The United Nation’s Hypocritical Opposition to Higher Taxes

Like other international bureaucracies (most notably the IMF and OECD), the United Nations routinely advocates for higher taxes.

According to the bureaucrats, we are supposed to believe that higher taxes are necessary because a bigger burden of government will increase growth.

I’m not joking. The Center for Freedom and Prosperity produced a video outlining – and debunking – this silly theory.

What’s especially galling is that international bureaucrats at places like the U.N. get tax-free salaries, so they are exempt from the negative impact of the bad policies they want for everyone else.

I’ve sometimes speculated that they might have a more sensible attitude if they had to pay tax.

Well, we now have a test case. In an article for ABC News, Deng Machol writes about the U.N. deciding that taxes are a bad idea.

Following an appeal from the United Nations, South Sudan removed recently imposed taxes and fees that had triggered suspension of U.N. food airdrops. Thousands of people in the country depend on aid from the outside. The U.N. earlier this week urged South Sudanese authorities to remove the new taxes, introduced in February. The measures applied to charges for electronic cargo tracking, security escort fees and fuel. …The U.N said the new measures would have increased the mission’s monthly operational costs to $339,000. The U.N. food air drops feed over 16,300 people every month. At the United Nations in New York, U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said the taxes and charges would also impact the nearly 20,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan, “which is reviewing all of its activities, including patrols, the construction of police stations, schools and  centers, as well as educational support.”

What a revelation. The U.N. suddenly realizes that higher taxes decrease whatever is being taxed. The “philoso-raptor” won’t be surprised.

Maybe, just maybe, the bureaucrats will now realize that high taxes on the rest of us also are a bad idea.

But I won’t hold my breath. After all, some (untaxed) bureaucrats at the United Nation think it is a violation of human rights if the rest of us don’t pay more tax.

P.S. As you might suspect, the U.N. budget has plenty of waste.

P.P.S. I had the surreal experience of being a credentialed observer at a United Nations conference where it seemed like I was the only person who did not favor higher taxes.

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Politician of the Year?

It’s only April, but I suspect Senator Elizabeth Warren, a doctrinaire statist from Massachusetts, is going to win Politician of the Year for 2024.

Which is noteworthy because she’ll be the first multi-year winner of the award, having previously won the prize in 2021 (and she deserved to win it in 2017 and 2019).

What did she do this time? Well, like many of our friends on the left, she only believes global warming is a problem if it means other ordinary people have to curtail their carbon footprints and suffer from lower living standards.

Elizabeth Warren falsely claims "life on Earth it at risk" because of so-called global warming.

Then she flies on a private jet and hides behind a staffer when she's caught on camera.

What a hypocrite…pic.twitter.com/2KyFdeM6hz

— The American Girl (@TheAmericanGrl) April 22, 2024

I assume this was for a domestic trip, so perhaps Sen. Warren isn’t quite as bad as the green Davos crowd.

But hypocrisy is still hypocrisy, and “Fauxcahontas” has a long track record of saying and doing dodgy things.

P.S. Here are some past winners of my “Politician of the Year” award.

• Gavin Newsom, Eric Garcetti, and Stacey Abrams
• Elizabeth Warren
• Richard Blumenthal
• Nancy Pelosi and Mayor Jim Kenney
• D.C. Councilman Jack Evans
• Malaysia’s Prime Minister
• France’s former President
• President of the Philippines
• The Mayor of New York
• Spain’s “ecological transition” minister
• Senator Fetterman of Pennsylvania
• Biden’s Energy Secretary
• Biden’s Transportation Secretary

A wretched hive of scum and villainy!

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An Inaccurate – But at Least Not Hypocritical – Leftist

Our friends on the left are often very hypocritical. I’ve written many times, for instance, about statist politicians who oppose school choice while sending their kids to private schools.

I’ve also shared columns about hypocrisy on issues such as the environment, pandemic, and minimum wage.

And, given my interest in fiscal policy, I especially enjoy mocking the leftists who urge higher taxes yet fail to lead by example.

In some cases, they aggressively seek to minimize their taxes (Joe Biden, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton). In other cases, they say they want to pay more but don’t take the simple step that would make that happen (Elizabeth Warren).

That being said, not every leftist is a hypocrite. Some do lead by example.

Here are some excerpts from a New York Times column by Matthew Desmond, a Princeton sociologist.

Alejandro Narváez is OK taking less. …when it comes to paying taxes, he forgoes many deductions…filing his taxes with TurboTax, not to save money but to lose it. “I see it as my responsibility to pay my fair share of taxes,” Mr. Narváez, who is 70, told me. “I have so many opportunities to reduce my taxes, but I choose not to.” …this time of year also provides us the opportunity to ask ourselves: Is it ethical to take tax breaks that primarily make the rich richer? …Besides the occasional statement from liberal elites asking to be taxed more, many of the biggest beneficiaries of the government’s largess have done very little to bring about fair tax reform. Why do we keep waiting for Congress to act when we could effectively tax ourselves more by following Mr. Narváez’s example and refusing to take some deductions? …My family has struggled with this question. …I have criticized the mortgage-interest deduction… My family qualifies for this ridiculous deduction. But we don’t want it. …So we’ve decided to create that society in miniature form, and with full recognition that we have the privilege of doing so, by donating what we receive from the mortgage-interest deduction to affordable housing initiatives on top of our regular giving. …I honestly don’t know if it’s better to donate tax deductions or, like Mr. Narváez, refuse them outright. I only know that it feels unfair to keep it all for ourselves. …Imagine if we all came to view tax breaks not as entitlements but as money that is not rightfully ours.

Kudos to Mr. Narváez and Mr. Desmond for putting their money where their mouths are.

I think it’s crazy to give more money to the nation’s most venal and corrupt people, but at least they’re not hypocrites.

However, I can’t resist pointing out that Mr. Desmond made several inaccurate statements in his column.

For instance, he echoes Joe Biden’s laughably dishonest assertion about tax rates.

…tax breaks benefit the billionaire class, which has the lowest effective tax rate in the country.

He also doesn’t understand (or doesn’t care) that both dividends and capital gains are example of double taxation.

…dividends and capital gains…are taxed at lower rates than other sources of income

And the same is true with regards to the death tax.

U.S. law allows wealth to be passed onto heirs almost tax-free.

Last but not least, he regurgitates the leftist trope that being allowed to keep your own money is a subsidy or handout.

…money the country dedicates to subsidizing private affluence.

Though I guess we need to acknowledge that at least they are being honest about their radical agenda.

P.S. Here’s the humor version of leftist hypocrisy.

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Tweet of the Year for 2024?

In the arena of public policy, who are the worst hypocrites?

1. Politicians who push for higher taxes while using clever tactics to protect their own money?
2. Preening celebrities who lecture us peasants about climate while they use private jets?
3. Politicians who send their own kids to private school while fighting against school choice?

I’m tempted to say the third group is the worst. And Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky deserve to be on the list because of what they recently wrote.

Here are some excerpts from their column in USA Today.

We’re proud public school graduates… That’s why we’re so alarmed that legislators want to loot our public schools to fund their private school voucher scheme. …In North Carolina, the Republican legislature passed a voucher program with no income limit, no accountability and no requirement that children can’t already go to a private school. This radical plan will cost the state $4 billion over the next 10 years, money that could be going to fully fund our public schools. In Kentucky, legislators are trying to amend our constitution to enshrine their efforts to take taxpayer money from public schools and use it for private schools. …The future of our nation goes to class in public schools, and all Americans must be on guard for lobbyists and extremist politicians bringing similar plans to their states. …We are going to keep standing up for our public school students to ensure that they have the funding they need, and that teachers are paid like the professionals they are. It’s what’s best for our children, our economy and our future.

There are many things to criticize about their editorial, such as the fact that they are kowtowing to teacher unions.

Or the fact that they ignore all the evidence about school choice producing better results for students.

They even imply that school choice is part of a segregationist agenda even though minority students would be the biggest beneficiaries.

So there are lots of reasons to condemn the editorial.

But the best critique is from Phil Kerpen. Here’s his response on Twitter (now X). Brief, but to the point.

It’s worse than disgusting.

P.S. In my list of hypocrites above, I should have included politicians in other countries who praise government-run healthcare but then run to the United States for their own treatment. And also bureaucrats at places like the IMF and OECD who get tax-free salaries yet promote higher taxes for everyone else.

P.P.S. Fortunately, Gov. Cooper’s awful views haven’t stopped progress in North Carolina.

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The World Economic Forum and its Davos Conference

Every January, because of its annual conference in Davos, I get asked about the World Economic Forum (WEF).

It’s time to finally respond to those inquiries. Three things come to mind, one positive and two negative.

• One the positive side, the WEF used to publish a Global Competitiveness Report that I often favorably cited (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016, 2018), even though it was not as methodologically sound as Fraser’s Economic Freedom of the World or the Heritage’s Index of Economic Freedom.
• On the negative side, as illustrated by this tweet, the WEF’s annual conference in Davos has attracted lots of wealthy hypocrites who fly to Switzerland in their private jets while pushing a climate agenda that would lower living standards for ordinary people.
• Also on the negative side is that the WEF and the Davos conference have tended to be platforms for other misguided ideas, such as global governance (cartels to empower politicians) and the so-called Great Reset (dirigiste policies such as eroding shareholder rights).

I might overlook that last negative point if there were lots of pro-liberty speakers like President Milei of Argentina. Sadly, people like him are the exception rather than the rule. It seems that there are always many more statists on the agenda.

Weighing the positives and negatives, I’m not a fan of the World Economic Forum. That being said, I also think it is silly to view the organization as being part of some grand conspiracy.

It’s more akin to a global Chamber of Commerce, with the same problems that sometimes are found with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (support for cronyism, bailouts, industrial policy, etc).

The bottom line is that the rich and powerful often are more interested in preserving their wealth than they are in policies that enable the creation of new wealth.

Especially since they might lose out if there is creative destruction!

Let’s look at what some other people think.

Writing for the U.K.-based Daily Telegraph, Dan Hannan has a good description of the Davos crowd.

While the WEF does not have a unified party line, delegates at its smugfest have a great deal in common. They like regulations, which are designed by and for people like them and which, though they are dressed up as being about consumer protection or greenery, end up keeping out the competition. They approve of government task-forces and advisory agencies – indeed, they meet in Davos partly to lobby each other for jobs on such bodies. They love supranational institutions, and regard sovereignty as dangerous, atavistic and, worst of all, low-status. …There is nothing pro-market about Davos. Here are the directors and lobbyists of Atlas Shrugged brought to life: woke, subsidy-hungry, pleased with themselves, ambitious, conformist, reluctant to express a view until they have a sense of the room. …our own age is corporatist, managerialist and high-spending, and delegates duly parrot those orthodoxies.

Walter Russell Mead had similar observations last year when writing in the Wall Street Journal about the WEF meeting in Davos.

It is that time of year again. The skies over Davos are thick with private jets flying in billionaires to bemoan the problems of climate change… It isn’t only the discordant but relentless mix of green virtue-signaling and conspicuous consumption. You will hear more talk about the evils of inequality…, yet everyone wears a badge that delineates his exact place in an elaborate and inflexible pecking order. …The WEF grows out of a German understanding of capitalism. …Business needed to demonstrate that capitalism could beat the socialists at their own game. Big business would work with the government to achieve important social-welfare goals. …That ethos of coordinating public and private efforts to achieve social goals powered the WEF from its earliest years, and the vision of public/private partnerships in service to the forum’s vision of the common good remains the animating principle of Davos to this day.

