In my regular walks I’ve noticed something interesting. A significant number of tiny cameras, mounted on the end of ten foot fishing pole-like contraptions have sprung up within a few blocks of me. So far all I’ve seen are north of me.
They aren’t just on major thoroughfares or adjacent to traffic lights but all over a residential neighborhood. The only labels I’ve found on them refer to “Juson Technology”.
I wonder if those that authorized whatever these cameras are doing recognize that a) what they’re doing is probably actionable; and b) if it isn’t it probably calls into question a significant number of Supreme Court cases on subjects that the very same people probably consider sacrosanct.
In 1964 only 6% of blacks in Mississippi were registered to vote, the lowest percentage in the region. Two years later, that number had climbed to 60%, the highest in the South. “In every southern state, the gains were striking,†wrote the late political scientist Abigail Thernstrom. “Sometimes good legislation works precisely as initially intended.â€
In 1970, there were fewer than 1,500 black elected officials in the U.S. Today there are more than 10,000, and they have included mayors of large cities with significant black populations—Cleveland, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, Detroit, Washington—as well as governors, congressmen, senators, a twice-elected black president and the current vice president. Black voter registration in the South, where most blacks live, is higher than in other parts of the country and, in Mississippi and Georgia, black voter turnout has outpaced white turnout.
In 1964 even Southern towns with overwhelmingly black populations had white mayors and white sheriffs. Today most Southern states the percentage of black sheriffs is much more closely aligned with the percentage of black population than in Northern states. In Illinois fro example 15% of its population is black but only 4% of sheriffs are black.
That’s just the start of the differences between then and now. 58 years ago stores, restaurants, hotels, restrooms, and even public drinking fountains were all segregated by race. Mr. Riley concludes that “the Democrats are stuck in 1964”. And what’s worse they’re patronizing black voters:
Why treat the black electorate like helpless children? It’s clear that when blacks are sufficiently motivated, they have little trouble meeting the same requirements that other groups meet and casting a vote. Democrats continue to claim that Republicans are advocating modern-day poll taxes and literacy tests in disguise, even as evidence to the contrary continues to mount.
Actually, that’s not quite fair to Democrats. According to the polls, most Democrats—as well as most Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blacks and whites, don’t object to things like requiring people to prove who they say they are before voting. Liberal activists and their friends in the political press like to obsess over such things, but outside that bubble none of this is especially controversial.
I think that the exaggerated claims of racism and little or no social progress are only possible because people today are so ignorant of the past.
Does racism still exist? Of course it does. And we’re still far from perfect. But the strides that we’ve made have been astonishing over a relatively short period of time.
The nature of the Capitol Police is unlike any in the country in that they perform mostly security functions and not traditional policing. The events of Jan. 6 were transformative, and it is clear that changes are needed in how the agency operates. A search is underway for a permanent chief to replace Steven Sund, who was forced to resign after the insurrection, and it is important that someone be found who can address internal issues, such as strengthening training, and external issues of a muddled chain of command that includes the House and Senate sergeants of arms and congressional leadership. Congress needs to do its part, so it is encouraging that a bill is in the works that would provide money for security improvements and include reforms to the police board that governs this critical agency.
Rather than commenting directly on the editorial or the politically fraught subject of Capitol security, I’ll comment on the Capitol Police.
The U. S. Capitol Police is the only law enforcement agency that does not report to the Executive Branch of the federal government. It reports to the legislative branch. Congressional inattention to its areas of responsibility have, sadly, become the norm.
The history of the force goes back to 1828 and its numbers have increased steadily since then to more than 2,000 sworn officers today. The area of its responsibility is 270 acres. That means that there are roughly three sworn officers per acre per shift for three shifts which should be manageable. The average pay for sworn officers of the USCP is more than $100,000 per year plus benefits including retirement. That is comparable to the pay of big city police forces around the country. Unlike big city LEOs the USCP are primarily security guards.
The minimum age for becoming a sworn officer of the USCP is 37. There is a mandatory retirement age of 57 (raising it to 60 is contemplated) but officers sometimes are allowed to serve additional years to enable them to reach 20 years of service. Once hired USCP officers are not required to be retested or meet any physical fitness standards.
I would make the following recommendations:
Lower the minimum age of the force to 30 with five years of civilian experience.
Retain the present mandatory retirement age.
Require officers to maintain defined levels of physical and psychological health. Using the “young and vigorous” standard comparable to Executive Branch agencies like the Marshall Service, ATF, or DEA would be advised.
Officers should be retested every five years.
I would also suggest that the Congress exercise its responsibilities with regard to the USCP but some things are too much to ask.
