Best and Worst News of 2022

Continuing a tradition that began back in 2013, let’s look at the best and worst developments of the past year.

Since I try to be optimistic (notwithstanding forces and evidence to the contrary), let’s start with the good news.

I’ll start by mentioning that we will now have gridlock in Washington. That’s probably a positive development, but I’ll explore that issue tomorrow as part of my “Hopes and Fears” column for 2023.

For today, let’s focus on three concrete developments from 2022 that unambiguously are positive.

States cutting tax rates and enacting tax reform – Since I’m a long-time advocate for better tax policy, I’m very pleased that more states are moving in the right direction. I especially like that the flat tax club is expanding. I’m also amused that a bad thing (massive handouts from Washington) backfired on the left (because many states decided to cut taxes rather than squander the money on new spending).

Chileans vote against a statist constitution – There was horrible news in 2021 when Chileans voted a hard-core leftist into the presidency. But we got very good news this year when the same voters overwhelmingly rejected a proposed constitution that would have dramatically expanded the power of government.

More families have school choice – Just like last year, we can celebrate that there was more progress on education this year. In 2021, West Virginia led the way. In 2022, Arizona was the best example. And we’ll discuss tomorrow why there are reasons to be optimistic about 2023.

Now let’s shift to the bad news of 2022.

I thought about listing inflation, which definitely caused a lot of economic damage this year. But the bad monetary policy actually occurred in 2020 and 2021 when central bankers overreacted to the pandemic.

So I’m going to write instead about bad things that specifically happened in 2022.

Biden semi-successfully expands the burden of government – The president was able to push through several bad proposals, such as the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and some cronyist subsidies for the tech industry. Nothing nearly as bad as his original “build back better” scheme, but nonetheless steps in the wrong direction.

The collapse of small-government conservatism in the United Kingdom – Just as today’s Republicans have deviated from Reaganism, the Conservatives in the United Kingdom have deviated from Thatcherism. Except even worse. Republicans in the USA acquiesce to higher spending. Tories in the UK acquiesce to higher spending and higher taxes.

Massachusetts voters opt for class warfare – Starting tomorrow, Massachusetts no longer will have a flat tax of 5 percent. That’s because voters narrowly approved a class-warfare based referendum to replace the flat tax with a new “progressive” system with a top rate of 9 percent. Though bad news for the state’s economy will be offset by good news for moving companies.

P.S. I almost forget to mention that the best thing about 2022 occurred on January 10 when the Georgia Bulldogs defeated Alabama to win the national championship of college football.

P.P.S. While 2022 was a mixed bag, history buffs may be interested in knowing that it was the 100th anniversary of a big tax rate reduction (top rate lowered from 73 percent to 58 percent) implemented in 1922 during the under-appreciated presidency of Warren Harding.

Read Full Post »

The Most Important Ballot Referendum of 2022

While most people pay attention to which political party enjoys success when there’s an election, I think it’s also important to look at ballot initiatives.

• In 2021, voters in the left-leaning state of Washington overwhelmingly registered their opposition to capital gains taxation.
• In 2020, voters in the deep-blue state of Illinois said no to the big spenders by voting to preserve the state’s flat tax.
• In 2019, voters in left-leaning Colorado also said no to the big spenders by voting to protect the state’s spending cap.

But, as we’ve seen in California and Oregon, not every referendum produces a sensible result.

Today, we’re going to look at the most important ballot initiative of 2022. But before looking at the details, here’s a map showing the states gaining and losing population when Americans move across borders.

You’ll notice that Massachusetts is one of the top states for outbound migration, which means people are “voting with their feet” against the Bay State.

But bad news can become worse news. And that will definitely be the case if voters in Massachusetts approve a referendum next month to junk the state’s flat tax and replace it with a class-warfare system that has a top rate of 9 percent.

Jeff Jacoby wrote last year about the idea in a column for the Boston Globe.

A century-old provision of the Massachusetts Constitution commands that if the commonwealth taxes income, it must do so at a “uniform rate.” Five times in the modern era — in 1962, 1968, 1972, 1976, and 1994 — tax-and-spend liberals have invited voters to discard that rule and make it legal to soak the rich at higher tax rates. Five times voters have said no. …There is considerable arrogance in the way advocates of the surtax blithely disregard the voters’ repeated refusal to overturn the constitutional ban. Their attitude seems to be that no matter how many times the people uphold the uniform-rate rule, there is no reason to take them seriously. …more than 150 Massachusetts businesses representing almost 16,000 workers sent lawmakers an open letter imploring them not to hobble the state’s economy with a stiff new tax, and expressing “alarm” at the proposed constitutional amendment. They…know that a surtax aimed at millionaires is bound to injure countless people who will never earn anywhere close to a million bucks.