Here are excerpts from a 2023 column by Jim Geraghty in National Review, which focuses on hypocrisy.

…among many conservatives the reflexive response to the Davos conference is disdain, and there’s no getting around the fact that our world’s elites have earned their share of contempt. …so many Davos attendees arrive with an ambitious plan to save the world, and that plan to save the world usually involves making the rest of us change to fit their visions. …instead of sounding the alarm about China or Russia endangering the rest of the world, Davos attendees seem a lot more riled up about you, your sport-utility vehicle, your house, your diet (specifically the meat you consume)… Axios writes, “quips about taking private planes to a ski resort to lament climate change have become an annual tradition.” Er, yes, but it’s not like the critics of Davos made that up or exaggerate the reality. The need to reduce carbon emissions is, year in, year out, one of the biggest themes and messages of the Davos conference, while the attendees rank among the individuals with the highest carbon footprints on earth. Last year the attendees used roughly 1,000 private jets.

Adding outrage to injury, American taxpayers are subsidizing Davos, as reported by Adam Andrzejewski .

You probably didn’t even realize it, but you – the American taxpayer – helped fund the sponsoring organization with tens of millions of dollars in federal grants. Since 2013, WEF received nearly $60 million from U.S. taxpayers. Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that under the Trump Administration, the WEF received $33 million, which outpaced the $26 million in second-term Obama-era funding. …So, how did WEF soak up nearly $60 million in U.S. taxpayer funding since 2013? It was mostly through the State Department’s USAID; taxpayers paid $16 million to support the WEF Grow Africa program, which facilitated trade partnerships between agricultural businesses and African governments. Another $43 million went to WEF’s Global Alliance for Trade Facilitation program, to “boost competitiveness and business conditions, which are key drivers of inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction” in developing countries.

Notwithstanding all the above criticisms, Peter Roff has argued in favor of participation.

…the World Economic Forum held each year in Davos, Switzerland. …a pricy gathering of global glitterati that helps determine what the rest of us will be doing not weeks but years ahead. With so much at stake, you’d think the most ardent supporters of free minds and free markets would be beating down the doors of the complex where it’s held. …Instead, they write it off as some sort of global socialist conspiracy… Darrell Issa, the…California Republican congressman..agrees with the criticism but is aware of the importance of being part of the discussion. “We should not accede to being excluded from a deeper dialogue at the World Economic Forum any more than being shut out of college campuses, online platforms, or public forums,”

I agree with Peter. I frequently speak at conferences, testify to Congress (here and here), or participate in media panels (here, here, and here) where I am the token supporter of freedom.

But I do it in hopes of winning converts (which may be naive on my part, but it’s my job).

So if I ever get invited to Davos, I would participate. But I’m not holding my breath waiting for it to happen.

P.S. I can’t resist the humor value of this Daily Mail article.

The global elite tackling the world’s greatest problems – including gender inequality -at the Davos summit are fuelling a surge in prostitution in the Swiss resort town. Demand for sex work skyrockets each year at the meeting of world leaders and business tycoons who jet in from all around the world to rub shoulders with each other. …One sex worker named Liana said she dresses in business attire so she doesn’t stand out among the executives, despite prostitution being legal in Switzerland. …Liana charges around €700 ($760) for an hour and €2,300 ($2,500) for the whole night, plus travel expenses. The manager of one escort service in Aargau, 100 miles away from the summit, says she has already received 11 bookings and 25 inquiries – and expects many more to follow this week. …In 2020, an investigation by The Times found at least 100 prostitutes travel to Davos for the summit according to a Swiss police officer.

Since I don’t patronize those types of prostitutes (I only deal with the version you find in Washington), I don’t know if Davos attendees are getting a good price. But I hope the government officials at the conference are not financing their hijinks with tax dollars (though that might do less damage than some of the other ways they squander our money).

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A Strong Candidate for Politician of the Year

My politician-of-the-year candidates for 2022 were George Santos, Pete Buttigieg, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, and his Schools Chancellor.

All of these government officials displayed remarkable levels of hypocrisy, arrogance, and sleaze, making them strong contestants.

And, given the oleaginous nature of politicians (described here, here, and here), that is not an easy task.

So who is a contestant this year?

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is an obvious choice.

Her recent behavior was so despicable that even the left-leaning crowd at National Public Radio gave it some coverage. Here are some excerpts from Camila Domonoske’s report.

When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge. But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops. …between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150 and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia. …there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy. …a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger? In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police. The sheriff’s office couldn’t do anything. It’s not illegal for a non-EV to claim a charging spot in Georgia.

How disgusting. Politicians and senior government officials have an entitlement mentality that is worse than the worst welfare recipients.

If I was the family that was blocked, I not only would have called the police, but also parked in such a way to make sure Ms. Granholm’s car also could not access the charger.

P.S. Needless to say, Granholm’s bureaucracy should not exist.

P.P.S. Most people (including myself) have mocked the so-called Inflation Reduction Act because inflation immediately increased, but that awful legislation also gave us the turbo-charged subsidies for electric vehicles that Granholm is promoting (sort of a pared-down version of the Green New Deal).

P.P.P.S. Thinking about yesterday’s column, Norway’s Prime Minister should be another contestant for Politician of the Year.

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School Choice Hypocrite

I’ve written about disgustingly hypocritical politicians who oppose school choice for poor families while sending their kids to private schools.

• President Obama
• President Obama’s Education Secretary
• Elizabeth Warren
• Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina
• Gov J.B. Pritzker of Illinois

Now there is another hypocrite.

The boss of the Chicago teachers union is a big opponents of choice and competition, but she sends her kid to a private school.

The Wall Street Journal editorialized about her hypocrisy.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates has called school choice racist and made it her mission to kill an Illinois scholarship program for low-income children. So how did Ms. Gates try to explain herself this week after press reports that she has enrolled her son in a private Catholic high school? …Ms. Gates’s desire to do what’s best for her child is laudable. What’s not is to do that while denying other families the same choice. The school where her son is enrolled reportedly costs her $16,000 a year. What about those who can’t afford such a school? Illinois’s Invest in Kids program funds about 9,000 scholarships, and last year it had 31,000 applications. But the program is scheduled to sunset, and that’s exactly what the teachers unions have demanded. …Ms. Gates’s son deserves a quality education, but so do his neighbors. With any luck this controversy will improve the odds of renewing the Invest in Kids program. But the real moral and political scandal remains the same: that thousands of Chicago’s children are locked into failing public schools as part of a political job-protection program for the teachers union.

Ms. Gates is a bad person.

She is doing what is best for her kid, but doesn’t want poor parents to have the same freedom to escape bad government schools.

Incidentally, you won’t be surprised to learn that other union officials are similarly hypocritical. And high-level education bureaucrats do the same thing.

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Another Politician Exposed as a Green Hypocrite

Hypocrisy is not a admirable attribute, but it is unfortunately common trait for politicians.

For instance, I get very irked at allegedly conservative politicians who make speeches about fiscal responsibility, but then support bigger government when the cameras are off.

And I’ve also written about leftist politicians who impose taxes and red tape on ordinary people but then make sure they don’t have to live by those rules.

The hypocrisy on green issues is especially nauseating. There are plenty of politicians – and others – who pontificate about the supposed crisis of global warming, yet they use far more energy than average voters (i.e., they have big “carbon footprints”).

Yet they somehow think they can atone with occasional bouts of empty virtue signalling. Consider the case of a Spanish politician who is featured in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

European ministers of environment and energy are gathered in Valladolid, Spain, this week for an informal climate meeting. …Spain’s Ecological Transition Minister, Teresa Ribera, a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party,…cruised on a city bike through the streets of the small metropolis on her way to the conference. Cameras were rolling. …The proletariat wasn’t buying it. The video of the minister’s “green” bike ride shows her escorted by two security cars—one in front and one behind. Besides allegedly snarling traffic, her carbon footprint was twice what was required. Some reports said that the minister had emerged from a limousine 100 meters from the event and got on the bike there. …All of this is highly amusing because the climate glitterati want so much to appear virtuous but can’t give up the travel and other benefits of evil fossil fuels. …European Council President Charles Michel used commercial aircraft for a mere 18 out of 112 flights from 2019 to December 2022. …included his travel to the U.N. climate summits last year and in 2021. Jets for the grandees, but bikes for the masses.

Makes me wonder if Ms. Ribera takes lessons from the jet-setting Pete Buttigieg?

But let’s set aside the vapid symbolism of her short bike ride and consider a much bigger issue. Why are all these European politicians and bureaucrats traveling to a nice tourist destination when they could easily have the same conversations and meetings using an online platform such as Zoom?

Regarding global warming and our friends on the left, Professor Glenn Reynolds of the University of Tennessee famously says that “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when they start acting like a crisis.”

Just like I’ll believe rich leftists who claim they want to pay higher taxes when they put their money where their mouths are.

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Disgustingly Hypocritical Politicians in Illinois

There are two astoundingly hypocritical groups in the United States.

• Leftist politicians who clamor for higher taxes while aggressively protecting their own money from wasteful government.
• Leftist politicians who fight against school choice for poor families while sending their own children to private schools.

Since I’m a fiscal economist, I should be most upset about the first group, but I actually find the second group to be more nauseating.

I want to focus on that latter group because a small school choice plan recently was eliminated in Illinois and the Wall Street Journal opined on that reprehensible development.

Unions want to kill the program because its popularity showcases the failure of the public schools. Invest in Kids had more than 31,000 applications last year, roughly five students for every scholarship it could provide. Every family lined up for a place at a private school is an indictment of a union monopoly that continues to prioritize its power over student learning. Nowhere is this more pronounced than in districts with low-income families. Black and Hispanic families support the scholarship program in large numbers because they often have children assigned to Illinois schools where less than a third of students are proficient at reading or math… The measurable educational shortfalls continue from fourth to eighth grades, consigning young people to failure before they even reach high school. But don’t trouble the unions with this mass betrayal of minority children.

The elimination of this tiny school choice program is a tragedy.

The fact that it was killed by politicians who send their own kids to private school is disgusting.

And why did the top legislators in Illinois decide to deny educational opportunity to poor families?

The WSJ editorial hints at the answer.

Messrs. Harmon and Welch have each had their political careers funded by more than $1 million in contributions from the state’s teachers unions.

What awful people. I wonder how they can sleep at night.

P.S. While the news from Illinois is depressing, the good news is that school choice is spreading elsewhere, with West Virginia, Arizona, Iowa, Utah, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, and Oklahoma all adopting universal or near-universal policies over the past three years.

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The Most Reprehensible School Choice Hypocrite of 2023

The case for school choice is simple and straightforward. Government schools receive record amounts of taxpayer money and do a relatively poor job of educating children.

There are many reasons for the failure of government schools, including natural government inefficiency, but the main reason is probably that the system is controlled by teacher unions.

Indeed, it’s no exaggeration to assert that the system is run for the benefit of the unions rather than the students.

But there’s one group that I dislike more than union bosses.

The most reprehensible group of people in this field are the politicians who send their own kids to private schools while fighting to deny other families the same ability.

I have previously written about some of these hypocrites, including Barack Obama (and his Secretary of Education) as well as Elizabeth Warren. Now it is time to highlight North Carolina’s despicable governor.

