Thursday, March 31, 2022
Unworkable and Immoral
Apart from its unworkability, the fundamental problem with this plan is that it seeks to impose the income tax where there is no income. Asset values rise and fall, sometimes dramatically—in both directions. An investor typically holds assets for a period of time until he decides to sell. At that point, he has either a gain or a loss that is relatively easy to calculate. It is axiomatic that you haven’t made any money on a stock until you sell it, but the Biden proposal senselessly ignores this elementary principle.
The Biden plan raises the obvious question, what happens when asset values fall? Next time the stock market crashes or real estate values decline, will the federal government write checks to (only) the richest Americans to cover some portion of their paper losses? Will they get refunds of amounts they have paid on appreciation that has now gone up in smoke? I suppose not, which exposes the gross unfairness of the Biden plan.
Undefined
Today’s Freeport Question—the question that has the potential to split the Democratic Party off from a majority of voters—is: what is a woman? We have seen, this week, a nominee for the Supreme Court says [sic] she is incapable of defining what a woman is, without the expertise of a biologist. Are the federal courts now going to need in-house biologists to determine how to apply laws aimed at prohibiting discrimination against women? (Or men for that matter, because someone who can’t tell what a woman is may well have the same difficulty identifying a man.)
Whenever leftists try to lecture you about "the science" associated with some issue, remind them that they're the ones who can't tell the difference between boys and girls.
Labels: biology is hard, party of science
It's Good to Be Green
If you’re a glutton for misery, no doubt you’ve heard more than a few times from the climatistas about how we need to “end fossil fuel subsidies.” Supposed subsidies for oil, natural gas, and coal are actually minuscule when calculated on a per-unit-of-energy delivered to the consumer, and has little effect on consumer prices, unlike subsidies for wind and solar power, which are yuuuge on a per-unit-of-energy delivered, and they have large market price-distorting effects for electricity. If we simply “levelized” energy subsidies on a per-unit-of-energy delivered basis, wind and solar development would halt overnight, and oil, gas, and coal production would not change a bit in output or price.