The Wall Street Journal has editorialized against the proposal.

…progressives in Boston want to join New York and other nearby states in a high-tax arms race. …Bay State ballots in November will give voters the choice to place a 4% surtax on incomes above $1 million, bringing the top rate to 9% from 5%. The proposal would amend the state constitution to remove its flat-tax mandate. Passing the measure would rocket Massachusetts to seventh from 31st on the list of states with the highest marginal income-tax rates. …A $2.3 billion revenue surplus shows that the state is already taxing more than it needs. This year’s tax haul was so big it triggered a largely forgotten state law that caps revenue. Residents may soon receive checks that refund a portion of last year’s taxes. …Approving the tax would speed up a wealth exodus already under way. The Pioneer Institute last year noted that Massachusetts’ tax base has been eroding, and there’s no surprise about where the escapees are going. The top two destinations are Florida and New Hampshire, both of which lack an income tax. …The constitution’s flat rate mandate is a crucial limit on the demands of interest groups for ever-more spending. If tax rates rise and the revenue cap goes away, spending will soar to snatch the new revenue and soon the politicians will return to seek even higher rates, as they always do.

The economic consequences of class-warfare taxation are never positive.

And that will be true in Massachusetts. A study from the Beacon Hill Institute in Massachusetts estimates the economic damage that the surtax would cause.

…we find, using our in-house computer model (MA-STAMP) that the effects on the economy will be as follows: In its first year of implementation, the amendment will cause the state to lose 4,388 working families due to outmigration. This outmigration plus a reduction in labor hiring and labor-force participation will cause a loss of 9,329 jobs. …the state economy, real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product, will shrink by $431 million… Advocates of the measure claim that it will make possible a $2 billion annual in state spending. …Instead, we find that the revenue yield of the tax will be far less, the result of the expected shrinkage in economic activity. (See Table E-2.) In its first year of implementation, combined state and local revenues will rise by only about $1.2 billion.

Here’s a table showing some of the negative effects.

Alex Brill of the American Enterprise Institute also estimated that revenues would be lower than expected once the effects of the Laffer Curve are incorporated into the analysis.

Here are some excerpts from his article in the Hill.

Modifying the revenue forecast to incorporate evidence from the academic literature about likely behavioral changes yields a significantly lower estimated revenue pickup. I estimate that about 400 of the 22,000 taxpayers affected by the surtax would exit the state and many others would reduce work or shift and relabel their income to avoid the tax. By my estimate, the surtax would generate approximately $1.5 billion in 2023, since these behavioral responses would offset 32 percent of the revenue gain that would occur if taxpayers kept their behavior unchanged. Using a similar approach, Tufts University’s Center for State Policy Analysis recently estimated that the proposed surtax would generate only $1.3 billion in 2023.

Last but not least, the Tax Foundation crunched the numbers and also found the surtax would cause significant economic damage.

…while no one would mistake Massachusetts for a low-tax state, it has carved out a place as a competitive area to live and work within the Northeast corridor. …but consider the Commonwealth’s ranking on the Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index…in 2022, the Bay State still ranked 34th overall on the Index—well below the median. …Massachusetts’ competitive tax advantage in New England is primarily due to its individual income and sales tax systems, which rank 11th and 12th on the Index, respectively. With regard to its neighbors, only New Hampshire has a better overall Index ranking than Massachusetts. …In 2007, Christina Romer and David Romer, professors of economics at the University of California Berkeley, conducted a study to determine the impact of legislated tax changes on the economy. …The study found that a tax increase equal to 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) resulted in an estimated 3 percent decline in GDP after three years. …If the Romer and Romer study were applied to the Massachusetts surtax it would result in a 0.942 percent decline in GDP after three years. In other words, the Commonwealth’s total economic output could contract by $5.98 billion by the end of 2025.

Here’s a table from the report, showing that zero-income tax New Hampshire and Florida already are big winners when people escape Massachusetts.