Here are some excerpts from a column by Kyle Morris for Fox News.

Democrat North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a “state of emergency” this week in an attempt to prevent a school choice bill from passing the state legislature, despite sending his own daughter to a private school in Raleigh. …Cooper, highlighting efforts from Republicans in the state as a “private school voucher scheme”… The comments from Cooper come after he sent at least one of his three daughters to Saint Mary’s School, an expensive private school in Raleigh… Jason Williams, executive director of the NC Faith and Freedom Coalition, was quick to call out Cooper’s remarks in a tweet. “Why doesn’t Roy Cooper want your child to have the same quality, private education his kid had?” Williams wrote. “If he believed so much in public education, why did he spend thousands for his own kid to avoid it?” …”What a hypocrite. Public schools aren’t good enough for his kids, but they are for yours,” Independent Women’s Forum senior policy analyst Kelsey Bolar blasted.

Cooper’s supposed “state of emergency” is particularly nauseating.

He was perfectly content with a system filled with schools that failed students. But the moment teacher unions felt threatened, he sprung into action with hyperbolic rhetoric.

By the way, there’s another story that reveals additional school choice hypocrites such as Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and J.B. Pritzker.

To appease teacher unions, all of those people are willing to sacrifice other people’s kids. But not their own.

Utterly despicable.

P.S. The “Tweet of the Year” for 2021 involved school choice.

P.P.S. There’s strong evidence for school choice from nations such as Canada, Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands.

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More Hypocritical Leftists

I shared a clever video in 2011 exposing the hypocrisy of rich leftists. They claimed to support higher taxes, but refused to put their money where their mouths were.

Now we have a new version.

One difference is that the first video asked them on the spot to pay more tax. This time, Steve Moore merely asked them to pledge to voluntarily cough up some extra cash to the IRS.

And they refused. How predictable.

Steve should have further exposed their hypocrisy by directing them to Uncle Sam’s website that exists to accept voluntary payments.

Not that it would have made a difference. These leftists are engaged in moral preening, not serious policy.

Incidentally, I have debated rich statists on TV, telling them not to make the rest of us victims of their neurotic guilt feelings.

For what it’s worth, if they feel guilty having so much money, they should send some to me.

P.S. Germany also has guilt-ridden leftists who push for higher taxes.

P.P.S. It’s not just that rich leftists don’t pay extra tax. They also go out of their way to figure out how to pay lower taxes. Just look at the Clintons. And Warren Buffett. And John Kerry along with Joe Biden. As well as Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Bill Gates. Or any of the other rich leftists who want higher taxes for you and me while engaging in very aggressive tax avoidance.

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Another Guilt-Ridden Neurotic Leftist

At the risk of sounding like a “snowflake,” there are some things that “trigger” me.

It drives me crazy, for instance, when rich leftists support tax increases, particularly since many of them (Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc) lower their tax bills by using expensive lawyers and accountants.

If they really think politicians in Washington should have more money, they can easily volunteer extra money via a website maintained by the Treasury Department.

But they never seem to do that. Instead, all their moral posturing is focused on raising other people’s taxes.

This is not just a problem in the United States.

Indeed, Emma Bubola of the New York Times recently reported on one of these neurotic people from Europe.

By the time her extraordinarily wealthy grandmother died last month, Marlene Engelhorn already knew who she wanted to be the ultimate beneficiary of the enormous inheritance coming her way: the tax man. “The dream scenario is I get taxed,” said Ms. Engelhorn, the co-founder of a group called Tax Me Now. …For more than a year, Ms. Engelhorn has been campaigning for tax policies that would redistribute her eight-figure windfall — and anyone else’s. …she entered the orbit of groups of pro-tax millionaires, whose members meet in person or on video calls to discuss their privileges — and how to get the state to strip them away. …members are expected to share how they are engaged in what they typically term “reparations” to society. …Its policy goal is to implement or to increase inheritance and wealth taxes (Austria, where Ms. Engelhorn lives, abolished its inheritance tax in 2008). …Ms. Engelhorn’s multiple radio and TV appearances have resulted in dozens of people reaching out to ask her directly for financial help. She said it wrecks her to say no, but she believes it should not be on her to decide who gets her money. “I would like tax justice to take this impossible decision off my hands,” she said.

This type of nonsense triggers three reactions from me.

• First, I’m sure European governments have provisions in their law to accept voluntary payments. Strange how Ms. Engelhorn is not taking advantage of the opportunity.
• Second, she seems completely oblivious to the research showing how rich entrepreneurs (like her ancestors) created wealth – most of which goes to other people.
• Third, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read how it “wrecks her” to say no to people suffering hardship. She must be a sad joke of a person.

Though there was one part of the story that produced a genuine smile on my face.

It seems one of Ms. Engelhorn’s ancestors cleverly (and appropriately) did the German version of a corporate inversion.

It is not the first time a member of Ms. Engelhorn’s family has made headlines with tax-related issues. When her great-uncle and archaeology donor Curt Engelhorn sold Boehringer Mannheim, German tax authorities didn’t collect a dime because he had previously moved the company’s legal seat abroad.

Let’s close by looking at a different perspective.

In a column for the Foundation for Economic Education, Rainer Zitelmann opined on the existence of guilt-ridden rich people.

I know hundreds of multimillionaires and plenty of billionaires and conducted in-depth interviews with 45 of them for my doctoral dissertation The Wealth Elite. But I have yet to meet anyone who felt they weren’t paying enough tax. The 100 millionaires and billionaires from nine countries who have signed the latest letter asking to pay more tax might sound like a lot, but there are 2,755 billionaires around the world. There are also more than 20 million millionaires in the world, so 100 is equivalent to 0.0005 percent.

Though I’m not sure I fully embrace Rainer’s optimistic numbers.

After all, there’s strong evidence that rich people are now a reliable leftist voting bloc. At least in the United States.

P.S. You can see me debate guilt-ridden neurotic leftists by clicking here and here.

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Hypocrite of the Year

Politicians are generally despicable people, but the worst of the worst almost certainly would include the ones who oppose school choice in order to curry favor with teacher unions.

Like Joe Biden, for instance.

But if you want the worst of the worst of the worst, then we need to look at politicians who oppose school choice while having their own kids in private schools.

In other words, they are hypocrites who also support horrible education policy.

Like Elizabeth Warren, for instance.

Today, we’re going to highlight one of these reprehensible people.

In a column for the Washington Free Beacon, Chuck Ross writes about a Pennsylvania Senate candidate who wants poor kids to be stuck in sub-par schools, but has his own kids at a fancy private school.

Pennsylvania Senate hopeful John Fetterman (D.) opposes vouchers that let children in failing public school districts attend private and charter schools. But the progressive champion…sends his kids to an elite prep school. Fetterman’s kids attend the Winchester Thurston School in Pittsburgh, where parents pay up to $34,250… Fetterman and his wife Gisele have sent at least one of their three kids to Winchester Thurston for the past seven years. …Fetterman’s embrace of school choice for his own family opens him up to allegations of hypocrisy on several fronts. …Fetterman has publicly opposed vouchers that parents in poor-performing districts like his own could use to send their kids to private and charter schools. In 2018, he told an organization founded by Bernie Sanders supporters he opposed vouchers for families.

Some people are criticizing Fetterman’s hpocrisy, though I would have said something much stronger than “shame on him.”

“Shame on him,” said David P. Hardy, a distinguished senior fellow at the Commonwealth Foundation and co-founder of Boys’ Latin of Philadelphia charter school. “Fetterman could send his kids to [Woodland Hills], but he’s got money, so he can send them somewhere else,” Hardy told the Washington Free Beacon. “But the poor people there are stuck going to those schools, and he doesn’t give them any way out.”

It’s hardly a suprise that politicians often are hypocrites.

That’s true with regard to taxes. And that’s true with regards to the pandemic.

But it’s nauseating when they’re hypocrites on school choice since they are denying kids a chance for a better life by trapping them in failing government schools.

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Hypocritical Politician(s) of the Year

Admirable politicians are extremely uncommon. You’re more likely to spot a leprechaun or see the Loch Ness Monster.

In general, the people who want to rule over us are a distasteful mix of narcissism and demagoguery.

But some elected officials are worse than others, which is why I created the Politician of the Year Award.

At the end of 2021, for instance, I bestowed this honor on the Pathetic Politician of the Year and the Reprehensible Politician of the Year.

We’re still very early in 2022, but there already are some politicians who deserve recognition for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Especially with regards to hypocrisy. Consider, for instance, the Governor of California and the Mayor of Los Angeles, both of whom ignore the mask mandates they want regular people to follow.

What’s especially laughable is when politicians concoct absurd excuses.

Liz Wolfe highlights a grotesque example in a column for Reason.

L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti is the latest California politician to hammer home the point that the state’s pandemic rules are just for the little people. What Gov. Gavin Newsom started, and San Francisco Mayor London Breed continued, Garcetti has perfected. He even developed the ideal face-saving line: When a photo surfaced Wednesday of Garcetti, maskless, with Lakers legend Magic Johnson at a Rams game, the mayor reassured concerned citizens that he held his breath to take the photo. …Garcetti’s comically absurd response betrays either a misunderstanding of how COVID is spread or the extent to which the rules he’s imposed, but doesn’t feel the need to follow, are largely hygiene theater.

Since we’re on the issue of mask hypocrisy, let’s include Stacey Abrams, Georgia’s Democratic nominee for governor in 2018.

She’s already famous for being a sore loser. Like Trump, she refused to accept the fact that she lost her most recent election battle.

Now she’s also famous for being a mask hypocrite, thanks to a photo of her getting special treatment in a room full of masked children.

Here are some details on the controversy, as reported by Jim Geraghty for National Review.

On February 4, Stacy Abrams visited Glennwood Elementary School in Decatur, Ga.,.. She retweeted a tweet…which featured three photos of Abrams with students and faculty. Why are all the children masked, and she is not? Why is everyone masked, and Abrams is not? On what planet does that make sense? …After those on Twitter called out this insane double-standard, Abrams deleted the tweet… But deleting the tweets doesn’t eliminate the photos from the archives, and attempting to hide what happened does not change what happened. …The school welcomed a celebrity guest and chose to suspend its masking policy for her while keeping that rule in place for everyone else. If that is so self-evidently indefensible that Abrams and the school won’t even try to defend it, then why are those policies still in place? …Abrams and the school are just playing ostrich and waiting for the controversy to go away. We keep seeing this over and over and over again — Gavin Newsom, Ralph Northam, Muriel Bowser, Joe Biden, London Breed, Jamaal Bowman — officials who enact masking rules, then ditch the masks as soon as they think no one is looking and always insist that their not wearing masks is different somehow.

There are many other pandemic hypocrites. I mocked two of them in a column in September of 2020. And then skewered several more of them in a column in November of 2020.

Now that everyone has had a chance to get vaccinated, I’m trying to figure out if the double standards are absurd or elitist? Arrogant or pathetic?

But maybe we should ask politicians. After all, they’re the experts on hypocrisy.

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The List of School Choice Hypocrites Is Getting Longer

When contemplating the issue of school choice, it’s most important to focus on how we can improve educational outcomes, particularly for children from low-income communities.

But, as a fiscal economist, I can’t help thinking about how school choice is also good news for taxpayers.

And I also can’t help but notice that opponents are often very hypocritical.

