Category Archives: Politics

Fair Tax, Politics, Taxes and Spending

Fair Tax Straw Men

1 Comment

Neal Boortz, fresh back from vacation:

Slemrod says in that article that there is not one reputable economist of any political stripe that would support the FairTax. Tell that to the economists who support the FairTax, like Lawrence Koltikoff, the chairman of Boston University’s Economics department.

What Slemrod actually says:

In “The FairTax Book,” the syndicated radio host Neal Boortz and Representative John Linder, Republican of Georgia, claim that replacing all federal taxes – income, payroll and estate taxes – with a national sales tax would increase the average household’s purchasing power by about 20 percent, end the need for the I.R.S. and turn April 15 into just another spring day. “Once the FairTax takes effect,” they declare, “you’ll be receiving 100 percent of every paycheck, with no withholding of federal income taxes, Social Security taxes or Medicare taxes – and you’ll be paying just about the same price for T-shirts and other consumer goods and services that you were paying before the FairTax.”

For a book that claims in its introduction to be “about honesty,” this statement falls far short. No reputable economist of any political stripe would support it. The honest truth is that replacing the current tax system with any system that raises the same amount of revenue (as Boortz and Linder claim their plan does) may make us better off, but only by redirecting our resources away from dealing with complex filing requirements and improving our incentives to work, save and innovate – not by creating the kind of free-lunch miracle suggested here.

Slemrod is right and Boortz is wrong. No economists would agree with the statement that, under the Fair Tax, prices won’t go up but takehome pay will. That is mathematically impossible. And Boortz himself has admitted it.

'Culture', Politics

Sunday Night Linkorama

1 Comment
  • Here’s a tip. If you’re going to accuse someone of plagiarism, make sure he’s not plagiarizing himself.
  • Speaking of plagiarism, it’s probably not a good idea to steal your honor code.
  • I have to come up with one of these.
  • The Hillarys and the Huckabees. I like it.
  • How lovely. People get foreclosed on and trash the house, demonstrating the same responsible behavior that got them foreclosed on in the first place.
    • Politics, War on Terror

    The Toy Model of Iraq

    It’s now been five years since the invasion of Iraq. I was going to post about it earlier this week, but something in my essay bothered me. I’ve now been able to unravel what was wrong.

    Everyone and their uncle is contemplating their belly button, trying to figure out what we can learn from Iraq. But the more we parse, the more we break the issue down, the more I think we miss the basic point, a very fundamental point.

    Let me back up a moment. One of the things we do in astronomy is construct models. Models of stars, models of galaxies, models of the whole damned universe. Models are good tools for understanding complex phenomena. You plug in some basic physics and input parameters and see if the model reproduces what you observe. If it doesn’t, you revise the model or replace it with one that works. Really simple models are known as toy models.

    This isn’t unique to my profession, of course. Everyone tries to construct toy models to help them understand the basics of complex phenomena. Whether it’s historians trying to figure out the rise of Hitler or sociologists trying to figure out why men like football, we construct paradigms for reality so that we can peek behind the mess of life and glimpse the underlying engines of the world.

    It’s easy to forget — especially with models that tell us what we want to believe — that they are necessarily imperfect. They are useful for understanding phenomena in general but can be problematic when applied to specific situations. Little factors you’ve ignored in the big picture can become very significant when dealing with messy reality.

    Moreover, models work best in a *passive* sense. I would never presume to construct a star based on our very sophisticated models. It’s almost certain that we’ve missed something and the star will fail to ignite or explode. Models are useful for insight, not guidance of future action.

    So what does this have to do with Iraq?

    A principle reason I’m conservative that I distrust toy models of society. Leftist ideology — or more precisely, Hagelian ideology — posits that bright people can construct toy models of society and use them to improve the world. Marxism, for example, is nothing but a toy model that assumes the government can create an egalitarian economy.

    Unfortunately, these models tend to run into the harsh complexity of reality with devastating results. The model predicts communism should work, but the model’s imperfections condemn millions to the gulag. A toy model of “let’s give people money to erase poverty” runs into the harsh reality that you can create more of something you subsidize. A toy model of “the government should give people medicine” runs into the harsh reality of rationing and stagnation.

