Progressives like the progressive tax rate. With a progressive tax rate, higher wage earners pay a higher tax rate.
When a tax cut is enacted, Progressives are then surprised that people who pay more in taxes get a bigger cut. It all makes sense to conservatives, but Progressives just can’t seem to wrap their mind around it.
Progressive believe taxes are like a Chinese finger trap. Once a rate is enacted, they can only go up. Only those who know the trick can get out of it.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Taxes on June 17th, 2011
Tim Pawlenty is not flashy, but he has the guts to tell the Iowa voters that he would reduce ethanol subsidies.
Take note that Pawlenty is a Midwesterner and many of the talking heads think he must do well in Iowa to have a chance. That logic is probably right, but he didn’t play politics. He stuck to his convictions and said what needed to be said.
We don’t need flash. We have flash. What we need is an adult who can assess a situation and find a workable solution. After the narcissism of an Hawaiian Ivy Leaguer, Midwestern temperament is the change I am hoping for.
I like the other candidates, but my support is leaning toward Pawlenty.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Election on June 16th, 2011
..to have a property right to a job would be to have a property right to the manner in which other people spend their money. Such a ‘property right’ spread across the economy would completely suffocate the economy’s competitiveness and dynamism and, thus, over time impoverish us all.
Link
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Quotes on June 16th, 2011
“Shockingly bad journalism” is redundant when referring to the Washington Post
The Washington Post attack Republicans for hypocrisy because they want to do away with ethanol subsidies. The logic goes that Republicans say they want lower taxes but eliminating the subsidies is a tax increase.
Removing subsidies is far from being hypocritical. Republicans want lower taxes FOR ALL, not industries chosen by Washington elites.
…ethanol subsidy is that it is a classic case of rent-seeking. The beneficiaries are relatively few but relatively well organized. It is in the interest of politicians to vote to keep it, even though it is against the interest of most of their constituents
Read more
President Barack Obama is making a push to train 10,000 new American engineers a year…read more
If our free market wanted more engineers, they would pay them more. We don’t need the President to set the level or use government to persuade people to pursue engineering. All government will do is create a bubble of incompetent over paid engineers who under perform.
My opinion (as an engineer) is that we don’t need more engineers. We need better engineers. Our colleges and high schools are failing us. Young adults leave college with an inflated view of their non-existent skills.They come out cocky and useless. I came out less cocky (I worked as a carpenter for a year before finding an engineering job), but at least I had a skill. I could do computer programming.
Engineers need time in the field. We need to have more hands-on training for engineers and that means creating back trade schools without the stigma that they are only for dummies. School counselors recommend engineering to any student who is good in math. I believe this is a mistake. Math skills are not an indicator of engineering skills. I ask kids, “Do you take things apart?” or “Do you wonder how things work?”. Those personal traits are better indicators to a long career in engineering than math skills.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Common Sense on June 15th, 2011
Environmentalists and good intentioned people who strive to be green fall into this trap all the time. Will they ever learn?
ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found…read more
Make Right Turns Only
FedEx does it, and the MythBusters proved it works: When city driving, make as many right turns as possible, even if it means going a few hundred yards out of the way. Reducing loiter time—or idling while waiting for traffic to clear—saves gas.
Being overtly liberal hasn’t worked for MSNBC, but that doesn’t stop CNN from proclaiming their liberal bias right in the headline.
From this headline, I guess we are suppose to conclude that spending 14 trillion dollars more than you take in is perfectly sane.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Liberal Bias on June 14th, 2011
From the comments
- smart grid = energy rationing
- The way to make the grid LESS vulnerable (to EMP, solar radiation and terrorists) is to get rid of all computerized controls and decentralize, not to add more wireless control points and centralize.
- The smartest grid we could design would be a tall iron grid that completely encircles DC.
- I do not want my power supply system designed by a bunch of government bureaucrats…. especially far left-wing ones at that!
Of course that’s a joke. It would be a racial insult to consider ethnic group to be lacking is decision making skills, yet that is exactly what ABC News Claire Shipman contributed to the national dialog this week.