• Such as Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who utilized private education for her offspring but endlessly fights against school choice for less-affluent families.
• Such as the high-level education bureaucrat from Alexandria, Virginia who sent his kids to private school while opposing educational options for less-affluent families.
• Such as the Democratic congressional candidate whose kids were enrolled in an elite private school, yet attacked his opponent for supporting choice for less-affluent families.
• Such as the head of a teacher union in California who had his daughter in a private school while opposing similar options for less-affluent families.
• Such as the Secretary of Education and the Chief of Staff for President Obama, both of whom had their kids in private school but fought against choice for less-affluent families.
• Such as President Obama, who sent his daughters to one of the toniest private schools in Washington, yet resisted school choice for D.C.’s less-affluent families.

What do these opponents of choice have in common? What drives their hypocrisy?

Simply stated, they put the interests of teacher unions above the interests of children.

Speaking of which, the NH Journal recently reported on another glaring case of hypocrisy.

One of New Hampshire’s most outspoken school choice opponents stunned reform advocates Friday when she admitted she had pulled her son out of public school to attend a private academy… Advocates for education reform were stunned. “I’m sure Rep. Porter had good reasons for choosing a private school for her own child, and other families have good reasons as well,” said Jason Bedrick, Policy Director at EdChoice. “It’s a shame she’s seeking to deny families the same opportunities she and her children had.” …Porter’s stance highlights what supporters of EFAs and similar programs say is the hypocrisy of their opponents: They oppose letting low-income families use their children’s share of education funding to have the same choices they do. For example, while New Hampshire teachers’ unions are strident opponents of EFAs, multiple studies have found public school teachers are far more likely to send their children to private schools than their fellow parents.

Since we’re on this topic, it reminded me of past examples of education hpocrisy.

For instance, the Daily Caller investigated some of the Democratic Senators who opposed Trump’s Secretary of Education because of her support for school choice.

Lo and behold, they exercised choice for their children while opposing choice for poor kids.

At least seven of the 46 Senate Democrats who voted against Betsy DeVos…currently send or once sent their own children or grandchildren to expensive private schools. …Sen. Al Franken…has two children who attended The Dalton School in New York City… The cost of a single year of tuition for students in kindergarten through 12th grade at Dalton is $44,640. …Sen. Elizabeth Warren…has a granddaughter who rubs shoulders with the children of movie stars at the trendy Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California. Tuition at Harvard-Westlake costs $35,900 each year. …Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse…has two children. His daughter attended the Wheeler School, a coed day school in Providence where a single year of tuition for sixth grade through 12th grade currently costs $35,215. …Whitehouse…also sent his son to a St. George’s School, a private boarding school… Annual tuition at St. George’s is currently $39,900. …Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand…sends her two school-age children to Capitol Hill Day School… Tuition at the private, progressive bastion currently runs $30,300.00 per year for sixth through eighth grades… Sen. Richard Blumenthal…sent one of his four children to Brunswick School, a private, all-boys day school in Greenwich… A year of high school tuition at Brunswick currently costs $40,450. …Blumenthal sent another one of his kids to Greenwich Academy, an all-girls day school where high school tuition currently runs $41,890. …Sen. Maggie Hassan…daughter attended Phillips Exeter Academy… The cost for a year of tuition and fees at Phillips Exeter is currently $37,875. …Sen. Bob Casey…sent his daughters to Scranton Preparatory School, a private Jesuit school where a year of tuition costs $13,400.

Researching today’s topic, I also came across a column for PJ Media, authored by Tom Knighton, that exposed Matt Damon’s hypocrisy.

I’m a Matt Damon fan. …throughout his career, I’ve also known that he was a rabid leftist… It wasn’t until recently that I learned he was also a grade “A” hypocrite. You see, …he’s not sending his kids to public school. …Damon’s argument is that he can’t find the kind of progressive education he had growing up for his own children, and thus has no choice but to send his own kids to private school. Isn’t that just fascinating? Throughout this country, there are people who are less than thrilled with the school they find their children assigned to due to where they live. Maybe they live in a great neighborhood for their modest income level but the school they’re zoned for is notorious for drugs and violence. Maybe it’s just a bad school. …Damon would have that hardworking family that only wants what’s best for their kids to be forced to attend the bad school with no say in the matter, all while sending his kids to private school because he can’t find quite the same “progressive” education he had as a kid. In other words, because he’s rich, it’s cool for him to be picky about his children’s education, but not for the rest of us.

To be fair, while there are many leftists who are hypocrites (as well as plenty of folks on the right), we should acknowledge that there are counter examples.

Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post made a strong case for school choice back in 2017.

Millions of parents choose to send their children to parochial or other private schools. Millions more decide where to rent or buy a home based on the quality of the local public schools. The only people who do not enjoy this right are those who are too poor to move out of neighborhoods where public schools are failing. A disproportionate number of these are people of color. …Well, here’s a suggestion: DeVos could offer one or two cities the chance to become laboratories of choice. …The federal government would offer financial help… The system would then stop funding schools and begin funding families. Every child would be given an annual scholarship. Poor children, who often enter school needing extra attention, would get bigger scholarships. …Every school would then have to compete for students. Principals would be allowed to hire the teachers they wanted. …positive change would be almost immediate: Poor parents, so often ignored and disrespected by public school bureaucrats, suddenly would find themselves being wooed and treated as valued customers. …positive results might soon become self-reinforcing: High-performing schools would attract more students, low performers would have to improve or close.

Heck, the official editorial position of the Washington Post is favorable to school choice, notwithstanding the paper’s generally left-leaning outlook.

These honest and ethical leftists should be applauded.

Let’s close by celebrating the fact that 2021 was a great year for school choice and educational freedom (especially in West Virginia).

J.D. Tuccille of Reason has a new article pointing out that not only was it “a ‘historic’ year for school choice,” but it also has resulted in much greater levels of acceptance for alternatives to the government monopoly.

…accelerated by pandemic-era stresses, innovations in recent years brought big changes to education. The biggest change of all is probably the growing acceptance won by charters, homeschooling, and a host of flexible approaches to teaching kids… “How have your opinions on homeschooling changed as a result of the coronavirus?” EdChoice asks parents every month. In December 2021, 68 percent of respondents reported that they are more favorable to homeschooling than they were before the pandemic. Only 18 percent are less favorable. It’s not just homeschooling. The same survey finds rising support (70 percent) for education savings accounts which allow parents to withdraw their children from public schools and receive a deposit of public funds to pay for education expenses, school vouchers (65 percent) by which public education funds follow students to the schools of their choice, and publicly funded but privately run charter schools (68 percent) like the one my son attended through third grade.

You can see why I listed school choice as one of the best developments for 2021.

P.S. The “Tweet of the Year” for 2021 involved school choice.

P.P.S. There’s strong evidence for school choice from nations such as Canada, Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands.

 

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Leftism and Hypocrisy

I periodically write about our leftist friends who display remarkable hypocrisy on issues such as taxation, education, Covid, and climate.

Here are just a few examples.

• Joe Biden
• Barack Obama 
• Elizabeth Warren
• Hillary Clinton
• Bernie Sanders
• John Kerry
• Bill Clinton
• Gov. J.B. Pritzker

Gee, it’s almost as if there’s a pattern.

Writing for Reason, Professors Jason Brennan and Christopher Freiman highlight more of the hypocrisy that seems so prevalent on the left.

It’s been a bad year in public relations for Champagne socialists—or if you prefer, Neiman Marxists. The socialist Twitch streamer and Young Turks host Hasan Piker bought a $2.7 million house in Beverly Hills, complete with a swimming pool and an outdoor widescreen… Millionaire Aurora James designed Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s show-stealing “Tax the Rich” dress, which she wore to the $35,000-per-ticket Met Gala. The phenomenon of egalitarians living in luxury while denouncing the evils of inequality is not new. …socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders…remains within the top 1 percent of U.S. earners and the top .02 percent worldwide. Curious observers may question why Sanders, a tireless critic of the 1 percent, doesn’t sell his $575,000 vacation home and give the proceeds to charity or offer them as a general donation to the U.S. government via pay.gov. The same goes for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a longtime progressive who has a net worth of over $10 million… When the disconnect between personal behavior and expressed ideology is this dramatic, and when the person gets rich and famous for expressing that ideology, we have to wonder whether he was ever sincere or was instead merely trying to promote himself. …Talking about socialism is cheap (indeed, even lucrative); a $2 million donation is not. Yet rather than bear a real cost to really help the poor, Piker and other prominent egalitarians adopt a philosophy that they think demonstrates their good hearts but that allows them to live high.

So is there any defense of this type of hypocrisy?

Sort of, though I’m not sure it’s very persuasive.

In a Wall Street Journal column last year, Ted Rall defended rich leftists by claiming that put values above self-interest.

‘Limousine liberals” have driven full circle—or rather the term has returned to its origins. Coined in 1969 by Mario Procaccino, the Democratic Party’s unsuccessful challenger to New York Mayor John Lindsay, the epithet described “hypocritical wealthy do-gooders insulated from the negative fallout of their bad ideas,” in historian David Callahan’s definition. “This theme,” Mr. Callahan has written, “remained a staple of conservative attacks.” Sen. Ted Kennedy was a classic example. He sent his kids to exclusive private schools at the same time he was telling working-class whites to bus their kids to distressed schools in the slums. …The accusation of hypocrisy or inauthenticity is…less logical… Had Kennedy gotten the tax system of his dreams, he and his family would have been poorer. He voted his values, not his self-interest. That’s admirable.

P.S. Libertarians can be hypocrites, of course, but the only article I’ve analyzed on the issue was not convincing.

P.P.S. By contrast, there are plenty of hypocritical Republicans.

P.P.P.S. The champion hypocrites are the bureaucrats at the OECD and IMF, who reflexively support higher taxes while receiving very generous tax-free salaries.

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School Choice and 2021’s Tweet of the Year

After three columns on the topic in the past five weeks (see here, here, and here), I wasn’t expecting to write again about school choice anytime soon, but this speech by State Senator Justin Wayne of Nebraska must be watched.

Nebraska Senator Justin Wayne (D) tells his colleagues he'll vote against the school choice bill if they agree to send their own kids to public schools. pic.twitter.com/JzvS7iW6FE

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) April 28, 2021

What a great idea! All politicians who vote against school choice have to send their kids to the crummy government schools in their states and districts.

That wouldn’t be good news for hypocrites like Barack Obama (and his Secretary of Education), Elizabeth Warren, Democratic congressional candidates, and the head of a teacher union.

Heck, we could create a giant list of all the rich leftists who exercise choice for their own children while voting to deny similar opportunities for kids from families that don’t have lots of money.

And this is why I’m overjoyed that we have seen a lot of progress on the issue this year.

And it’s continuing. Here are excerpts from an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about recent steps to expand choice in Florida.

Florida already has among the most expansive school-choice offerings in the nation, and this week the Legislature expanded private-school vouchers to more families. …The bill increases the eligible household income cap from 300% to 375% of the poverty level—about $100,000 for a family of four—though it prioritizes households under 185%. The enrollment cap will continue to escalate by 1% of public-school enrollment annually, allowing roughly 28,000 new students each year. …One of the bill’s biggest boons is extending scholarships to students already in private school. …Florida is a haven for overtaxed northerners, but it’s also an education refuge for low- and middle-income families.

Also in the Wall Street Journal, Paul Peterson of Harvard has a column on how government lockdowns have created an opening for expanded educational freedom.