If the referendum is approved, we can easily predict that future versions of this chart will show much bigger numbers.

Simply stated, some of the geese with the golden eggs will fly away (while the ones that stay will decide to produce fewer eggs – as well as figure out ways to protect the eggs that remain).

Read Full Post »

Will the Supreme Court Limit Tax Imperialism by Massachusetts?

On the rare occasions when I write about the Supreme Court, it’s usually to grouse that the Justices don’t defend the Constitution’s limits on the federal government.

For example, the Court engaged in tortured reasoning to rule in favor of Obamacare even though there’s nothing in Article 1, Section 8, that gives Washington the power to mandate the purchase of health insurance (though that awful decision by Chief Justice John Roberts looks brilliant compared to the even-worse 1942 decision that gave Washington the power to control whether a farmer could grow grain on his own farm to feed his own hogs).

But perhaps the Supreme Court can make up for some past mistakes by accepting – and then properly deciding – a case from New Hampshire.

The Granite State wants to block the government of Massachusetts from imposing taxes on people who live and work in New Hampshire.

For some background on this legal battle, the Wall Street Journal has a new editorial on this topic.

Can a state collect income tax from nonresidents working remotely for in-state businesses? Massachusetts, New York and some other states claim they can, and now New Hampshire is asking the Supreme Court to protect its citizens from this tax grab. …New Hampshire, which imposes no income tax on wages, last fall sued Massachusetts and is asking the Supreme Court to hear its case (N.H. v. Mass.). “Massachusetts has unilaterally imposed an income tax within New Hampshire that New Hampshire, in its sovereign discretion, has deliberately chosen not to impose,” says the Granite State. Under longstanding Supreme Court precedent, states can only collect taxes that are “fairly apportioned” and “fairly related to the services provided by the State” within their borders. …Massachusetts and other states are forcing nonresidents to pay income taxes even though they don’t use public services. …If the Court doesn’t intervene, remote workers who are unfairly taxed by other states will have no recourse for redress beyond biased state tax tribunals. States like California may copy the Massachusetts and New York playbook.

Jeff Jacoby, a columnist for the Boston Globe, argues his state is one the wrong side of this fight.

In April, the Department of Revenue published an “emergency regulation” declaring that any income earned by a nonresident who used to work in Massachusetts but was now telecommuting from out of state “will continue to be treated as Massachusetts source income subject to personal income tax.” For the first time ever, Massachusetts was claiming the authority to tax income earned by persons who neither lived nor worked in Massachusetts. …Massachusetts has indeed injured New Hampshire… It has launched what amounts to an attack on a fundamental aspect of New Hampshire’s sovereign identity — its principled refusal to tax the income of New Hampshire residents earned in New Hampshire. It was one thing for Massachusetts to withhold taxes from New Hampshire residents for income earned within the borders of Massachusetts. With its new tax rule, however, Massachusetts is reaching over the border to extract taxes, thereby undermining a core New Hampshire policy. …the Supreme Court has the power to shut down such overreaching. And now, thanks to New Hampshire, it has the opportunity.

Professor Ilya Somin from George Mason University’s law school elaborates in a column for Reason.

New Hampshire v. Massachusetts…has some real merit, and also has important implications for the future of American federalism. …New Hampshire’s motion…in the Supreme Court outlines two theories as to why the Massachusetts rule is unconstitutional: it violates the Dormant Commerce Clause (which prevents states from regulating and taxing economic activity beyond their borders), and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has long been held to bar state taxation of people who neither live nor work within its borders. Both arguments build on one of the bedrock principles of American federalism: that state sovereignty is territorial in nature. States do not have the power to regulate and tax activity beyond their borders. …most of Massachusetts’ arguments rely on the notion that the NH workers in question have close connections to the Massachusetts economy and benefit from interacting with it . Therefore the state claims it has a right to keep taxing them as before. …If Massachusetts prevails…, it could potentially have dire implication for the growing number of people who work as remote employees for firms located in another state. The latter state could tax their income even if they never set foot there. This would also make it much harder for people to “vote with their feet” for states with lower taxes, better public policies, and other advantages. …The “Live Free or Die State” deserves to win this important case.

The above columns mostly focus on the legal aspects of the case.

From my perspective, I’m more concerned about upholding the principle that the economic powers of governments should be constrained by borders.

