Transfers

Thomas reports that Austin's roof solar panel permit fees are about $4000. $1/sq. ft.

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10% to 27% of non-citizen adults in the U.S. are now illegally registered to vote
The U.S. Census recorded more than 19 million adult non-citizens living in the U.S. during 2022. Given their voter registration rates, this means that about two million to five million of them are illegally registered to vote.

A leap, but...

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Transfers

George Will raises an interesting question: Why does the government, which is substantially staffed by progressives, use — actually, abuse — statistics to suggest the futility of progressive anti-poverty policies?

Will explains why the reality of income inequality in America is unwelcome on both the political left and right. Two slices:

In more than 50 years, government transfer payments (Medicaid, food stamps, etc.) to the average household in the bottom quintile of earners, have risen (in inflation-adjusted dollars) from $9,700 to $45,000 annually. Why, then, does the government, which is substantially staffed by progressives, use — actually, abuse — statistics to suggest the futility of progressive anti-poverty policies? Because this provides a permanent rationale for government growth: perpetual undiminished poverty.

In their 2022 book “The Myth of American Inequality: How Government Biases Policy Debate,” Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund and John Early demonstrate gross defects in the Census Bureau’s measurement of inequality. By not counting about 88 percent of government transfer payments that enlarge the buying power of lower-income households, and not counting taxes that lower the wealth of higher-income households, government statistics purport to prove that the average income in the top quintile of earners is 16.7 times that of the average in the bottom quintile. Counting transfers and taxes, however, the actual ratio is 4 to 1.

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Economist Pierre Lemieux, writing in the Cato Institute’s journal Regulation, says that in 2017, 44 percent of all households had real (inflation-adjusted) incomes that 50 years earlier were earned only by those in the top 20 percent. “Recall,” he says, “that real wages increased by 74 percent over the past 50 years and the real median household income nearly doubled.”

Amid increased attention to income inequality, the populist right — “national conservatives” — and the progressive left favor “industrial policy” that regressively funnels money upward to corporations. The populist right advocates protectionism (tariffs to shield corporations from competition), and the populist left advocates hundreds of billions of dollars of subsidies (for semiconductors, electric vehicles, solar panels, etc.).