President Biden wants credit for opening up the nation’s schools within 100 days of taking office. …The big news at the 100-day mark isn’t school opening but the revival of the school-choice movement. …school-choice advocates have scored big victories around the country. Indiana enlarged its voucher program. Montana lifted caps on charter schools. Arkansas now offers tax-credit scholarships to low-income students. West Virginia and Kentucky have funded savings accounts that help parents pay tuition at private schools. Florida, a movement leader, has enlarged its tax-credit scholarship programs. Even Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee promises to veto a moratorium on new charter schools. …The pandemic is the driving force. The failure of the public schools to educate children in the past year has angered parents and policy makers. …the loss of learning and social connectivity produced by school closures has been devastating, especially for low-income minority children. …Survey data show a rise in the level of support over the past two years for vouchers, charters and tax-credit scholarships. Political leaders sense a change in the public mood. After aggressive unions and bewildered school boards shut down schools for a year, the choice bandwagon has begun to roll.

Let’s hope that choice bandwagon rolls further. It will be great for kids.

And, given the importance of quality education for competitiveness, it will be great for the nation as well.

P.S. I’m disgusted by the hypocritical politicians who send their kids to private schools while voting against school choice for the rest of us. But I’m even more disgusted – and baffled – that the NAACP opposes school choice when minority children have the most to gain.

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A Battlefield Conversion on Fiscal Policy for the GOP

I have relentlessly criticized Republicans in recent years for being profligate big spenders.

But I have some good news. The GOP is finding religion and is once again fretting about big government.

The bad news is that many of them are total hypocrites.

The only reason that they’re now beating their chests about fiscal responsibility is that there’s now a Democrat in the White House pushing for big government rather than a Republican in the White House pushing for big government.

Talking a few days ago with Politifact, I remarked on the GOP’s battlefield conversion.

“The very narrow Democratic majorities in the House and Senate will make big policy changes difficult for Biden,” said Daniel Mitchell, a conservative economist with decades of experience in Washington. “Republicans were big spenders under Trump, but they’ll dust off their fiscal conservatism rhetoric with Biden in the White House. …”There will be unanimous, or near-unanimous, GOP opposition to the tax increases,” Mitchell said. That could make passage difficult.

I’m not the only one to notice Republicans change their spots when Democrats are in charge.

In her Washington Post column, Catherine Rampell also notes their hypocrisy.

It’s almost like clockwork. As soon as a Democrat enters the White House, Republicans pretend to care about deficits again. …And so Republicans laid the groundwork for blocking the Biden administration’s request for more covid-19 fiscal relief, on the grounds that further spending is not merely unnecessary but also irresponsible. …These foul-weather fiscal hawks neglect to mention, …before the coronavirus pandemic — the Republican-controlled Senate passed and President Donald Trump signed spending bills that added…$2 trillion to deficits.

If Ms. Rampell’s column focused solely on Republicans behaving inconsistently, I would fully applaud.

Unfortunately, she also used the opportunity to make some assertions that deserve some pushback. Beginning with what she said about the 2017 tax reform.

…the GOP’s prized 2017 tax cuts added nearly $2 trillion to deficits.

It is true that the legislation is a short-run tax cut, but there’s no long-run revenue reduction because many of the provisions expire at the end of 2025.

And, as Brian Riedl made clear in this chart, the tax cuts only play a tiny role even if all the provisions ultimately are made permanent.

Ms. Rampell then makes a Keynesian argument that more spending would be stimulative.

…the U.S. economy actually needs more federal spending, and President Biden has proposed a $1.9 trillion plan… Republicans objecting to Biden’s proposal…seem to be writing off the need for more relief entirely, at least now that a Democrat is president.

Is she right about Republican hypocrisy? Yes.

Is she right that bigger government produces growth? No.

If Biden and the Democrats were simply arguing that some level of handouts are needed and justified to compensate for government-mandated shutdowns, I wouldn’t be happy, but I also wouldn’t complain.

But I do object to the mechanistic argument that government can magically produce prosperity by borrowing money from the economy’s left pocket and putting it in the economy’s right pocket.

At best, the borrow-and-spend approach only produces a transitory bump in consumption, but does nothing for real problem of inadequate income (which is why we should focus on GDI rather than GDP).

She also engages in a bit of historical revisionism about Obama’s failed stimulus from 2009.

This is, not coincidentally, almost exactly what they did about a decade ago. …Republicans suddenly demanded to turn off fiscal (and monetary) spigots once Barack Obama was elected.

In reality, Republicans didn’t control either the House or Senate in Obama’s first two years. He was able to adopt his so-called stimulus. And the economy was stagnant.

Republicans did win the House at the end of 2010 and were somewhat successful in controlling spending for the next few years. And that’s when the economy did better.

Just like it did better during the Reagan and Clinton years when there was spending restraint.

To put this discussion in the proper context, I’ll close with another chart from Brian Riedl. The long-run problem we face is not red ink. Deficits and debt are merely the symptom of the real problem of excessive government spending.

P.S. I wish Politicifact had identified me as a libertarian. I’m only willing to be called a conservative if that means Reaganism, but I worry it now means Trumpism.

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The Humor Version of Left-Wing Hypocrisy

I’ve written about how our friends on the left represent the rich, and pointed out how big parts of their agenda are designed to help people with above-average incomes.

Today, let’s have some fun with that issue.

Bernie Sanders has three houses, yet complains about the supposed excesses of capitalism. I wonder if he applies that analysis to his Mini-Me, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

But that $3,500-plus ensemble is chump change compared to what she wore for Vanity Fair‘s obsequious cover story.

AOC on the cover of Vanity Fair. The clothes are estimated to cost $14,000. So happy that AOC is upholding the long established hypocritical tradition of Socialists who believe Socialism is for poor while they enjoy the fruits of Capitalism. pic.twitter.com/g8iTa1my1q

— Sunanda Vashisht (@sunandavashisht) October 29, 2020

Next, we have the irony of “AOC” augmenting her financial status by selling $58 “tax the rich” t-shirts.

By the way, just in case you think I’m making this up, here’s AOC’s tweet.

In other words, we have one rich person selling over-priced products to other rich people so they can virtue-signal about how awful it is that some people are rich.

The Babylon Bee has some satire on other products AOC could sell.

In an Instagram live video recorded in her posh D.C. apartment, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez announced today she is now selling Tax the Rich Caviar for just $10,000 a can. “Show everyone how bad the rich people are with this delicious caviar,” the website reads. “All our Tax the Rich caviar is responsibly sourced, with all proceeds going to help Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tax the rich.” …Many people are criticizing the products as tone-deaf and out of touch, but Ocasio-Cortez says she is making a list of these people for some future purpose.

Let’s close with Crazy Bernie, joined by fellow millionaires (and fellow hypocrites) Elizabeth Warren and Michael Moore.

I don’t know if they were actually discussing inequality when that photo was snapped, but all three of them definitely enjoy the blessings of capitalism while pushing policies that would prevent other people from becoming similarly wealthy

 

P.S. Let’s not forget about other left-wing millionaires, such as Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the Governor of Illinois, all of whom want to atone for their wealth by raising taxes on the rest of us.

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Happy Thanksgiving from America’s Hypocritical Politicians

I’m going to break tradition.

Normally, I use Thanksgiving as an opportunity to explain how the Pilgrims almost starved to death because they initially used a socialist system for farming, but then began to prosper once the colony shifted to a property rights-based approach (the same thing happened at the Jamestown settlement in Virginia as well).

If you want to learn about the failure of socialism in the early 1600s, watch this video from Reason, or these videos from John Stossel and Prager University.

Today’s topic, though, is about Thanksgiving hypocrisy by the political elite.

In his column for the Wall Street Journal, Jason Riley excoriates do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do politicians.

…politicians have always believed that they deserve special treatment, that the ordinary rules don’t apply to them. They have pushed for limits on school choice for the poor while sending their own children to private schools. They have advocated for gun control and defunding the police while being protected by armed security guards. …there could be as many as 50 million Thanksgiving travelers this year, only 10% less than in 2019. This is a form of mass civil disobedience like nothing the country has seen since the 1960s. Some of it is born of Covid fatigue, to be sure. But the endless parade of politicians flouting their own rules surely has also played a role. It began shortly after the spring lockdowns and if anything has become more commonplace, even farcical. …There’s a widespread assumption among liberal elites that the rest of us are incapable of calculating risks and taking necessary precautions to ride out the pandemic, and it’s insulting. …The decision of so many millions of Americans to buck public-health warnings, trust their common sense, and spend Thanksgiving with loved ones is a welcome indication that people may be tiring of all this condescension.

Meanwhile, NBC News reports on the two-faced actions of Mayor Michael Hancock of Denver.

Denver’s mayor is explaining himself and offering an apology after he traveled to Mississippi for Thanksgiving, though he had urged others to stay home if possible because of the coronavirus pandemic. …The mayor’s trip comes as officials in Colorado have warned about a steep increase in Covid-19 cases that threatens to stress the hospital system, and after warnings from the governor and others to keep Thanksgiving gatherings small and safe. …The station reported he traveled to Houston for the Mississippi trip, and that his account tweeted the guidance to stay home about 30 minutes before his flight.

Last but not least, Bill McGurn of the Wall Street Journal is not impressed with the hypocritical behavior of politicians, but he focuses on the big-picture lesson to be learned.

Californians live under some of the tightest Covid-19 restrictions in the nation. So when Gov. Gavin Newsom was recently caught without a mask at a crowded table for 12 at a posh Napa Valley eatery, he instantly became the poster boy for the “Do as I Say, Not as I Do” crowd. …No doubt Thanksgiving will bring fresh examples. While many citizens dutifully inform grandma there’s no room for her at the table because of new Covid-19 restrictions, someone inevitably will be caught enjoying the holiday with dozens of friends and second cousins… And it’s easy to mock these pols for their blatant hypocrisy when they are caught. But maybe the more important lesson to be learned here is that hypocrisy is guaranteed when we impose one-size-fits-all mandates that are rigid and unworkable.

Amen.

I wrote back in May about the two-faced behavior of politicians in the coronavirus era, and nothing has changed in the past six months.

They genuinely think that they should be exempt from all the nonsensical policies that they impose on everyone else.

They’re hypocrites on coronavirus. They’re hypocrites on education. They’re hypocrites on taxes. And they’re hypocrites on global warming.

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Education Bureaucrat: Choice for Me, Equal Mediocrity for Thee

Writing about the failed government education monopoly back in 2013, I paraphrased Winston Churchill and observed that, “never has so much been spent so recklessly with such meager results.”

This more-recent data from Mark Perry shows that inflation-adjusted spending has ballooned in recent decades, driven in part by teacher expenses but even more so by the cost of bureaucrats.

Robby Soave recently wrote about the hypocrisy of one of those non-teaching bureaucrats.

In a must-read article for Reason, he notes that the lavishly compensated superintendent of government schools in a suburb of Washington, DC, has decided that one of his kids will get a better education at a private school.

Alexandria City Public Schools (ACPS) Superintendent Gregory Hutchings has always been proud to call himself a parent of two children who attend public school. …But now, Hutchings has pulled one of his kids from ACPS—which remains all-virtual, to the frustration of many parents—and instead enrolled the child in a private Catholic high school currently following a hybrid model: some distance learning, and some in-person education. …It’s hard to blame Hutchings for trying to do right by his own child. But he is in a position to do right by thousands of other kids who don’t have the same opportunity.