That’s the reason why I defend so-called tax havens, even when that leads to abuse (government officials engaging in everything from name calling to legal threats). Simply stated, high-tax nations shouldn’t have the right to tax economic activity that occurs inside the borders of low-tax jurisdictions.

After all, if we want to constrain “Goldfish Government,” taxpayers need some ability to escape oppressive tax regimes.

The bottom line is that the Supreme Court should take this opportunity to limit the Bay State’s greedy politicians.

P.S. This case is partly a fight between proponents of territorial taxation (the good guys) and proponents of extraterritorial taxation (the bad guys).

P.P.S. The Supreme Court unfortunately did recently rule on the wrong side of a case involving extraterritorial taxation.

P.P.P.S. If you want a practical example of what this means, read this column about the taxation of successful Olympic athletes.

Read Full Post »

Is the Massachusetts Flat Tax in Danger?

Regarding fundamental tax reform, there have been some interesting developments at the state level in recent years.

Utah, North Carolina, and Kentucky have all junked their so-called progressive systems and joined the flat tax club.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that Illinois politicians are desperately trying to gut that state’s flat tax.

And the same thing is true in Massachusetts.

The Tax Foundation has a good explanation of what’s been happening in the Bay State and why it matters for the competitiveness, job creation, and entrepreneurship.

A joint constitutional convention of Massachusetts lawmakers has voted 147-48 to approve H.86, dubbed the Fair Share Amendment, to impose a 4 percent income tax surcharge on annual income beyond $1 million. The new tax would be levied in addition to the existing 5.05 percent flat rate, bringing Massachusetts’ total top rate to 9.05 percent. …Massachusetts requires legislatively-referred constitutional amendments be passed in consecutive sessions, meaning that the same measure would need to be approved in the 2021-2022 legislative session before it would be sent to voters in November of 2022. The millionaires’ tax, though targeted at a wealthy minority of tax filers in the Bay State, would cause broader harm to Massachusetts’ tax structure and economic climate. It would eliminate Massachusetts’ primary tax advantage over regional competitors… The Bay State’s low, flat income tax on individuals and pass-through businesses is the most competitive element of its tax code, giving the Commonwealth a clear strength compared to surrounding states and regional competitors. Income tax rate reductions in recent years have helped shed the moniker of “Taxachusetts” while setting up the Bay State to be a beneficiary of harmful tax rate increases in surrounding states. However, a 9.05 percent top rate would be uncompetitive even in a high-tax region. The amendment would hit Massachusetts pass-through businesses with the sixth-highest tax rate of any state.

Here’s a map showing top tax rates in the region (New Hampshire has an important asterisk since the 5-percent rate only applies to interest and dividends), including where Massachusetts would rank if the new plan ever becomes law.

The Boston Globe reports that lawmakers are very supportive of this scheme to extract more money, while the business community is understandably opposed.

A measure to revive a statewide tax on high earners received a glowing reception on Beacon Hill Thursday, suggesting an easy path ahead despite staunch opposition from business groups. “We are in desperate need for revenue for our districts,” said Senator Michael D. Brady of Brockton, one of the proposal’s more than 100 sponsors and a member of the Joint Committee on Revenue…. “We have tremendous unmet needs in our Commonwealth that are hurting families, hurting our communities, and putting our state’s economic future at risk,” said Senator Jason M. Lewis of Winchester, the lead sponsor of the Senate version of the proposal. …business groups…came armed with arguments that hiking taxes on the state’s highest earners would drive entrepreneurs — and the jobs and tax revenue they create — out of the state, as well as unfairly harm small- and mid-sized business owners whose business income passes through their individual tax returns. “Look, we’re trying to prevent Massachusetts from becoming Connecticut,” said Christopher Anderson, president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council.

Meanwhile, the Boston Herald reports that the Republican governor is opposed to this class-warfare tax.

Gov. Charlie Baker cautioned the Legislature against asking for more money from taxpayers with the so-called millionaire tax… “I’ve said that we didn’t think we should be raising taxes on people and I certainly don’t think we should be pursuing a graduated income tax,” Baker told reporters yesterday. …Members of Raise Up Massachusetts, a coalition of community organizations, religious groups and labor unions, are staunchly supporting the tax that is estimated to raise approximately $2 billion a year. …The Massachusetts Republican Party is sounding the alarm on what they’re calling, “the Democrats’ newest scheme,” to “dump” the state’s flat tax system.