There’s also an economist at the University of Michigan who has studied diversity and decision-making and has found that, in every business decision, diversity leads to better decisions. In other words, a group of all white men are not going to reach the best decisions…read more
This is another one of those thoughts spouted on TV that is considered serious, yet lacks any logic.
So if a group of all white men (like the founding fathers) “are not going to reach the best decisions” based on their lack of diversity, then logic dictates that the Congressional Black Caucus is equally susceptible to faulty decision making.
I say decisions based on the consensus of any group, regardless of their diversity, is suspect. This is what makes the Constitution such a miracle.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Common Sense on June 13th, 2011
Every country was hurt in the banking crisis of 2008, but some have rebounded better than others.
Canada’s jobless rate unexpectedly declined in May to the lowest since January 2009 as the economy added workers for the seventh time in eight months. read more
Canada holds corporate taxes low (16%) and spent far less ($6 billion, 0.5% of GDP) on “stimulus”.
In the United states, the corporate tax rate is 35% and we spent far more ($870 billion, 6%) on…well…nothing.
It may be too broad a brush to paint. Economies are effected by an infinite number of variables. However you want to paint our problem, it is hard to see how the Obama stimulus helped.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Economics on June 13th, 2011
I came the realization years ago that I would work until the day I die. This was not a statement about my work ethic. It was a conclusion after reflecting on the trajectory of economics in this country. This reality is starting to come into view for others.
Many of us won’t be able to retire until our 80s
…the latest research shows that you’ll have to work much longer than you anticipated. In fact, many Americans will have to keep on working well into their 70s and 80s to afford retirement, according to the study, titled “The Impact of Deferring Retirement Age on Retirement Income Adequacy.” Read more
What makes this entirely unfair is not that my parent and grandparents were able to retire, but that some from my generation (public employee union members) will retire quite nicely at a young age…funded by private sector workers who must work until they are dead or unable to perform.
This is what Barack Obama and the left calls “social justice”
One (of many) complaints against electric cars is that they take too long to “fill up” with electrons. But a group of MIT students seems to have developed a semi-solid electron-laden “fuel” that could completely how we power EV’s.
Forgoing the traditional route of storing electrons in either nickel or lithium-ion, the MIT students have figured out a way to store electricity in semi-solid flow cells. Called “Cambridge Crude,” the charged particles are stored in an electrolyte gel that can be removed and refilled when drained, not unlike how we currently fill our cars with gasoline. The gel would move between a charging area, and dispensing area, sending electrons straight to the drivetrain. Perhaps even more importantly though, this technology can (supposedly) store 10x more electricity, at half the price of current conventional battery technology.
Source: Gas 2.0 (http://s.tt/12Cup)
The Washington Post has an open invitation for readers to help read thousand of emails from and to Sara Palin.
More than 24,000 e-mail messages sent to and from Sarah Palin during her tenure as Alaska’s governor will be released Friday. Join The Post in digging through them. We are looking for 100 organized and diligent readers who will work alongside Post reporters to analyze, contextualize, and research the e-mails…read more
Knowing their liberal bias and loathing for Sara Palin, it’s hard not to assume they are looking to manufacture the news.
Posted by: The Elephant Owner in
Liberal Bias on June 9th, 2011
Dan Akerson, the C.E.O. of GM, has proposed raising the gas tax by $1 per gallon in order to persuade consumers to accept more fuel efficient cars. I understand his problem. The government (his partner) has dramatically increased the CAFE standard and he has to find a way to get people to buy what they don’t want.
So will a tax nudge us toward car the intellectuals want us to drive?
Did a tax on horse feed lead us from covered wagon to train? No.
Did a tax on train fares lead to the invention of the Automobile? No.
Air travel thrived while trains travel died even though the government has pump billions into Amtrak.
Computers have transformed nearly all aspects of life and they did it without taxing the typewriter or analog electronic controls.
And it’s not like taxes have never been used to dissuade us. The government taxes booze and cigarettes…and everyone knows how that stop people from drinking and smoking.
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