Mr. Hutchings is a hypocrite, but that’s hardly a surprise.

So was Barack Obama. And Obama’s Secretary of Education. Lots of other leftists also have opposed school choice while allowing their kids to benefit from superior private schools, including Elizabeth Warren.

Why are they hypocrites? Because they put the self-interest of teacher unions before the educational interests of other people’s children.

But let’s return to Mr. Hutchings, because not only is he a hypocrite, he’s also a believer in equal levels of mediocrity.

Hutchings previously expressed concerns about parents seeking alternative educational arrangements. In a July 23 virtual conversation with parents and teachers detailing the district’s fall plans, Hutchings fretted that in-person learning pods would cause some students to get ahead of their Zoom-based public school counterparts. …Hutchings described pod-based learners as “privileged.” “If you’re able to put your child in a learning pod, your kids are getting ahead,” he said. “The other students don’t get that same access.” Students enrolled in pod-based learning, private tutoring, or private schooling that involves in-person instruction are indeed better off than those languishing in virtual education. But that’s a failure of public schools, which have largely chosen to privilege the demands of unions over the needs of children.

This is truly reprehensible.

In the past, I’ve criticized President George W. Bush “No Child Left Behind” scheme because it involved more centralization and more wasted money.

Hutchings is even worse. His policy should be called “No Child Gets Ahead.” And he’s not alone. My home county of Fairfax has the same disgusting attitude.

All things considered, Mr. Hutchings deserves membership in the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame.

P.S. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyhow, that the record spending increases for government schools have not been matched by improvements in educational outcomes. Heck, the chart shows that there haven’t been any improvements.

P.P.S. Getting rid of the Department of Education would be a good idea, but keep in mind that the battle for school choice is largely won and lost on the state and local level.

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Two Rivals for the Politician of the Year Award

Back in July, I asked “Why are there so many bad and corrupt people in government?” and suggested two possible explanations.

1. Shallow, insecure, and power-hungry people are drawn to politics because they want to control the lives of others.
2. Good people run for political office, but then slowly but surely get corrupted because of “public choice” incentives.

Both answers are correct, of course. The real debate is whether one type dominates (based on decades of up-close interaction, I’m guessing there are more from category #1).

In any event, there are plenty of things to dislike about politicians. What’s especially galling is when they decide they don’t have to abide by the laws and regulations they impose on the rest of us.

Consider, for example, the oleaginous example of Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker of the House apparently feels she doesn’t have to obey the rules imposed on everyone else.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited a San Francisco hair salon on Monday afternoon for a wash and blow-out, despite local ordinances keeping salons closed amid the coronavirus pandemic… In security footage…, the California powerhouse is seen walking through eSalon in San Francisco with wet hair, and without a mask over her mouth or nose. …Salons in San Francisco had been closed since March and were only notified they could reopen on Sept. 1 for outdoor hairstyling services only. Salon owner Erica Kious…cast Pelosi’s visit as a double standard. “It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,”…Kious told Fox News that she had expected to be able to reopen her salon in July, and prepared her space in accordance with local guidelines. “There were rules and regulations to go by to safely reopen, which I did, but I was still not allowed to open my business,” she said.

By the way, I can’t resist sharing this additional passage from the story.

“No one can last anymore,” she said. “I have also lost 60 percent of my clientele because everyone is fleeing the city.”

I’ll simply add that there are good reasons to escape San Francisco. And those reasons existed before the coronavirus.

But that’s just a start. There are also good reasons to leave California.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the topic of repugnant politicians so we can see that that Pelosi isn’t the only hypocrite.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney also deserves attention for his two-faced behavior.

Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney publicly apologized on Monday after he was busted for sneaking across the border to enjoy a meal at a Maryland restaurant over the weekend. …in Philadelphia, indoor dining is still fully forbidden under restrictions imposed by the city government—the one that Kenney runs. …his do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do approach to COVID-19 undermines the legitimacy of the harsh restrictions Philadelphia has imposed on its own restaurant industry and demonstrates a callous disregard for how those policies have impacted the city’s residents and businesses. Kenney can drive across the border to Maryland easily, but a Philly bar can’t pick up and move to Delaware to escape the city’s lockdowns.

This online comment about Kenney’s hypocrisy is priceless.

By the way, Kenney is infamous for imposing a soda tax that hurt Philly merchants since consumers simply stocked up at stores outside the city. So at least he’s consistent in hurting all types of businesses.

In any event, both Pelosi and Kenney deserve consideration if there’s a 2020 Politician of the Year contest (previous contestants for that honor include D.C. Councilman Jack Evans, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, and French President Francois Hollande).

Or maybe we need a Hypocrite of the Year contest. Though normally that’s a honor reserved for rich politicians who advocate for higher taxes on ordinary people, yet figure out clever ways of protecting their own money (such as Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Congressman Alan Grayson, Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Tom Steyer).

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Coronavirus and the Two Americas

Earlier this month, Neil Ferguson was awarded membership in the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame after he and his mistress were caught violating lockdown rules that Ferguson – in his role as a supposed public health expert – demanded for the entire United Kingdom.

This was a stunning display of hypocrisy, perhaps even to the extent that Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren might be shocked.

But I want to focus on a different point, which is the degree to which the coronavirus has exposed the fault line between those who are subsidized by government and those who pay for government.

In her Wall Street Journal column, Peggy Noonan opines about how the “protected” don’t have to worry about the consequences of economic shutdowns.

There is a class divide between those who are hard-line on lockdowns and those who are pushing back. We see the professionals on one side—those James Burnham called the managerial elite, and Michael Lind, in “The New Class War,” calls “the overclass”—and regular people on the other. The overclass are highly educated and exert outsize influence as managers and leaders of important institutions—hospitals, companies, statehouses. …Since the pandemic began, the overclass has been in charge—scientists, doctors, political figures, consultants—calling the shots for the average people. But personally they have less skin in the game. The National Institutes of Health scientist won’t lose his livelihood over what’s happened. Neither will the midday anchor. I’ve called this divide the protected versus the unprotected. …Here’s a generalization based on a lifetime of experience and observation. The working-class people who are pushing back have had harder lives than those now determining their fate. They haven’t had familial or economic ease. No one sent them to Yale. …they look at these scientists and reporters making their warnings about how tough it’s going to be if we lift shutdowns and they don’t think, “Oh what informed, caring observers.” They think, “You have no idea what tough is. You don’t know what painful is.”

Fareed Zakaria’s column for the Washington Post acknowledges that it is a problem when a bunch of cossetted elites make policy for everyone else.

…there is a broader distrust that we need to understand. …Social power exists in three realms — government, the economy, and the culture. …In all three, leaders tend to be urban, college-educated professionals, often with a postgraduate degree. That makes them quite distinct from much of the rest of the country. …And yet, the top echelons everywhere are filled with this “credentialed overclass.” …many non-college-educated people…see the overclass as enacting policies that are presented as good for the whole country but really mostly benefit people from the ruling class… Let’s look at the covid-19 crisis through this prism. Imagine you are an American who works with his hands — a truck driver, a construction worker, an oil rig mechanic — and you have just lost your job… You turn on the television and hear medical experts, academics, technocrats and journalists explain that we must keep the economy closed — in other words, keep you unemployed — because public health is important. All these people making the case have jobs, have maintained their standards of living… The covid-19 divide is a class divide.

Writing for USA Today, Professor Glenn Reynolds observes that the self-anointed experts are not the ones paying the price for coronavirus policies.

…it’s hard not to notice a class divide here. As with so many of America’s conflicts, the divide is between the people in the political/managerial class on the one hand and the people in the working class on the other. And as usual, the smugness and authoritarianism are pretty much all on one side. …in Los Angeles — where less than half the county is working now — radio journalist Steve Gregory asked the L.A. County Board of Supervisors whether any of them were willing to take voluntary pay cuts during this crisis. He was told by the chair that his question was “irresponsible,” which is to say embarrassing and inconvenient. (By contrast, New Zealand’s senior officials, including the prime minister, are taking a 20% pay cut.) …There really are two Americas here: Those still getting a paycheck from government, corporations or universities, and those who are unemployed, or seeing their small businesses suffer due to shutdowns. …Then there are the hypocritical gestures, like Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s illicit haircut… People don’t appreciate being lectured and condescended to and bossed around. They especially don’t appreciate being urged to sacrifice by people who make no sacrifices themselves.

I’m tempted to focus on Glenn’s point about how American politicians should follow the lead of New Zealand lawmakers and accept a pay cut as a gesture of solidarity.

Heck, all levels of bureaucracy should take a haircut. Bureaucrats already have a significant advantage in compensation compared to the private sector, and that gap surely will grow now that so many businesses have been shuttered and so many workers have been forced into unemployment.

But I want to focus on a different point, which is the inherent unfairness of the elite having consequence-free power and authority over ordinary people.

In part, it’s the point that Thomas Sowell makes in the accompanying quote.

But it goes beyond that. The problem with the “overclass” or “protected class” is that they also don’t pay any price when they’re totally right, somewhat right, or only partly right.

In other words, the people who live off the government, either directly or indirectly, have relatively comfortable lives – all financed by the people who deal with much greater levels of hardship and uncertainty.

At the risk of understatement, that’s not right.

P.S. This gap is exacerbated when government officials display thuggery rather than empathy.

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English Hypocrite Joins the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame

One of the most-nauseating features of government is how politicians and bureaucrats impose lots of restrictions on ordinary people, yet then officially or unofficially create exemptions for themselves.

• Bill and Hillary advocating for higher death taxes, but then rigging the system so they could avoid that unfair levy.
• Elizabeth Warren sending her kid to private school while seeking to restrict better education for other people’s children.
• Bureaucrats at the OECD getting tax-free salaries while urging ever-higher taxes for people in the private sector.

The coronavirus pandemic has created a new opportunity for the political class to flaunt its privileged status while stepping on the rights of ordinary people.

The Wall Street Journal opined on this issue today and noted plenty of elected officials have decided to exempt themselves from lockdown rules.

A good sign that a government policy is misconceived is that its most energetic promoters can’t abide by it. The coronavirus outbreak has exposed this sort of hypocrisy more than a few times. Mayor Bill de Blasio famously visited his favorite YMCA for a workout even as his office was telling the rest of New York City to stay home. In Chicago, salons and barbershops were shut down while Mayor Lori Lightfoot allowed herself a haircut. Beaumont, Texas, Mayor Becky Ames flouted her city’s shelter-in-place order to have her nails done.

But these examples are trivial compared to the actions of Neil Ferguson, the officious British government employee who has been publicly hectoring his countrymen to follow stay-at-home orders, but decided those rules didn’t apply to his f*buddy.

Neil Ferguson, the epidemiologist at Imperial College,…led the researchers who predicted that, absent a forceful governmental response on movement and commerce, Covid-19 could cause more than 500,000 deaths. That modeling was soon scaled back, but Mr. Ferguson has since become a familiar figure in Britain for urging the government to impose strict shelter-in-place orders. It appears Mr. Ferguson wasn’t sheltering in place. Or, rather, he was but his paramour, Antonia Staats, wasn’t. …Ms. Staats had crossed London at least twice since citywide lockdowns were imposed in March—a clear violation of government rules. He has resigned from his position as government adviser.

I’m not surprised Ferguson is a hypocrite. It goes with the territory.

