by Christian Britschgi, ReasonJuly 2, 2024.
Extract:
Phoenix amicus curiae brief in the Grant Passport The case was co-authored by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns, a taxpayer-funded advocacy group that has spent much of the past year fighting efforts by the Arizona Legislature to liberalize local zoning codes.
Local governments like to blame Martin for the rise in homelessness because it frees them from any real responsibility for the problem. Homelessness is something that happened to them, and now the 9th Circuit is preventing them from doing anything about it.
This is an incredible example of blame shifting. In fact, local and state governments bear a significant portion of the responsibility for the increase in homelessness by making it so difficult to build housing in the first place.
Nothing is more linked to homelessness rates than high housing costsAnd nothing drives up housing prices more than government restrictions on housing construction.
When Getting City Approval for a New Apartment Building it takes two yearsState environmental law allows Has anyone delayed an approved project? with legal proceedings, and the cheapest forms With housing construction completely banned, is it surprising that thousands of people are finding themselves on the streets?
by Romina Boccia, ReasonJuly 2, 2024.
Extract:
In reality, Social Security operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. That means that payroll taxes collected from current workers 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 Treasury bonds, which are actually IOUs from the federal government.
When Social Security runs a deficit—that is, it pays out more in benefits than it collects in taxes—it must repay these bonds to cover the shortfall. The federal government must then find the money to honor these IOUs, either by raising taxes, cutting spending elsewhere, or borrowing more.The Trust Fund does not contain real, liquid assets, but rather a promise of repayment by the government, which ultimately depends on the overall health of the federal budget and fiscal policy. (bold in original)
The story of HRD:
In 2004, Dan Klein, who was teaching at Santa Clara University, asked me to come and give a talk in the evening to the students. We discussed a topic that might interest them and I suggested “Social Security: The Nightmare of Your Future.” That’s what I spoke about. My daughter, Karen, was a student at the university and, although she wasn’t required to attend, she showed up with a friend. It was a Tuesday night and, just as was the schedule when her mother and I taught there in the early 1980s (that’s where we met), there were no classes on Wednesdays. This is relevant because my daughter told me she would stay for the first half hour and then leave because it was party night. I told her it was okay and asked her permission to use a story about an interaction we had when she was 11. She said yes.
Here’s the story I told to make it clear that the trust fund is not really a trust fund. When Karen was 11, she asked me if I had saved for her college. I said I had started last year. Being the daughter of an economist, she asked, “How much?” I said I had saved $10,000 a year for 8 years. That convinced her. Then I told the audience, “Imagine if instead of putting $10,000 a year into a money market fund, I wrote “I owe you $10,000″ on a piece of paper and put it in a jar, and I did that for 8 years in a row. Who here believes that after the jar was empty in 8 years, I would have $80,000?”
By the way, the conference lasted 45 minutes and the question and answer session another 40 minutes. At the end, Karen came in with her friend. They had been there the whole time. She said, all excited, “I didn’t know these things.”
by Michael Munger, AIER, July 1, 2024.
Extract:
It would be possible to treat such a value as a “mark-to-market” estimate, but again, for assets that have limited markets (family or closely held company stocks) or no annual market (such as a single mansion or a large piece of real estate for which there are no “comparables”), such estimates are likely to be inaccurate and costly to verify.
This is where “ULTRAs” come in. Instead of taking 2% (say) of the liquidated value of the asset, the government would simply take possession of the asset on the spot. An ULTRA is a “notional stake.” The government literally takes a portion of the value of the asset; that value will be paid to the government when the asset is sold. It is now only a “notional” stake, in the sense that there is no shared control or voting rights. But for ULTRA advocates, in any situation where tax agencies are allowed to tax an asset today, but cannot because there is no valuation event, the taxpayer could be forced to pay with an ULTRA rather than cash.
And:
It is very difficult to know the value of an asset, but ULTRA comes to the rescue! As Delmotte says:
Without knowing its economic value, the government takes 2 percent of Plenty’s equity in the first year, while in the second year the remaining 98 percent of the asset is subject to a 2 percent tax (leaving Giselle with 96.04 percent); in the third year, another 2 percent ULTRA tax leaves Giselle with 94.12 percent of the original asset value. After twenty years of wealth taxes, this leaves Giselle with 66.4 percent of Plenty’s equity, and the tax authorities now hold 33.6 percent of the company’s value. Under ULTRA, there is no current cash tax payment, but when Giselle sells her Plenty shares after 20 years, 33.6 percent of whatever the sale price is goes to the tax authorities.
The effect is rather surprising, if we take this example as an example. In a relatively short time, the government literally takes over a substantial share of the property. of all successful private companies. Rather than being an inconvenience, advocates have actually become enthusiastic about government ownership of “the metaverse”, and giving the Secretary of the Treasury extremely broad and unilateral discretion over the use of ULTRA instead of cash payments.
by Krit Chanwong, Cato at largeJuly 5, 2024.
Extract:
Forty-six states and DC require acupuncturists to be approved with the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (NCCAOM). To obtain certification, aspiring acupuncturists must hold a degree from one of the 49 Accredited Acupuncture SchoolsAspiring 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 pass all four NCCAOM exams. In contrast, Pennsylvania mandates only two exams.
California does not recognize any NCCAOM certifications. Instead, the state has its own licensing rules. Aspiring acupuncturists in California must be graduates of one of 29 universities accredited by California’s Acupuncture Board and pass the California acupuncture licensing exams. According to the Community Acupuncture People’s Organization (POCA), the California Acupuncture Licensing Exams “have been considered the gold standard in acupuncture licensing testing.” The high regard given to the California exam is due to the increased rigor and depth of the test compared to the NCCAOM.
And:
Licensing acupuncture is just one small example of California’s licensing mania. For 20 years, California was class 49 out of 50 in Cato’s Freedom in the 50 States survey on professional licensing freedom. A 2023 Archbridge Institute study find California requires professional licensing for 189 occupations, higher than the national average of 179. These licensing regulations harm all Californians: a 2018 Institute of Justice study suggests that California’s licensing system costs 195,000 jobs a year, which may be one reason the Golden State has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state.
