by Christian Britschgi, RodeJuly 2, 2024.
Extract:
Phoenix’s amicus brief in the Subsidy pass The case was co-authored by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns — a taxpayer-funded lobbying group that has spent much of the past year fighting efforts in the Arizona Legislature to liberalize local zoning codes.
Local governments like to blame Martin for increasing homelessness, because it absolves them of any real responsibility for the problem. Homelessness is something that happened to them, and here comes the 9th Circuit stopping them from doing anything about it.
It’s an incredible act of blame shifting. In fact, local and state governments bear a significant portion of the blame for the rising homeless population by making it so difficult to build housing in the first place.
Nothing correlates more with homelessness rates than homelessness high housing costs. And nothing drives up housing costs like government restrictions on building housing.
When obtaining approval from the municipality for a new apartment complex lasts two yearsenvironmental legislation allows everyone postpones an approved project with lawsuits, and the cheapest forms of homes are completely prohibited. Is it any surprise that thousands of people end up on the streets?
by Romina Boccia, RodeJuly 2, 2024.
Extract:
In reality, social security works on the basis of a pay-as-you-go system. This means that payroll taxes collected from current employees are immediately used to pay benefits to current retirees. Any excess funds are credited to the Social Security Trust Fund, but these are not cash reserves; they are special issue government bonds, which are essentially IOUs of the federal government.
When Social Security runs a deficit – meaning it pays out more in benefits than it collects in taxes – it must redeem these bonds to cover the deficit. The federal government must then come up with the money to honor these IOUs, either by raising taxes, cutting spending in other areas, or borrowing more money. Sothe trust fund does not contain any real, liquid assets, but rather a promise that the government will pay for itself, which ultimately depends on the overall health and fiscal policies of the federal budget. (bold in original)
DRH story:
In 2004, when Dan Klein was teaching at Santa Clara University, he asked me to come and give an evening lecture to the students. We discussed what might be a good topic that would appeal to them and I suggested “Social Security: The Nightmare of Your Future.” I talked about that. My daughter, Karen, was studying there and although she wasn’t required to attend, she showed up with a man friend. It was on a Tuesday evening and just like the schedule when her mother and I taught there in the early 1980s (that’s where we met), there were no classes on Wednesdays. That’s relevant because my daughter told me she was going to stay for the first half hour and then leave because it was party night. I told her that was fine and asked her permission to use a story about an interaction we had when she was eleven. She said yes.
Here’s the story I told to make the point that the trust fund isn’t really a trust fund. When Karen was eleven, she asked me if I had saved for college. I replied that I had only started doing it last year. As the daughter of an economist, she asked: ‘How much?’ I replied that I saved $10,000 a year for eight years. That satisfied her. Then I said to the audience, “Imagine if, instead of putting $10,000 a year into a money market fund, I had written ‘IOU $10,000’ on a piece of paper and put it in a jar and kept it for eight years. had been in a jar for a long time. queue. Who here believes that if I emptied the pot within eight years, I would have $80,000?
By the way, the conversation lasted 45 minutes and the question and answer session another 40 minutes. At the end, Karen showed up with her friend. They had stayed the whole time. She said excitedly, “I didn’t know those things.”
by Michael Munger, AIER, July 1, 2024.
Extract:
It would be possible to treat such values as mark-to-market estimates, but also for assets with limited markets – shares in closely held or family-owned companies – or no annual market at all – for a unique country house, or a large piece of land. of properties for which no “comparables” exist – such estimates are likely to be inaccurate and expensive to verify.
That’s where “ULTRAs” come into the picture. Instead of taking two percent (say) of the liquidated value of the wealth, the state would simply take ownership of the wealth. An ULTRA is a ‘fictitious shareholding’. The government literally takes a share of the value of the property; that value is paid to the state when the asset is sold. Now it is only a “fictitious” stake, in the sense that there is no shared right to control or vote. But for those advocating ULTRAs, in any situation where tax authorities today have the authority to tax assets, but cannot do so because there is no assessment event, the taxpayer could be induced to pay with an ULTRA instead of with cash.
And:
It is very difficult to know the value of the asset, but ULTRA comes to the rescue! As Delmotte puts it:
Without knowing its economic value, the government takes 2 percent of the equity in Plenty in the first year, while in the second year the remaining 98 percent of the asset is subject to a 2 percent charge (leaving 96.04 percent remains for Giselle); in year three, another 2 percent ULTRA tax leaves Giselle with 94.12 percent of the value of the original property. After twenty years of wealth tax, Giselle now still has 66.4 percent of the shares in Plenty, and the tax authorities now own 33.6 percent of the value of the company. Under ULTRAs, there is currently no cash tax payment, but when Giselle sells her shares in Plenty after twenty years, 33.6 percent of whatever the sale price turns out to be will go to the tax authorities.
The effect is quite surprising when you look at the example. In a relatively short time, the government literally takes over substantial ownership of all successful private companies. Rather than being a detriment, proponents have actually become excited about government ownership of “the Metaverse”, and giving the Minister of Finance extremely broad and unilateral discretion regarding the use of ULTRAs instead of cash payments.
by Krit Chanwong, Cato at FreedomJuly 5, 2024.
Extract:
Forty-six states and DC require acupuncturists to be present certified with the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM). To obtain a certificate, aspiring acupuncturists must have a degree from one of the following: 49 accredited acupuncture schools. Aspiring acupuncturists must also pass at least two of the four exams administered by the NCCAOM. The number of required exams varies by state. Delaware for example mandates that its acupuncturists take all four NCCAOM exams. Pennsylvania on the other side mandates only two exams.
California does not recognize any NCCAOM certifications. Instead, the state has its own licensing rules. Aspiring acupuncturists in California must graduate one of 29 universities accredited by California’s Acupuncture Board and take the California acupuncture licensing exams. According to the People’s Organization for Community Acupuncture (POCA), California acupuncture licensing exams are “held up as the gold standard for acupuncture licensing testing.” The high rating given to the exam in California is due to the greater accuracy and depth of the test compared to that of the NCCAOM.
And:
Acupuncture licensing is just a small example of California’s licensing mania. For twenty years, California was arranged 49 out of 50 in Cato’s Freedom in the 50 States survey of occupational licensing freedom. A 2023 Archbridge Institute study found it that California requires occupational licensing for 189 occupations, which is higher than the national average of 179. These licensing rules harm all Californians: a 2018 Institute of Justice study suggests that California’s licensing regime costs 195,000 jobs annually — perhaps one reason the Golden State has one of the state’s highest unemployment rates.