But I do wonder how he became a government adviser with the Conservative Party supposedly in charge? I thought Republicans were the “stupid party.”

In any event, the U.K.-based Sun is famous for its clever headlines (sort of like the New York Post), and this latest scandal is no exception.

Let’s conclude that Ferguson deserves to be the second Brit in the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame (joining the chap who worked in law enforcement while moonlighting as a jihadist).

P.S. For what it’s worth, Ms. Staats is a left-wing activist, so she’s part of a long tradition of statists who want more power for government, but conveniently don’t think they should be subject to the rules imposed on the rest of us.

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Here’s How Guilt-Ridden Rich People Can Pay More Tax without Hurting the Rest of Us

I want more people to become rich. That’s why I support free markets.

But a few already-rich people say such silly things that I wonder whether a big bank account somehow can lead to a loss of common sense.

For background information on this issue, there’s a Politico article on some of the recent statements by Bill Gates.

It appears he’s embracing the horribly unworkable notion of taxing unrealized capital gains, and he definitely wants more double taxation of capital gains, a more punitive death tax, and a higher tax rate on capital gains that are part of “carried interest” (even though that becomes irrelevant if the regular capital gains rate is being increased).

And he’s getting closer to endorsing a wealth tax, which – to be fair – would address one of my criticisms in the interview.

Bill Gates…is echoing Democrats’ calls for higher taxes on the rich. …the Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist cites a litany of ways the rich ought to be paying more. …he favors “taxing large fortunes that have been held for a long time (say, ten years or more).” …Capital gains taxes should go up too, “probably to the same level as” ordinary income, he said. The estate tax should be hiked, and loopholes used to duck it ought to be shut down. People should also pay more on “carried interest,” Gates said. He also called for higher state taxes, including the creation of an income tax in his home state of Washington.

An income tax in the state of Washington would be particularly misguided. At least if the state hopes to be competitive and not drive away wealth and entrepreneurship.

A few months ago, Gates was in the news for the same reason.

At the time, I suggested that he should simply write a check to the federal government. After all, there’s nothing to stop him – and other guilt-ridden rich people – from paying extra tax.

But he conveniently says this wouldn’t suffice. To make matters worse, Gates apparently thinks government should be bigger, that there’s more it “needs to do.”

Gates rejected the notion that the wealthy could simply volunteer to pay more. …”Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do.”

I guess he’s not familiar with the Rahn Curve.

In any event, Bill Gates isn’t the only rich person who feels guilty about their wealth (or strategically pretends to feel guilty in order to either virtue signal or appease the class-warfare crowd).

The New Yorker has an article on the so-called Patriotic Millionaires, a group of masochists who want more of their money confiscated by Washington.

Abigail Disney…is the granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, who founded the Disney company with his younger brother, Walt, in 1923, and her father was a longtime senior executive there. …In 2011, she joined an organization called the Patriotic Millionaires… She began to make public appearances and videos in which she promoted higher taxes on the wealthy. She told me that she realized that the luxuries she and her family enjoyed were really a way of walling themselves off from the world, which made it easier to ignore certain economic realities. …Patriotic Millionaires…now has more than two hundred members in thirty-four states…the group’s mission was initially a simple idea endorsed by a half-dozen rich people: “Please raise our taxes.”

The good news is that only a tiny fraction of the nation’s millionaires have signed up for this self-loathing organization.

To qualify for the group, members must have an annual income of at least a million dollars, or assets worth more than five million dollars. That could include many families who would describe themselves as upper middle class—who, for instance, own homes in cities with hot real-estate markets. When I asked Payne how hard it was to persuade rich people to join, she said, “I think the last time I checked there were about three hundred and seventy-five thousand taxpayers in the country who make a million dollars a year in income”—there are now almost half a million—“and we have a couple hundred members.” She laughed. “If you ever needed a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many of America’s élite are concerned about the basic well-being of their fellow-citizens, that should give you a rough estimate.”

I’m also happy to see that the article acknowledges a very obvious criticism of Ms. Disney and her fellow travelers.

At a time when political activists are expected to live according to their values, Disney’s role as an ultra-wealthy spokesperson for the underclass makes her a target of vitriol. In late September, someone tweeted at her, “Boy do I despise virtue signaling rich liberal hypocrites living off the money earned by their far better ancestors. Bet you live in a luxury apt in NYC! Why don’t you renounce your corporate grandad’s money and give it ALL away! You never will . . . HYPOCRITE!”

And she is a hypocrite.

Just like the other guilt-ridden rich people I’ve had to debate over the years.

If you want to see hypocrisy in action, there’s a very amusing video showing rich leftists being offered the opportunity to fill out this form and pay extra tax – and therefore atone for their guilt without hurting the rest of us. Needless to say, just like Abigail Disney and Bill Gates, they’re all talk and no action.

P.S. I wasn’t fully responsive in the interview since I was also asked how higher taxes on the rich would affect the economy. I should have pointed out that class-warfare taxes are the most destructive, on a per-dollar-collected basis, because they impose heavy penalties on saving, investment, and entrepreneurship. And that’s very bad news for workers since less innovation translates into lower wages.

P.P.S. Guilt-ridden rich people also exist in Germany.

P.P.P.S. I’m especially nauseated by rich politicians who advocate for higher taxes, yet refuse to put their money where their mouths are. A partial list includes Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Congressman Alan Grayson, Governor J.B. Pritzker, and Tom Steyer.

P.P.P.P.S. If you’re a rich leftist, you can even be a super-hypocrite and utilize tax havens to protect your money.

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Elizabeth Warren’s Reprehensible Hypocrisy

If I had to identify the most economically destructive part of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s agenda, I’d have a hard time picking between her confiscatory wealth tax and her so-called Medicare-for-All scheme.

The former would dampen wages and hinder growth by penalizing saving and investment, while the latter would hasten America’s path to Greece.

By contrast, it’s easy to identify the most ethically offensive part of her platform.

Just like President Obama, she’s a hypocrite who wants to deny poor families any escape from bad government schools, even though her family has benefited from private education.

To make matters worse, she’s even lied about the topic.

Corey DeAngelis of the Reason Foundation has been on top of this issue. I recommend his article. And if you like exposing dishonest politicians, here’s a very snarky PG-13-rated tweet.

Holy shit. I have Warren on video lying about where she sent her kids to school.

Sarah Carpenter: "I read that your children went to private schools"

Warren: "No my children went to public schools" pic.twitter.com/PEHr3jNvjx

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) November 22, 2019

The Washington Free Beacon has some additional details.

Sarah Carpenter, a pro-school choice activist who organized a protest of Warren’s Thursday speech in Atlanta, told Warren that she had read news reports indicating the candidate had sent her kids to private school. Though Warren once favored school choice and was an advocate for charter schools, she changed her views while seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. …Warren denied the claim, telling Carpenter, “My children went to public schools.” …however, …Warren’s son, Alex Warren, attended the Kirby Hall School for at least the 1986-1987 school year… The college preparatory school is known for its “academically advanced curriculum” and offers small class sizes for students in grades K-12. …Carpenter pressed Warren to reconsider her education plan, which would place stringent regulations on both charter and private schools. She told the candidate that she simply didn’t have the resources to exercise the same choices for her children that Warren appears to have made for her son.

Moreover, private schools are a family tradition, as the Daily Caller revealed.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat representing Massachusetts, has a granddaughter who rubs shoulders with the children of movie stars at the trendy Harvard-Westlake School in Los Angeles, California. Tuition at Harvard-Westlake costs $35,900 each year. There’s also a $2,000 fee for new students. Harvard-Westlake offers a bevy of amazing opportunities for students including study-abroad programs in Spain, France, China, Italy and India. There’s also the Mountain School, “an independent semester program that provides high school juniors the opportunity to live and work on an organic farm in rural Vermont.”

If you want to learn more about Warren’s disingenuous posture, I also recommend this article by Chrissy Clark of the Federalist.

Anyhow, what makes her hypocrisy especially odious is that she was semi-good on the issue. At least back before political ambition caused here discard her moral compass.

Education Week looked at Warren’s record and confirmed she used to be sympathetic to school choice, albeit only for parents who wanted to choose among various types of government schools.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s education..plan’s contention that the nation must “stop the privatization and corruption of our public education system” and keep money from being “diverted” away from public schools through vouchers. …supporters of school choice cried foul. They pointed to what Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi wrote in The Two-Income Trap, a book they authored in 2003, as evidence that she once backed a voucher system for parents seeking education options for their children, but has now abandoned that position for political expediency and to please teachers’ unions. …In 2003, Warren and Tyagi wrote that while…many schools might technically be public, they said, many parents effectively paid tuition for good public schools through their ability to purchase a home in their attendance zones. …So how to solve it? “A well-designed voucher program would fit the bill neatly,” the two authors stated, adding that “fully funded” vouchers would “relieve parents from the terrible choice of leaving their kids in lousy schools or bankrupting themselves to escape those schools.” …Essentially, what Warren and Tyagi wanted was an open enrollment system of public schools.

So why has her position “evolved”?

She’s decided that getting to the White House is more important than the best interests of poor children. The Daily Caller reports on Warren’s kowtowing to union bosses.

Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is pledging to crack down on school choice if elected, despite the fact that she sent her own son to an elite private school, publicly available records show. The 2020 presidential candidate’s public education plan would ban for-profit charter schools…and eliminate government incentives for opening new non-profit charter schools, even though Warren has praised charter schools in the past. …Warren has pledged to reduce education options for families, but she chose to send her son Alexander to Kirby Hall, an elite private school near Austin. Tuition for Kirby Hall’s lower and middle schools — kindergarten through eighth grade — is $14,995 for the 2019-2020 school year. A year of high school costs $17,875. …“I do not blame Alex one bit for attending a private school in 5th grade. Good for him,” said Reason Foundation director of school choice Corey DeAngelis, who first flagged Alexander’s private schooling Monday. “This is about Warren exercising school choice for her own kids while fighting hard to prevent other families from having that option.” …Warren’s crackdown on elite charter schools would leave elite private schools like Kirby Hall unscathed, while greatly eliminating charter schools as a parallel option for lower-income families.

It’s important to note that this is an issue where honest people on the left are on the right side.

Here’s a recent editorial from the Washington Post.

…when it comes to education, Ms. Warren has a plan that seems aimed more at winning the support of the powerful teachers unions than in advancing policies that would help improve student learning. …Ms. Warren took a page from the union playbook in calling for a clampdown on public charter schools. In addition to banning for-profit charter schools (which make up about 15 percent of the sector), she would subject existing charters to more scrutiny and red tape and make it harder for new charters to open… Ms. Warren’s change of heart (which started in 2016, when she opposed a referendum that would have lifted caps on charter schools in Massachusetts), along with the silence of other Democrats who once championed charter schools (New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former vice president Joe Biden come to mind), is no mystery. The teachers unions wield outsize influence in the Democratic Party, and they revile the mostly non-unionized charter sector. …The losers in these political calculations are the children whom charters help. Charters at their best offer options to parents whose children would have been consigned to failing traditional schools. They spur reform in public school systems in such places as the District and Chicago. And high-quality charters lift the achievement of students of color, children from low-income families and English language learners. Research from Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found, for example, that African American students in charter schools gained an additional 59 days of learning in math and 44 days in reading per year compared with their traditional school counterparts. More than 3.2 million children already attend charter schools, and 5 million more would choose a charter school if one could open near them.