    Some of the most frustrating and persistent problems in our world are the result of smart people coming up with big ideas and refusing to believe that those ideas aren’t working. It was underfunded; it didn’t go far enough; it was sabotaged by special interests; something, anything has to be at fault. Because our beautiful ideas for remaking the world can’t be wrong.

    In 2003, we bought a particularly shiny toy model. We were assured by various egghead theorists that they understood Iraq. Their theories told them that Iraq wouldn’t blow up in our faces; that ethnic strife would not appear; that all we had to do was boot out Saddam and democracy would bloom. Their toy models said so. Even worse, we supported this toy model of society with a toy model of the military in which Don Rumsfeld assumed that he was so smart that he could make one American soldier do the work of five.

    And now, 4,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis have experienced the grim failure of yet another sophisticated social experiment.

    That’s the failing of Iraq. We listened to a bunch of smart people with smart theories assuring us that they could make democracy bloom. It is the same intellectual fallacy that gave rise to marxism, fascism, the welfare state and the run-and-shoot offense. As conservatives, we should have known better.

    ———

    Now — all that having been said, I still wonder if it could have all worked out if only we’d had more competent management. A 500,000 strong occupation force, competent leadership and reconstruction duties given to people who knew what they were doing might have soaked up a lot of the slop for our failed model of Iraq. But you only get to roll the dice once.

    And I worry about the movement to get out of Iraq now. It seems to me that the desire of many on the left is not to do what’s best given the current situation. What they really want is to un-invade the country. They cling to the illusion that if we pull out now, it will be as if we never went in. They will have been right, Bush will have been wrong and they can crow about their rightness for the next few decades (witness how many leftists view our withdrawal from Vietnam).

    The debate we need to be having from this point is not whether we should have invaded or not. Issues of WMDs and NIE’s are of academic interest. The debate is that Iraq is one step from chaos. What responsibility do we have to the Iraqi people? What is within our ability to do? Let’s let historians judge the decision to invade and focus on what’s going on today.

    Politics, Science and Edumacation, The Nanny State

    Tuesday Night Linkorama

  • The first sex happened 570 million years ago and involved a twelve inch … organism. Not mentioned? 569,999,999 years ago, the first funisia dorothea porn hit the internet.
  • Interior decorators think licensing their profession is equivalent to licensing doctors. Somehow I don’t think anyone has ever died because the carpet didn’t match the curtains.
  • This is pathetic. A warden is refusing to grant a furlough to a man whose 10-year-old daughter is dying of cancer. What an asshole.
  • A must-read. Our efforts to stop slavery are being hamstrung because feminist and religious twerps are insisting that all forms of prostitution be lumped into slavery.

    Over the objections of a few anti-slavery stalwarts in the Justice Department, the House of Representatives passed a bill in December that expands the current anti-trafficking legislation to cover most forms of prostitution, coerced or not. If approved in its current form by the Senate and signed by the president, the law will no longer address slavery exclusively and will instead become a federal mandate to fight prostitution on a broad scale.

    Prostitution is always degrading, and it is often brutal — but it is not always slavery. Equating the scourge of slavery with run-of-the-mill, non-coerced prostitution is not only misleading, it will weaken the world’s efforts to end real forced labor and human trafficking.

    • Politics

    Horny Governors, Batman!

    Apart from the amusement factor, I really could care less about the new New York’s governor’s misbehaving. For one, he’s New York’s problem. Have fun, guys. For two, I suspect this sort of thing goes on a lot more often than we admit. Marriage among the rich and powerful is more about … well, money and power than about love (see Clintons, Bill and Hillary). Even the heartland isn’t at 100% fidelity. Or even 75.

    Most importantly, it doesn’t seem that Patterson broke any laws. If the GOP laughs it off, it will put the lie to the “the impeachment thing was just about sex” mantra the Dems have been reciting for the last ten years.