We’re talking about the tax on global intangible low-tax income, known as Gilti, which was created by the 2017 tax reform. American multinationals were previously charged the full U.S. corporate tax rate on their global profits, but only when they repatriated their foreign earnings. That created a strong incentive to park foreign profits overseas. Gilti taxes many foreign profits as they arise, but at half the top domestic rate. That less punitive approach allowed more companies to return overseas cash to the U.S.
Gilti was flawed from the start and needs fine-tuning, but Mr. Biden would make it worse in every respect. Start with the rate. The 2017 tax law set the statutory Gilti rate at half the regular corporate rate, so Gilti now is 10.5%. Mr. Biden would increase that to 21%, three-quarters of the 28% rate he proposes for companies overall.
That’s the statutory rate, though, and the effective rate companies actually pay is higher. This is because Gilti embedded double taxation in the tax code. Before the 2017 reform, companies could claim a credit of 100% of foreign tax paid against their U.S. tax bill, and also could carry losses forward or back. Gilti allows a credit of only 80% of foreign taxes, with no carry-forwards or carry-backs.
This means today’s effective Gilti rate is at least 13.125%, so any U.S. company paying less than that percentage of profits in foreign taxes will owe Treasury a Gilti payment. Raising the statutory rate to 21% increases that effective rate to 26.25%. This new Biden effective minimum tax would be higher than the statutory tax rates in most countries even in Western Europe, and that’s before those countries apply deductions and exemptions.
Reforms to the corporate income tax will also test the Biden Administration’s commitment to international institutions and accords:
The OECD’s current discussions for a global minimum tax involve a lower statutory rate than the new Biden Gilti, probably around 12%, though it hasn’t published a number. The OECD is trying to find ways to allow companies to carry losses forward or backward to smooth out tax liabilities over time. And the OECD would offer a more generous investment exemption by also exempting part of the profits attributable to foreign payroll, a carve-out not included in current Gilti that would benefit service companies with fewer tangible assets.
This doesn’t make the OECD plan a good idea. But it shows that even in Europe there are limits to how much governments are willing to harm their companies to stifle low-tax competition from the likes of Ireland.
Corporate income taxes are an area in which the Democratic Party has painted itself into a corner. Their reliable talking point of the terrible injustice of low corporate income tax rates and the need to raise them in the name of justice is precisely backwards. Business income taxes should be abolished on many grounds including on the grounds of justice. Taxing the same income multiple times is itself unjust. Furthermore, as I have documented in the past, business income taxes are inefficient. Not only do they induce companies to do things they wouldn’t do in the absence of the tax and pay substantial sums to avoid the tax, they also pass both the tax and the cost of tax avoidance along to their customers. That is, in effect, a regressive tax, falling most heavily on the poor.
After enduring a year of closures, employee safety fears and start-stop openings, many American restaurants are now facing a nationwide ketchup shortage. Restaurants are trying to secure the tabletop staple after Covid-19 upended the condiment world order. Managers are using generic versions, pouring out bulk ketchup into individual cups and hitting the aisles of Costco for substitutes.
“We’ve been hunting high and low,†said Chris Fuselier, owner of Denver-based Blake Street Tavern, who has struggled to keep ketchup in stock for much of this year.
The pandemic turned many sit-down restaurants into takeout specialists, making individual ketchup packets the primary condiment currency for both national chains and mom-and-pop restaurants. Packet prices are up 13% since January 2020, and their market share has exploded at the expense of tabletop bottles, according to restaurant-business platform Plate IQ.
Even fast-food giants are pleading for packets. Long John Silver’s LLC, a nearly 700-unit chain, had to seek ketchup from secondary suppliers because of the rush in demand. The industry’s pandemic shift to packets has pushed up prices, costing the Louisville, Ky.-based company an extra half-million dollars, executives said, since single-serve is pricier than bulk.
“Everyone out there is grabbing for ketchup,†Chief Marketing Officer Stephanie Mattingly said.
What is unclear to me, either from the article or from additional research, is where in the supply chain the problem has cropped up or if it is, indeed, everywhere.
For Kraft Heinz, the 500 lb. gorilla of ketchup and most condiments, it may not be quite as simple as ordering more. For example, the tomato varieties used in Heinz ketchup are tailored specifically to the brand and grown exclusively for Kraft Heinz. The harvest was the harvest. I haven’t been able to determine whether Kraft Heinz manufactures their own ketchup packets or whether they’re made for them. In either case they may be made overseas.
And then there are the environmental issues. Single serve condiment packages are terrible for the environment. They tend to be multi-material, too costly to recycle.
I really ought to write a post on retail packaging. Most people don’t think about it but you can basically date modern retail to two developments: single use packaging and mass advertising. That is going to be a substantial impediment to plans to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2040, 2050 or 2550. A lot of that packaging is dependent on oil. Dispensing with that packaging would be disastrous for retail and would land on the poorest Americans hardest.
