts, to yet another Super Bowl victory, I want to report a change in my sports psychology. In my dutiful connection to the latest run of Patriot Super Bowl appearances, I have begun to feel something different, strange and unfamiliar — not a recovery of the old romance, but a growing appreciation of pure, ruthless effectiveness, an admiration for iron efficiency, a joy at the dismantling of highly touted rivals, a feeling that almost … almost … makes me begin to have a trace of a scintilla of understanding for what it feels like to be a Yankees fan.
A slippery slope! He eventually quotes General Patton. Does Douthat risk brain damage by listening to sports talk radio? If so, he knows that way back when Mike Francesca would greet pronouncements by the Yankee owner with an intro about a new message from General George M. Steinbrenner, with the theme from "Patton" in the background.
Oh, boy. Seven more weeks until baseball?
MORE: I can't find a General Steinbrenner clip but Mike and the Mad Dog talk to Red Sox fan Mike Barnicle after the 2003 finale. Starts at about 32:40.
The NY Times swallows hard and front-pages on ode to the Pemian oil fields Low gasoline prices, the US as an oil exporter, Venezuela and Iran reeling, jobs, jobs, jobs - all they do is forget to credit Obama.
Wait, what? Credit Mr. "We Can't Drill Our Way Out Of This"? That would be crazy and they didn't try but... if I were an Earnest Obamaphile I would claim that although Obama paid lip service to the Green Agenda he never go behind the sort of federal fracking ban that, for example, Cuomo eventually backed in New York.
I was watching the press exhibition by embattled Governor Northam and thought I had tuned in to the longest cold open in the history of Saturday Night live.
Eugene Volokh is his calm and sensible self on the question of long-past misbehavior. His respondents at Reason also raise reasonable objections to being even-handed and sensible, arguing that Democrats won't stop and "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly?".
IMHO, if the apology for the picture on Friday and the disavowal of the picture on Saturday are baffling. If people think that on Saturday morning the governor decided on a strategy of bald-faced lying, well, yes, then you have to believe he is psychotic and delusional.
If, on the other hand, you think he panicked on Friday and realized he needed to pound the table in defense of his once-good name on Saturday, well, maybe. Obviously, politicians lie, but they also panic.
My question is, what's the rush? Is the governor signing controversial bills this weekend that the Lt. Governor would veto? I doubt it.
Only two weeks ago the right was enraged that the media piled onto the Covington kids with no atempt to gather facts and reflect. Two weeks later, here we go again.
Of course, the right could thunder away to their heart's content about Northam and nothing would change, as we saw with the controversy about his abortion comments. Democrats are happy to pile on because (a) they are in a furious contest to be Wokest Democrat EVER and (b) this is a free shot at the hoop since Lt. Governor Fairfax is totally acceptable ideologically and cosmetically.
ON THAT ABORTION BILL: I concur with David French about the real problem with that bill - moving from three doctors to one and removing a standard of harm to the mother are disturning:
The bill reduces the number of doctors required to certify the alleged medical need for an abortion from three to one, and — critically — eliminates any required showing of severity before the doctor and mother can determine that the birth would impair her physical or mental health. Under the bill’s actual text, virtually any claim of impairment would suffice to meet the act’s requirements. Anxiety? Depression? The conventional physical challenges of post-partum recovery? Any of those things could justify taking the life of a fully formed, completely viable, living infant.
However, although I rarely agree with NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg (and disagree with her conclusions in this linked piece) her summary is fair: Northam's comments were taken out of context:
Things only escalated on Wednesday, when Gov. Ralph Northam was asked about the uproar during an appearance on a radio show. Northam, a pediatric neurologist by training, spoke about what actually happens when a woman goes into labor with a fetus that has severe deformities and may not be viable. The infant, he said, would be delivered and kept comfortable, and the family would decide about resuscitation.