    'Culture', Law and Order, Politics

    Tuesday Morning Linkorama

  • Sometimes I want to give a chance to the Democrats. But then their majority leader says something really stupid. Who knew the Founding Fathers liked earmarks?
  • Ewww. OK, it’s clean and tidy. But yesterday, I put my daughter in a box and pushed her around the room like she was in a racing car. She laughed and giggled the whole time, her eyes alight with glee. Can your zombie babies do that?
  • I was never that big a fan of David Mamet and could give a rat’s ass about his politics. But Gutman is right. Hollywood will now find him cliched and sooo 90’s, now that he’s a libertarian.
  • I’m with Bob Barr, who is so much more likable now that’s he’s not in Congress. Seizing cars because they are driven by illegal immigrants is going to ruin a lot of innocent people. I hate seizure laws; hate them.
  • This story, about a man losing his dead wife’s voice mail in an upgrade, is just heartbreaking. I’ve never had that situation, but once, after a breakup, I kept an ex-girlfriend’s last phone message on my machine for a long time (an “I love you” message, not a “go to hell” message).
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Thursday Linkorama

  • Fresh off their triumphant cleaning up of baseball, our Congress is investigating CEO pay at mortgage companies. Stand by for hearings about people not listening to their parents.
  • Fifty weird science facts. Actually. Most of these aren’t terribly shocking.
  • Is locking up cold medicine reducing meth consumption? Nope.
  • Fifty most influential blogs. I think this one comes in #6,321,438th.
    • Politics, Science and Edumacation

    Primary Night Linnnkorama

  • Uh-huh. The Democrats are the party of clean government. Keep drinking.
  • Tom Hayden wishes Vietnam were poorer. What an idiot.
  • The WaPo finally figures out that the middle class is doing well. Geez, WaPo. It’s only like we’ve been saying this for years.
  • Read a book that mentions the Klan? Get hammered by your employer. Apparently, even mentioning this country’s racist past is a hate crime.
  • Utterly shameful. Visas denied to Iraqi translators.
  • A fascinating look at the state of climate skepticism. It’s not over yet.
    • Politics, War on Terror

    FISA Poll Smoking

    Ah, where would conservatism be without American Solutions and their polls. They are claiming that Americans favor the Protect America Act by 3 to 1 margins. However:

    Amazingly, even the first four words of the story, “in July of 2007,” are inaccurate, as the Protect America Act was actually passed in August [Hal – they’ve fixed that]. And it only gets worse after that. Not surprisingly, if you repeatedly misrepresent the state of the FISA debate, it’s possible to get randomly sampled voters to come to the conclusion you’re looking for. I think it’s telling that they seem to believe this level of deception was necessary to get the result they were looking for.

    In case you’re curious how voters respond to a less blatantly biased poll, 61 percent of voters believe that “the U.S. government should have to get a warrant from a court before wiretapping the conversations U.S. citizens have with people in other countries,” while only 35 percent believe that “the government should be able to wiretap such conversations without a warrant from a court.” Similarly, 31 percent of voters believe that “Congress should give the phone companies amnesty from legal action against the companies,” while 59 percent believe that “citizens who believe their rights have been violated should be free to take legal action against those phone companies and let the courts decide the outcome.” That poll is from the ACLU, so it may be worth taking with a grain of salt, but its questions are certainly more representative than those of Gingrich’s group.

    For the record, the question AS asked was, “Do you think that it is acceptable that congress left on a 12-day recess before renewing the act or should they have taken action before leaving for 12 days to make sure it did not expire?” I was just watching Penn & Teller’s interview with “Fuck You” Frank Lutz the other day and was reminded about how small changes in poll wording can produce big changes in response. I would bet that the respondents, by a 3-1 margin, have no idea what the Protect America Act is.

    I’ll be honest here. I despise opinion polls. They are of purely academic interest too me. We do not live in a democracy, thank God. We live in a Constitutional Republic. Whether to pass the FISA law or not is a debate about privacy, the Constitution and the War on Terror. The opinions of the public are irrelevant.

    Politics

    Attacking Obama

    Mark Helperin pens a stupid piece on how John McCain can beat Barack Obama using methods Clinton can’t. Let’s take it apart.

    1. Play the national security card without hesitation.

    2. Talk about the Iraq War without apologies or perceived contradiction.

    3. Go at Obama unambiguously from the right.

    All these are fine. Obama doesn’t have any experience on foreign policy. And unlike Clinton, McCain does. Being firm on Iraq has helped McCain as he’s been consistent on it. And Obama’s weaknesses are the far-left economic views he has embraced in the primary. He will tack right in the general election – and that’s when McCain can pounce.