The governor’s viewpoint is largely irrelevant, however, since he can’t block the legislature from moving forward with their class-warfare scheme.

But that doesn’t mean the big spenders in Massachusetts have a guaranteed victory.

Yes, the next session’s legislature is almost certain to give approval, but there’s a final step needed before the flat tax is gutted.

The voters need to say yes.

And in the five previous occasions when they’ve been asked, the answer has been no.

Overwhelmingly no.

Even in 1968 and 1972, proposals for a so-called progressive tax were defeated by a two-to-one margin.

Needless to say, that doesn’t mean voters will make the right choice in 2022.

The bottom line is that if the people of Massachusetts want investors, entrepreneurs, and other job creators to remain in the state, they should again vote no.

But if they want to destroy jobs and undermine the Bay State’s competitiveness, they should vote yes.

Read Full Post »

Two Lessons from State Tax Policy

In recent years, I’ve argued that America’s corporate tax system must be very bad if companies are not only redomiciling in places like Cayman and Bermuda, but also inverting to countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom.

Well, the same thing happens at the state level. Yes, companies (as well as entrepreneurs and investors) usually move from high-tax states to low-tax states, with zero-income tax jurisdictions like Texas reaping a windfall of new jobs.

But when a big company like General Electric announces that it will move its headquarters from Connecticut to a state like Massachusetts, that’s a damning indictment of Connecticut. After all, Massachusetts doesn’t exactly have a reputation as a low-tax refuge.

The always-superb editorial page of the Wall Street Journal looks at the big-picture implications.

Hard to believe, but Connecticut was once a low-tax haven in the Northeast. Its business climate has grown so hostile in recent years, however, that General Electric on Wednesday announced that it will move its headquarters to Boston. When Taxachusetts becomes a reprieve, Governor Dan Malloy ought to know Connecticut has a problem.

Exactly.

And what’s really amazing is that Connecticut didn’t even have an income tax as recently as 1990.

But once politicians got the power to impose that levy, the state has been in a downward spiral.

And it doesn’t appear that the decline will end anytime soon.

… last summer…Connecticut’s legislature grabbed an additional $1.3 billion in tax hikes, the fifth increase since 2011. …The state’s $40.3 billion two-year budget boosted the top marginal tax rate on individuals earning more than $500,000 to 6.99% from 6.7% and 6.5% in 2010. Mr. Malloy also extended for the second time a 20% corporate surtax that his Republican predecessor Jodi Rell had imposed in 2009. …The tax hikes have failed to cure Connecticut’s chronic budget woes.

Of course they haven’t. Raising taxes to cure an over-spending problem is like trying to douse a fire with gasoline.

But the tax-happy politicians have one achievement. They’ve managed to drive the economy into the dumps.

Since 2010 the…State has recorded zero real GDP growth, the lowest in the nation save Louisiana (-0.7%) and Maine (-0.6%). Connecticut is one of only four states (Illinois, Vermont, West Virginia) whose populations have declined since 2012.

Notwithstanding all this bad economic news, politicians in Hartford continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow.

Over the next two years spending is set to rise by $1.5 billion, including $700 million in higher personnel costs. Pension payments are soaring. Connecticut’s pension system is 48% funded, third worst in the country after Illinois and Kentucky.

Good grief, as Charlie Brown might say. The bottom line is that the productive people who are left in Connecticut should make plans to leave before it’s too late.

By the way, there are two other noteworthy observations in the WSJ‘s editorial.

First, I like the fact that General Electric has escaped the fiscal hell-hole of Connecticut, but I’m not a fan of the company because it likes to feed at the public trough.

And, indeed, it will be getting special privileges from Massachusetts.

Mr. Immelt says GE, which has been headquartered in Fairfield since 1974, selected Boston after considering…a “package of incentives” valued at as much as $145 million.

Huh, whatever happened to the quaint notion that the laws should apply equally to everyone? Why should GE enjoy one set of rules while other companies labor under a different set of rules?

I imagine Voltaire is spinning in his grave.

Second, even though Massachusetts was foolish enough to engage in favoritism for GE, the state actually isn’t as bad as its reputation.

As the WSJ explains, it has a flat tax for households and it also has been cutting its corporate rate.

