We are self-absorbed people. Those elements of culture--cohesiveness, common vision, sacrifice, the moral legitimacy of government--are replaced by entrepreneurs in space, bitcoins, and the sheerest of the clothes at the expensive event. Are we whistling past the graveyard or screaming past it?
Speaking of screaming, Biden has nominated for comptroller of the currency a woman who went to the University of Moscow on a Lenin Scholarship. Is stupid always funny?
China's “one-child” policy has resulted in a rapidly aging population that has turned a worker surplus into a dearth and has led to a socially destructive shortage of women. Beijing has found no solution to counteract decades of counterproductive social engineering. Did they have a model?
So the migrants move on. And we move on. The Afghan event will be remembered in history but not this week; this week we have a new Covid scare. And the migrant problem has been replaced by a new Covid scare. Do you think these distractions are random?
Carbon fuel is responsible for 81% of energy use in the world today. In 20 years it will make up 73%, this under the most optimal condition. Do you get the impression from politicians and the news that the shift away from carbon is more successful than it really is?
While most taxes are passed on to consumers, a large portion of corporate tax increases is actually paid by labor down the line. Workers, not owners, pay at least some share of higher corporate taxes. Psaki’s position—the Biden White House’s position—is that this sort of thing is “absurd and unfair.” Like gravity, for example?
Is just being 'not-Trump,' enough?
The current U.S. top rate of capital gains is 29.2 percent, which is much higher than the OECD average of 19.1 percent. Nine OECD countries do not tax long-term capital gains, while other nations only started taxing long-term gains in recent decades, such as Canada (1972), Ireland (1975), and Australia (1985). Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan testified to Congress in 1997 that the proper tax rate on long-term capital gains is zero. Biden has proposed doubling the top federal capital gains tax rate. With state taxes on top, that would push the U.S. rate up to the highest in the OECD at 48.4 percent. Why is taxing savings so important to the Left?
The proposed spending bill contains a segment that empowers and funds the IRS so inspect any American's bank account that has contained $600. What type of person thinks that reasonable?
Although SARS-CoV-2 has proved unpredictable, no virus in history has ever continued to evolve to higher pathogenicity. As we learned from HIV, mutations usually incur costs to viral fitness or render the virus weaker. No vaccine-preventable or immunity-inducing infection has ever raged on as a pandemic indefinitely. And lethality limits viral success. So is the anxiety about the next 'wave' reasonable?
Stanford students on bicycles: 41% are masked, 17% wear a helmet. Is mask-wearing the projection of hypochondria?
Following a long-term historical reality, high school boys have greater math aptitude and out-perform high school girls on the Math SAT, especially for the highest test scores. In 2021, 153 boys scored 700-800 for every 100 girls. Is this proof of discrimination?
[Ezra] Klein’s suggestion that changing the status quo requires conservatives and libertarians to stop denouncing Uncle Sam for big fiascoes like Solyndra, the solar company that infamously went under shortly after receiving a $538 million loan guarantee from a green-energy program under the Obama administration. Denouncing such waste, Klein insists, only serves to embarrass the government for its failures, thus prompting it to be more cautious. As such, Klein would like “to somehow quiet these players looking to point out every failure.” So, the more damage the better?
In 1981, after 190 years of federal spending, the national debt was “only” $1 trillion. Now, just 40 years later, it’s more than $28 trillion. Is that innocuous?
Sometimes the animosity the Left has for progress is hard to understand. The rich will always be rich. A free economy does not benefit them nearly as much as it does the common man. The advantage of a free economy is that production provides for most of the culture, not just the wealthy. This wealth is not Bezo wealth but the wealth of the common man, whose improvement outstrips that of the improvement in the wealthy. So, what exactly is the objection there, envy?
The bill in the House Ways and Means Committee would extend the existing $7,500 EV tax credit through 2031 and remove the 200,000 car per manufacturer cap, which both GM and Tesla have hit. Currently, there’s no vehicle price limit on the credit, so people can use it to buy electric Porsches. Why do we want to tax the rich, yet at the same time subsidize their projects and purchases like green energy?
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