Yesterday when I went to my main PC I was confronted by a black screen. I quickly verified that the PC was fine but the monitor was malfunctioning. I replaced it temporarily with a spare (I tend to have spares on hand for most computer components), checked how quickly Amazon would get me a replacement, then ordered a replacement online with Micro Center. An hour or so later I hopped in my car, drove to the Micro Center store (about 7.5 miles away), got into the queue for Internet orders, picked up my replacement monitor and took it home.
It took me an hour or so to get the new monitor working. As it turned out although the cable I had been using worked fine with other monitors it didn’t work with the new monitor. Fortunately, I had a spare cable (remember: I keep spares) and my spare cable worked. So, a mere two and half hours after I realized there was a problem I was back in operation. That sort of cut into my day.
But there is a way to stem the tide of a new type of gun that is proliferating unchecked. President Biden can use executive action to crack down on “ghost guns,†which avoid regulation and serial numbers because they are sold unfinished or as kits.
“Ghost guns have taken off, and they’re untraceable,†said Dr. Garen Wintemute, a gun violence expert at the University of California at Davis. Law enforcement agencies recovered about 10,000 ghost guns in 2019, and they account for 30 percent of all firearms taken in gun trafficking investigations in California. Ghost guns have been used in at least three mass shootings in California, Wintemute said.
White nationalists have seized upon the chance to build secret arsenals through ghost guns. Last year, a supporter of the extremist boogaloo movement allegedly used a ghost weapon to kill a law enforcement officer, and the men accused of plotting to kidnap Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, also had ghost guns.
I have no opposition to that measure although I would prefer that the Congress enact a law against “ghost guns” which President Biden could then sign into law.
However, I wonder if Mr. Kristof has reasonable expectations for the results of such a law? There are many ways of obtaining firearms that are less expensive than “ghost guns”. Most frequently the guns used in crimes are either stolen or gifts from family and friends. IMO a better way to “stop the parade of gun deaths” would be to crack down on such gifts. Some states have laws requiring all firearms to be sold through licensed dealers. That seems to me to be a commonsense measure for controlling the sale of firearms.
Here in Chicago in 2021 year-to-date there have been 142 gun homicides, 7 on Easter Sunday alone. We’re on track to have the bloodiest year in our history relative to population. By far the greatest number of victims were young black men (83.3% of victims were black; the ratio of men killed to women killed is about 6:1). It is assumed that the perpetrators of these crimes were mostly young, black men as well although practically no perpetrators have been identified for any of these killings.
Offhand I’d speculate that none of those homicides used a “ghost gun”. Note that Mr. Kristof identified one instance of a “ghost gun” having been used in a homicide last year. That’s .001% of homicides.
One of the points Noah Smith made in his post that I agree with is that things aren’t working so we should change what we’re doing. But what is it that we’re doing that’s not working? I think it’s:
I think the Clinton era tax reforms have been a disaster from the standpoint of income inequality and economic growth. We need to revert back to the treatment of executive income that prevailed before those changes. They’re not working.
Maintaining a loose labor market via immigration or, as Jared Bernstein put it, turning on the immigration spigot whenever somebody’s wages go up, has not worked.
Decreasing U. S. production hasn’t worked. The dream of becoming a society that consumes without producing is a fantasy.
The Clinton era bank reforms have been a disaster, too. In 2009 we should have seized the opportunity presented to us to break up the big banks. Foolishly, we didn’t.
Cutting personal income taxes, first during the Bush Administration and again during the Trump Administration, has perhaps worked a little but it has increased personal consumption without increasing business investment. I don’t believe that’s working.
Spreading democracy via hard power whether that hard power is military might or economic might isn’t working. On the other hand spreading democracy via soft power was an enormous success. Too bad that the former has diminished the latter. Taking every foreign policy decision that either Bush Administration or the Clinton Administration made and doing the opposite wouldn’t be a bad start. The Obama Administration’s decisions to support the putsch in Ukraine and attempt to do the same thing in Syria were bad decisions, too.
To be completely honest there’s a lot that I like in Noah Smith’s post, an attempt to explain “Bidenomics”. Some of his points are points I’ve made myself:
Cuts in marginal tax rates have not increased business investment.
Cuts in marginal tax rates have not resulted in people working more.