Northam appeared to be pointing out the absurdity of Gilbert’s hypothetical, since even in grave circumstances, no one gets an abortion on the delivery table. But as a clip of the interview went viral, conservatives, including the Republican senator Marco Rubio, began accusing Northam of supporting the murder of newborns. It was the right-wing version of an online outrage mob, warping the governor's innocuous comments into a callous declaration of evil.
When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of the mother, with the consent of physicians, more than one physician by the way, and it’s done in cases where there may be severe deformities, there may be a fetus which is non-viable. So in this particular example, if the mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen, the infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if this is what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physician and the mother.
The discussion would NOT be about whether to kill the infant; the discussion would be about what heroic interventions would be employed while a severely deformed infant with a life expectancy of minutes or days managed to survive. In that sense it mirrors end of life discussions for the elderly and ill. Do Not Resuscitate? Electroshock to restart a failing heart? Feeding tubes? When should the family and physicians let nature take its course with a ninety year old or a nine-minute old?
Look, I have no problem bashing Northam for the actual abortion bill. However, his critics don't need to gild the black rose by misinterpreting his comments, willfully or inadvertently. And as was emphasized yesterday, Gov. Northam may not be the best spontaneous communicator of the current political class.
OK, THAT was a cheerful post to start the latest holiday. I suppose the national hatefest can resume just before gametime when we see whether the network broadcasts the national anthem and we can boo/cheer whomever is kneeling/standing. Then we'll pick it up again at halftime when Maroon 5 panders to the crowd that thinks they should have joined the boycott.
This will be the first game where I look forward to the endless booth reviews.
Hard to see Gov. Northam of post-birth abortion fame surviving this blackface/KKK yearbook debacle. Having a nickname of "Coonman" isn't likely to help.
If he wants to quietly resign, the Super Bowl is a great distraction. Of course, that means he has to hang on until Sunday evening.
So what was the top marginal tax rate in the 70s? C'mon, everyoneknows that Reagan cut the top tax rate to 50% in 1981!
But what I for one did not know was that the Tax Reform Act of 1969, most famous for creating the AMT, lowered the top rate on Earned Income to 50%, leaving it at 70% for dividends, interest and rent. That seems topical if we are talking about the historical experience and incentives of people to show up sober and work all day at different tax rates.
And since you ask, the effect of that 1969 tax change did not go unremarked. Here is a NY Times archive article on executive compensation from 1975 (do overlook their scanning misfires):
The Executive's Tax‐Free Perks
By MARYLIN BENDER
No matter how much stockholders grumble and Government tax reformers threaten to crack down, fringe benefits for top executives arc getting perkier and perkier.
Such traditional and conspicuous prerogatives of hieh executive office — usually called perquisites or perks—as chauffeur‐driven limousines and country‐club memberships may be somewhat imperiled. However, those with significant monetary value such as total medical coverage, million‐dollar life insurance and various riskfree, capital accretion deals are regularly being negotiated to lure cr keep managers at the top cf the corporate totem pole.
...
The higher the income tax rate, the more precious the tax‐free fringe benefit. Faced with 80 percent tax bites, some British executives have expressed gratitude for a weekly perk of two gallons’ of gasoline.
When their maximum income‐tax liability on straight salary dropped to 50 percent a few years ago, executives based in the United States lost whatever shyness they might have had about demanding hefty raises. Meanwhile, they continue to press the executive‐compensation specialists (who are hired and paid by the corporation) to devise other sweeteners for their incentive‐compensation packages.
Any numbers to give us an idea what we're talking about?
Perks with tangible dollar value have come to mean far more than status to executives. And the question of value is increasingly pertinent as the I.R.S. seems to be thinking of imputing perks as gross income.
Ira “The Executive Money Map,” a guide to planning return on investment in a manager's life, David J. McLaughlin, a partner in the management‐consulting firm of McKinsey & Company, estimates that for the typical chief executive at the $200,000‐a‐year level, 11 perks amount to a pretax value equal to 17.75 to 27.75 percent of salary.