And Jonathan Chait of New York magazine is certainly not a conservative or libertarian, but he’s part of the honest left. As you might imagine, he’s also disappointed that Warren chose union bosses over poor children.

Warren has changed her views on education, which are now aligned with the interests of the tenured workforce, at the expense of educating low-income children https://t.co/xfrkbJnZNa

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) October 29, 2019

To be fair, there are plenty of other folks on the left who have sold their souls to the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers – including, most disappointingly, the NAACP.

P.S. Some Republicans are hypocrites on the issue as well.

P.P.S. Speaking of hypocrites, President Obama’s Secretary of Education sent his kids to private schools, yet he fought to deny that opportunity to poor families. The modern version of standing in the schoolhouse door.

P.P.P.S. If you want to learn more about school choice, I recommend this column and this video.

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A $3.12 Billion Suggestion for Bill Gates

Maybe I’m just a curmudgeon, but I get rather irked when rich people endorse higher taxes.

Are they trying to curry favor with politicians? Seeking some sort of favoritism from Washington (like Warren Buffett)?

Or do they genuinely think it’s a good idea to voluntarily send extra cash to the clowns in D.C. ?

I’m not sure how Bill Gates should be classified, but the billionaire is sympathetic to a wealth tax according to news reports.

Bill Gates…says he’d be ok with a tax on his assets. In an interview with Bloomberg, Gates was asked if he would support a wealth tax… Gates said he wouldn’t be opposed to such a measure… “I doubt, you know, the U.S. will do a wealth tax, but I wouldn’t be against it,” he said. …This isn’t the first time Gates has hinted at supporting a wealth tax, an idea being pushed by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.). In February, Gates told The Verge that tax plans solely focused on income are “missing the picture,” suggesting the estate tax and taxes on capital should instead be the subject of more progressive rates.

My reaction is that Gates should lead by example.

A quick web search indicates that Gates is worth $105 billion.

Based on Warren’s proposal for a 3 percent tax on all assets about $1 billion, Gates should put his money where his mouth is and send a $3.12 billion check to Washington.

Or, if Gates really wanted to show his “patriotism,” he could pay back taxes on his fortune.

CNBC helpfully did the calculations.

A recent paper by two economists who helped Warren create her plan — University of California, Berkeley professors Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman — calculated what effect Warren’s plan would have had on America’s richest, including Gates, if it had been imposed starting in 1982 (the first year Forbes magazine began tracking the net worth of the 400 richest Americans) through 2018. Gates, whose fortune was tallied at $97 billion on 2018′s Forbes 400 list, would have been worth nearly two-thirds less last year — a total of only $36.4 billion — had Warren’s plan been in place for the last three decades. Gates’ current net worth is $105.3 billion, according to Forbes.

In other words, Gates could show he’s not a hypocrite by sending a check for more than $60 billion to Uncle Sam.

Because I’m a helpful guy, I’ll even direct him to the website that the federal government maintains for the knaves and fools who think people like Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi should have extra money to squander (my two cents is that they’re the ones with the worst incentive to use money wisely).

Needless to say, Gates won’t give extra money to Washington.

Just like he won’t fire the dozens (if not hundreds) of financial advisors that he surely employs to protect his income and assets from the IRS.

The bottom line is that nobody who embraces higher taxes should be taken seriously unless they show us that they’re willing to walk the walk as well as talk the talk.

Based on the behavior of Elizabeth Warren and John Kerry, don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.

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The Ultimate Leftist Hypocrite

I’ve shared some amazing stories about leftist hypocrisy over the years.

• John Kerry criticizing tax havens while keeping much of his fortune in the Cayman Islands.
• Bernie Sanders agitating for a $15 minimum wage while paying his staff a lower amount.
• Bill and Hillary dodging the death tax, while supporting plans to force others to pay.

But if there was a first prize for statist hypocrisy (especially if timing is part of the contest), then the winner might be Dan McCready, a wannabe Congressman from North Carolina.

The Daily Caller has some of the jaw-dropping details.

McCready…is running against Republican state Sen. Dan Bishop in the Sept. 10 special election for North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District…during a candidate forum the Fayetteville NAACP hosted “…politicians like state Sen. Bishop,” McCready said at the event,… “They don’t believe in public schools. They do anything they can to conduct a war on schools.” …Despite McCready’s accusations that his political opponents lack faith in public schools, he has enrolled some of his own four children, ages 2 to 8, in a Charlotte-based private school with a tuition rate close to $18,000 per student.

Then again, maybe McCready’s hypocrisy isn’t so unusual. Rich politicians in Washington, including Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, routinely send their kids to private school while fighting to deny school choice for others.

Why?

To be fair, it’s not that they don’t like kids from poor families. The problem is that they put the interests of teacher unions ahead of the interests of those kids. Public Choice 101.

That’s despicable.

And what’s equally despicable is that the NAACP, where McCready was speaking, also opposes school choice – even though minority children suffer the most because of the failed government school monopoly.

Why?

Because they’re also bought off by the teacher unions.

I’ll close by directing your attention to this column about the empirical evidence for school choice.

P.S. It’s also uplifting to see very successful school choice systems operate in nations such as Canada, Sweden, Chile, and the Netherlands. And India doesn’t have school choice, but it’s a remarkable example of how private schools are the only good option for poor families that want upward mobility.

P.P.S. The Washington Post provides an example of honest and decent leftism, having editorialized in favor of poor children over teacher unions.

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Joe Biden: Providing another Great Moment in Left-Wing Hypocrisy

I wrote last month about a group of leftist millionaires who said they should pay more in taxes.

My response was to ask why they aren’t taking advantage of the existing process that allows them to send extra money to the federal government? There’s even a special website that facilitates payments from people who want to voluntarily pay more tax.

Yet, in a glaring example of hypocrisy, these rich statists won’t “put their money where their mouths are.”

Now we have a new example of a rich leftist who says one thing and does another.

And he happens to be a former Vice President of the United States. Tax Notes reports that Joe Biden, who says he wants higher taxes if he wins the 2020 presidential election, has been very aggressive about minimizing the amount of his money that is taken by the IRS.

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s tax returns show he took advantage of a planning strategy that the Obama administration tried to shut down. The planning technique involves the use of an S corporation to allow only a small portion of an individual’s earnings to be subject to self-employment tax. On the portion that isn’t on the hook for self-employment taxes, in some cases it can also escape the 3.8 percent net investment income tax for high-income earners enacted into law during the Obama administration. “It’s truly astounding to me that Biden would take such an aggressive position while contemplating a run for president,” Steven Rosenthal of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center said. “I don’t get it,” he added. …Biden, who is now a Democratic presidential candidate for 2020, released federal and state tax information on June 9 showing he and his wife, Jill, earned millions from speaking and writing engagements since leaving office.

Interesting, there are some Democrats who have chosen not to take advantage of this strategy.

…before becoming president, Barack Obama earned income as an author but listed it on Schedule C, subjecting it to self-employment tax. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., similarly earned income as author and listed the amounts on Schedule C.

What makes Biden’s hypocrisy so remarkable is that the Obama-Biden Administration proposed to make this type of avoidanceillegal.

In its proposed fiscal 2017 budget, the Obama administration would’ve expanded the 3.8 investment to passthrough income so it wouldn’t escape the 3.8 percent tax based on a technicality. The provision, included in a section entitled “loophole closers,” would have raised $271.7 billion over 10 years, according to the Treasury Department’s analysis of the proposal.

So Biden wanted to take away the right of other people to protect their money, yet he is perfectly happy to copy their tax-minimization tactics.

By the way, I should say, quite emphatically, that Biden made the right choice for his family.

Voluntarily giving more money to Washington would be wasteful and reckless. I’m not going to claim that politicians in D.C. are the worst people in the country. But I will assert that they’re the ones with the worst incentive to use money wisely.

In any event, there’s definitely something distasteful about a rich leftist politician behaving like a “greedy capitalist” in his private life. Especially since this politician in the past has asserted that it’s patriotic to pay more tax!

Does this make him a fiscal draft dodger? Is there smoke coming out of the Hypocrisy Meter?

And if so, does that mean John Kerry also is unpatriotic? And what about Bill and Hillary Clinton?

Though Governor Pritzker of Illinois may be the most aggressive example of taxes-for-thee-but-not-for-me.

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Governor J.B. Pritzker: Hypocrite of the Year

If the people who advocate higher taxes really think it’s a good idea to give politicians more cash, why don’t they voluntarily send extra money with their tax returns?

Massachusetts actually makes that an easy choice since state tax forms give people the option of paying extra, yet tax-loving politicians such as Elizabeth Warren and John Kerry never avail themselves of that opportunity.

And the Treasury Department has a website for people who want to give extra money to the federal government, yet proponents of higher taxes (at least for you and me) never lead by example.

For lack of a better phrase, let’s call this type of behavior – not choosing to pay extra tax – conventional hypocrisy.

But what about politicians who support higher taxes while dramatically seeking to reduce their own tax payments? I guess we should call that nuclear-level hypocrisy.

And if there was a poster child for this category, it would be J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois governor who is trying to replace his state’s flat tax with a money-grabbing multi-rate tax.

The Chicago Sun Times reported late last year that Pritzker has gone above and beyond the call of duty to make sure his money isn’t confiscated by government.

…more than $330,000 in property tax breaks and refunds that…J.B. Pritzker received on one of his Gold Coast mansions — in part by removing toilets… Pritzker bought the historic mansion next door to his home, let it fall into disrepair — and then argued it was “uninhabitable” to win nearly $230,000 in property tax breaks. …The toilets had been disconnected, and the home had “no functioning bathrooms or kitchen,” according to documents Pritzker’s lawyers filed with Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios.

Wow, maybe I should remove the toilets from my house and see if the kleptocrats in Fairfax County will slash my property taxes.

And since I’m an advocate of lower taxes (for growth reasons and for STB reasons), I won’t be guilty of hypocrisy.

Though Pritzker may be guilty of more than that.

According to local media, the tax-loving governor may face legal trouble because he was so aggressive in dodging the taxes he wants other people to pay.

Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, his wife and his brother-in-law are under federal criminal investigation for a dubious residential property tax appeal that dogged him during his gubernatorial campaign last year, WBEZ has learned. …The developments demonstrate that the billionaire governor and his wife may face a serious legal threat arising from their controversial pursuit of a property tax break on a 126-year-old mansion they purchased next to their Gold Coast home. …The county watchdog said all of that amounted to a “scheme to defraud” taxpayers out of more than $331,000. …Pritzker had ordered workers to reinstall one working toilet after the house was reassessed at a lower rate, though it’s unclear whether that happened.

This goes beyond nuclear-level hypocrisy – regardless of whether he’s actually guilty of a criminal offense.

Though he’s not alone. Just look at the Clintons. And Warren Buffett. And John Kerry. And Obama’s first Treasury Secretary. And Obama’s second Treasury Secretary.

Or tax-loving international bureaucrats who get tax-free salaries.

Or any of the other rich leftists who want higher taxes for you and me while engaging in very aggressive tax avoidance.

To be fair, my leftist friends are consistent in their hypocrisy.

They want ordinary people to send their kids to government schools while they send their kids to private schools.

And they want ordinary people to change their lives (and pay more taxes) for global warming, yet they have giant carbon footprints.

P.S. There is a quiz that ostensibly identifies hypocritical libertarians.

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