Income inequality has risen sharply since 1980.
but, since I disagree with the premises of his post, it’s hard for me to agree with his assessment of the Biden Administration’s economic policies. Here are his premises:
The last economic policy paradigm, bequeathed to us by Ronald Reagan (and Paul Volcker), was based around tax cuts, deregulation, welfare cuts, and tight monetary policy. These were intended as remedies for the two main economic problems of the 1970s — slow growth and inflation, together known as “stagflationâ€. The idea that tax cuts boost growth comes from basic economic theory; in almost any model, taxes distort the economy (except for things like carbon taxes), so if you cut taxes it should make the economy more efficient, thus increasing growth at least temporarily. The idea that deregulation boosts growth was more of an article of faith — since “regulation†means a ton of different things, there’s no economic model that can capture it in a general sense (actually deregulation really started under Carter, who arguably did more than Reagan). Welfare cuts were partly based on economic theory — means-tested welfare programs are a form of implicit taxation, which theoretically discourages people from working — and part dogma about a “culture of dependenceâ€. As for tight monetary policy — or more accurately, an anti-inflationary bias at the Fed — that was obviously just a response to inflation.
We can argue back and forth about whether the Reagan paradigm ever boosted growth; in fact, I don’t know the answer. The late 80s and 90s were good years for American incomes and the 90s and early 00s were good years for productivity. How much tax cuts and deregulation had to do with that is up for debate, and how much the country benefitted from reduced inflation is also arguable.
But it’s clear that by the 2000s and 2010s, the Reaganite paradigm wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do.
What should be apparent is that for his analysis to hold water we must, indeed, have cut taxes, deregulated, cut welfare, and had tight monetary policy. Did we? I would submit that by objective measures none of those things has happened. Let’s start with taxes:
To my eye what that says is that whether you measure tax revenues in terms of dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, or as a percentage of GDP we have not cut taxes. Let’s dig into the most generous assessment (percentage of GDP).
Basically, revenues as a percentage of GDP have been flat since 1980. What are true are that a) marginal rates have been cut and b) we have not increased revenues as a percentage of GDP. From that at most I’d conclude that marginal tax rates are not economically relevant. Now let’s consider deregulation.
Here’s a telling chart of economically significant regulations issued by year since 1980:
The story that graph tells is pretty conclusive. Regulations have increased year on year, administration on administration since 1980 and that includes during the Trump Administration when you take 2020 into account. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story.
Federal regulations are cumulative. Unless expressly removed which only happens very rarely they increase year by year. Here’s a graph of the number of pages in the Federal Register, the official journal of the federal government’s agency rules, proposed rules, and official announcements:
Under the Trump Administration there may have been a small reduction in the total amount of regulation but arguing that we’ve been cutting regulations for decades is one step too far. How about welfare?
Here’s a graph of federal welfare spending as a percentage of GDP:
The different colors represent the major categories of welfare spending (unemployment, families and children, housing). All sorts of things might be concluded from that chart. That welfare spending has decreased is not one of them. But even that graph does not tell the whole story because it doesn’t include healthcare spending. Here’s a graph of federal Medicaid spending over the last 20 years:
If you’re wondering about Medicaid spending since 2015, that has increased, too, but has roughly maintained the same percentage of GDP. So welfare spending hasn’t been cut, either. How about monetary policy? Have we had a tight monetary policy over the last 20 years?
The answer to that is a resounding “No”. As it turns out there’s actually a way of measuring the looseness or tightness of monetary policy, cf. “the Taylor Rule”. The graph below illustrates the relation of the Fed Funds rate to various forms of the Taylor Rule:
Summarizing what that graph says in words, monetary policy was too loose from 2001 through 2005 and has been too loose since 2008. That’s 17 of the last 20 years. Even shorter: we have not had a tight monetary policy. We’ve had a loose monetary policy.
I’m going to try and wrap this post up. Don’t mouth political nostrums at me. If you’re going to make an argument based on your observation that certain things have happened, be prepared to support your views with evidence. Right now I don’t believe the available supports the notions that we’ve actually cut taxes, deregulated, cut welfare, or had a tight monetary policy. What has been done is that we have lower taxes, fewer regulations, less welfare and a tighter monetary policy than might otherwise have been the case in the absence of countervailing actions. That’s not the same as low taxes, few regulations, less welfare, and tight monetary policy.
Last night my wife and I streamed 63UP. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, back in 1964 British filmmaker Paul Almond, assisted by Michael Apted, made a documentary about 14 British seven-year-olds (10 boys and 4 girls) from different parts of Britain and different social classes—7 Up!. At least in part I think it was intended to be an “out of the mouths of babes” sort of treatment of the British class system.
Every seven years since then Mr. Apted has released another installment, interviewing the same individuals. One of the girls, Lynn, died in 2013. Mr. Apted himself died in 2019 at 79.
The series is fantastic, fascinating and 63UP is no exception. The now 13 individuals are no longer cute kids but pensioners, largely philosophical about their lives.