That was in, say, 1975. In today's play money, per the BLS, $200,000/year then is roughly $1 million per year today. So yeah, rich. And fringe benefits worth 20%, or another $200K in today's money, ain't hay.
Part of the motivation for the reform, as explained by the Staff of the Joint Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation, was to avoid distortions in the economy and discourage the appeal of tax shelters.
That said, they offer an abstruse example explaining that the interplay of tax shelters, tax preferences and the new 50% Earned Income rate have taken them to a dark place in terms of clarity (I paraphrase).
Well. We would need a Vietnam-times tax veteran to sort this out but my current understanding is that:
- the overall top rate stayed at 70% until the Reagan ERTA. Capital gains were taxed at a much lower rate.
- wage and salary taxes were cut, even for the top earners, in 1969. That matters, because Pikkety and Saez have long noted the rise of the "working rich", who get their income from salaries, stock options, and founder's stock, not from clipping dividends and bond coupons or collecting rent on property.
- therefore the top marginal tax rate in the 70s was... I don't know. For salaried executives I am tempted to say 50% but there is a trapdoor element here. Prior to the big 1986 reform there were all sorts of tax shelter schemes that let people invest in real estate, oil and gas, railroad cars, and all sorts of things not really in their normal line of work (I suspect this is covered in Mad Men but I have yet to watch it.)
The author "Adam Smith", writing in the 60s and 70's, had an amusing tax quip which I remember as follows:
"The US tax code is funny. When you get a big book advance friends tell you to buy an oil well. But when someone strikes oil, no one tells them to write a book".
So, the puzzle: if I had gotten an Earned Income windfall of $50,000 in November 1975 but could arrange to offset all that income with a tax shelter before year end, what was my actual marginal income and marginal tax rate? Great question, right? I know people are applauding because I can hear the sound of one hand clapping.
Let me close with this article about marginal and effective rates and Nick Gillespie's point that through a range of economies and tax regimes the Federal Tolerated Tax Take has never stayed above 20% of GDP for long.
ERRATA:
Here is the graph from Krugman that started this train of thought. If you are wondering what it means to compare average growth over ten years with the top tax rate in the final year, well, I don't have a Nobel Prize in anything, so save it.
OH, WHY NOT? Let me put the fox among the chickens. Contra Krugman (that means "Contrary to Krugman", not "Krugman has taken up arms in Central America"), not all the cool economists are sure that a top rate of 70% of more on the rich would be hunky dory. Charles I. Jones, a Stanford Prof with Harvard and MIT degrees, tinkers with the Saez model and suggests (somewhat drolly) that if new ideas are sufficiently valuable we might all benefit from a negative tax on the rich.
A negative tax on the rich? OK, it's cold outside but Hell hasn't frozen over yet, either here or in Stanford.
More generally, the calibrated model suggests that incorporating ideas and economic growth cuts the optimal top marginal tax rate substantially relative to the basic Saez calculation.
Well, how do we value an Elon Musk?
OH, YEAH: This is the total opposite of penance but my failure to know basic Nixon-era tax reforms earns me a song.
TROUBLE IN PIKKETY PARADISE: Dylan Matthews of Vox does a nice job with contrasting inequality studies which come to somewhat different estimates of the rise in inequality over time. His conclusion, however, is, uhh, well see for yourself:
The Auten/Splinter data does suggest that we might be underestimating how well the rich were doing in the 1960s and 1970s, and thus overestimating how different today’s age of inequality is from that period, a conclusion shared by some other recent research.
Among other things, that would suggest that the high individual tax rates of that period might have been less effective at tempering inequality than commonly thought. They certainly did something, but it appears rich people of that period found ways to collect the money tax-free regardless, specifically by parking it in corporations.
Rich people avoided taxes in the 60's and 70s? No way! Wait'll he hears about tax shelters.. And disco.
COMPREHENSIVE TAX GUIDE: All top tax rates, including surcharges and a split from 1970 to 1981 on Earned Income:
Further Note: 1970-81 rates reflect a lower top rate on earned income (second figure listed).
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