    But the rest of Halperin’s ideas are a mixture of the dumb and the meaningless. It reads like the empty rhetoric ignorant people insist is Obama’s forte combined with the pointless nastiness of Anne Coulter. Quite frankly, it reads exactly like what the Clinton camp has been doing. And I’m sure it will have the same effect.

    4. Encourage interest groups, bloggers, and right-leaning media to explore Obama’s past.

    Muck-racking? If people didn’t care about Clinton’s adultery and shady Whitewater deals, they won’t care about Obama’s Rezko stuff. Clinton has tried this. It didn’t work.

    5. Make an issue of Obama’s acknowledged drug use.

    This would be incredibly dumb. Obama admitting to drug use makes me want to vote for him, since he’s not trying to insult my intelligence. Clinton has tried this. It didn’t work.

    6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama.

    I’ve been hearing this complaint a lot — that criticism of Obama will be equated with racism. Perhaps. We know that criticism of conservative blacks (Rice, Powell, Watts) is not racism, according to the Left, while criticism of liberal blacks is.

    But I think “racism!” cries would actually backfire on Obama. The one thing he does not want to become in this election is “the black guy”. If his supporters start playing the race card, it will cripple his campaign.

    7. Exploit Michelle Obama’s mistakes and address her controversial remarks with unrestricted censure.

    As I said before, Michelle Obama’s words doesn’t bother me. Hillary Clinton said a lot of crazy things as first lady as well. Until Michelle Obama indicates she’s going to be part of the Administration, any dumb remarks she makes are irrelevant.

    8. Play dirty without alienating his party.

    And how do you do this, precisely?

    9. Dismiss Obama’s brief national tenure from his own lofty platform of decades in the Senate – there will be no ambiguity about who has more experience as conventionally defined.

    Because this worked so well for Hillary.

    10. Use his sterling war record to reinforce his image of patriotism and valor – and contrast it with his opponent’s.

    Yes, President Dole rode that particular rail right into the White House. Oh, wait.

    11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.

    This is not only stupid, it’s offensive. I don’t give a shit if Obama’s middle name is Hitler and he’s descended from Martians. Neither, I suspect, do most Americans.

    12. Employ third party groups like the NRA to hit Obama on issues that might turn off general election voters. Perhaps an ad such as this will run in Ohio: “So, what do you really know about Barack Obama? Did you know he supports meeting with the head of terrorist states? Do you know he wants to get rid of your right to own a handgun? Do you know he is calling for the repeal of the law preventing gay marriage? Do you know he is for a trillion-dollar tax increase? What do you really know about Barack Obama?”

    Of course, none of these things are true. Which I guess makes them perfect 527 issues. This is effective, if unpleasant, advice.

    13. Face an electorate less consumed with “change change change” (the main priority for Democratic voters) and keenly interested in “ready from day one” as an equally important ideal.

    Again, this worked so well for Hillary. In fact, “ready from day one” were her exact words.

    14. Link biography (experience/courage) and leadership (straight talk) to a vision animated by detail – accentuating Obama’s relative lack of specificity.

    Halperin is lazy, as are most Right-Wing pundits when it comes to Obama. He’s been very specific about policy — that’s his weakness. His policy specifics are pure liberal pap.

    15. Give Obama his first real race against a credible Republican. (Clinton has always asserted that Obama would wilt before a fierce Republican assault.)

    More empty words. What’s the alternative? Running a non-real race? Against a silly Republican? This was more of a talking point for Clinton. She could have pointed out that the only Republican he beat was crazy-ass Alan Keyes. I don’t see how, “he’s never beaten a Republican” is going to sway the voters.

    16. Confront Obama with a united, focused campaign absent of second-guessing, which hits the same themes and message every day.

    Of course, Obama’s got that down as well. And conservatism has thrived for the last few years by never second-guessing anything.

    Oh, wait.

    This is all a bunch of shit. Frankly, it makes wonder if Mark Halperin and Mark Penn are, in fact, the same person. Has anyone actually seen them together?

    Here’s what you need to do to defeat Barack Obama and it’s very simple — run as a fiscal conservative. Emphasize his big spending plans and tax increases. Outflank him on Iraq. Those are the two big issues. Everything else — from his middle name to his drug use — is pure shit. Emphasizing these issues will do nothing to advance the campaign and everything to annoy the voters.

    Obama can be beaten — but only on substance. If you try to slime him or out-personality him, you will lose.

    Update: West Virginia Rebel tips me to Blankley’s superior strategy.

    Law and Order, Politics

    Wednesday Linkorama

  • Outrage of the Day: A horrible car accident? Be sure to charge the black guy.
  • An interesting profile of Obama’s advisors. I find it hard to believe he’ll govern as liberal as he’s campaigning. Still prefer Mccain though.
  • A 16-year-old has consensual sex with a girl. Finds out she’s 13. Now he’s a registered sex offender and is getting constant harassment. The more I read, the more I hate these registries. Just a reminder: 80-90% of sexual crimes are committed by someone the victim knows, not the stranger living down the street.
  • That icon of the 80’s — Sharper Image — is going bankrupt. You could see this coming when they forced their founder out of the CEO chair. Maverick businesses tend to collapse when the maverick leaves — see Dell Computers.
    • Politics

    Saturday Night Linkorama

  • Oh, that liberal media. Right.
  • Remember, there are more ways than earmarks to benefit your buddies. Earmarks concern me a lot less in influence peddling than regulation or tax policy.
  • Forbes on the ongoing efforts to ban drug reps from treating doctors to lunch.

    Another argument made by supporters of the Senate bill is that promotion leads physicians “to prescribe the expensive new drugs that are being marketed to them when a more affordable generic would do,” in the words of one senator. There are three things wrong with this argument. First, manufacturers of generics do not promote those drugs, so it might be difficult for the physician to learn about generics at all. Second, new drugs lead to better health outcomes. They keep people out of the hospital. A 2007 study by business professor Frank Lichtenberg of Columbia University estimated that a prescription for a new drug (5 years from FDA approval) costs an average $18 more than an older one (15 years on the market) but reduces other medical costs, including hospital and office visits, by $129. Finally, by leading consumers to purchase newer drugs, marketing increases investment in innovation and thus makes research more likely.

    I’ve never understood the animus toward drug companies. Doctors are busy — drug reps are the only way they find out about some meds, such as the anti-reflux med I’m using.

    But apparently, it’s just fine when special interest treat politicians to junkets. But if a drug rep buys a doctor lunch, it’s pure evil.

    • Politics

    The Obama Cult

    I’ve been hearing a lot in recent days about the Cult of Personality surrounding Obama. It’s a fair point. When women are fainting at Obama rallies, they aren’t exactly thinking about his tax plan. And there a number of people, notably his wife, who are talking about him as though he were the second coming.

    This is neither unprecedented nor a cause of concern.

    Americans have historically been resistant to the Cult of Personality. Probably the most successful “personality” President in American history was FDR and I don’t think anyone would accuse him of not having concrete policies. The three most successful post-war Personality Presidents were JFK, Reagan and Clinton. All three men went through periods, not long after election, when they very unpopular. In fact, all three were, at some point, long shots to win re-election.

    In fact, the Cult of Obama more reminds me of the Cult of Carter than anything else. It’ difficult to recall at this stage, but Carted has an entire “Cult of Personality” thing going in 1976. All it got him was unelected in four years. I’ll have an in-depth post on that later.

    When you look at non-Presidents, the situation is even better. Joe McCarthy managed to wear out the public within four years. George Wallace collapsed. Ross Perot imploded. All three were in the public eye because of various Cult flavors.

    And even if Barack Obama is the Democratic candidate, the general election is eight months away. Already, the Obamania is beginning to subside, which is why Barack has slowly been putting more substance into his speeches. I predict that by the time the convention rolls around in August, the Cult of Personality will be gone and Obama will have to stand on policy and accomplishment. His record in these matters, ignorant Obama attackers aside, is solid, if liberal. He has very specific policy proposals and a record in Illinois and in the Senate of — not exactly !!CHANGE!! — but gradual improvement.

    So the Cult of Personality doesn’t bother me. In the end, it won’t win Obama the White House and it won’t stop him from enjoying the abuse Americans love to heap on their Presidents.