Massachusetts has the lowest taxes in the Northeast outside of New Hampshire… The Tax Foundation ranks Massachusetts’s business tax climate 25th in the country, ahead of Georgia (39), Connecticut (44), Rhode Island (45) and New York (49). Massachusetts has worked to shake its high-tax image by cutting its corporate rate to 8% from 9.5% and flat income tax to 5.15% from 5.3% in 2008. In the same period, Connecticut has raised its corporate rate to 9% from 7.5% and its top income tax rate to 6.99% from 5%.

Wow, I’m embarrassed that I used to live in Connecticut.

Though, in my defense, I was a kid when my family escaped from New York and Connecticut was a zero-income tax state when that happened.

Now, though, Connecticut merely serves as a bad example.

There are two broad lessons from this episode.

1. A state that doesn’t have an income tax should never allow the adoption of that awful levy. I’m thinking specifically of the folks in the Pacific Northwest since some of the big spenders in the state of Washington are advocating for that levy. And add Wyoming and Alaska to that list since politicians in those states over-spent when energy prices were high and some of them are now pushing to impose an income tax since tax receipts from energy are no longer climbing.
2. A state with a flat tax should never allow the introduction of multiple rates. It’s remarkable that Massachusetts has a flat tax (thanks to an old provision in the state’s Constitution), but the key lesson is that the flat tax has made it difficult for leftist politicians to raise the rate since all taxpayers would be adversely impacted (this is also why it’s been difficult for big spenders in Illinois to raise tax rates). In a system with graduated rates, by contrast, it’s much easier for politicians to play the divide-and-conquer game and selectively raise some tax rate.

I’ll close with one additional observation that this story is yet another example of why federalism is good.

We get to learn the damaging impact of high taxes and excessive spending thanks to the fact that we still have some government taking place at the state and local level.

And this explains why our statist friends want centralization. If there’s a one-size-fits-all policy of high taxes and wasteful spending, it’s much harder to move across national borders than it is to move across state borders. That insulates politicians (though not fully since there are varying amounts of tax competition between nations, both for investment and people) from the consequences of their reckless behavior.

Read Full Post »

Another Failed Gun Control Experiment

It sounds strange, but my two favorite columns on gun control were authored by self-identified leftists. But they didn’t let ideology trump common sense.

Justin Cronin, for instance, explained that restrictions on gun ownership undermined his ability to protect his family. And Jeffrey Goldberg looked at the evidence and concluded that guns make people safer.

This doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate gun control columns by non-leftists. This Larry Correia piece, for instance, is must reading if you want to understand about magazine limits and so-called assault weapons.

And if you like real-world evidence, Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe examines what happened after Massachusetts adopted onerous gun control legislation. He starts by explaining the law and what supporters promised.

In 1998, Massachusetts passed what was hailed as the toughest gun-control legislation in the country. Among other stringencies, it banned semiautomatic “assault” weapons, imposed strict new licensing rules, prohibited anyone convicted of a violent crime or drug trafficking from ever carrying or owning a gun, and enacted severe penalties for storing guns unlocked. …One of the state’s leading anti-gun activists, John Rosenthal of Stop Handgun Violence, joined the applause. “The new gun law,” he predicted, “will certainly prevent future gun violence and countless grief.” It didn’t.

Legal gun ownership plummeted.

The 1998 legislation did cut down, quite sharply, on the legal use of guns in Massachusetts. Within four years, the number of active gun licenses in the state had plummeted. “There were nearly 1.5 million active gun licenses in Massachusetts in 1998,” the AP reported. “In June [2002], that number was down to just 200,000.”

Jacoby then explains, however, that the advocates of gun control were not very successful in restraining the behavior of criminals.

But the law that was so tough on law-abiding gun owners had quite a different impact on criminals. Since 1998, gun crime in Massachusetts has gotten worse, not better. In 2011, Massachusetts recorded 122 murders committed with firearms, the Globe reported this month — “a striking increase from the 65 in 1998.” Other crimes rose too. Between 1998 and 2011, robbery with firearms climbed 20.7 percent. Aggravated assaults jumped 26.7 percent.

Gee, what a surprise. The bad guys responded to incentives and committed more crimes once they knew that victims were less likely to be in a position to defend themselves.

To be fair, the statists do have a response.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for gun-control activists to admit they were wrong. …“Massachusetts probably has the toughest laws on the books, but what happens is people go across borders and buy guns and bring them into our state,” rationalizes Boston Mayor Tom Menino. “Guns have no borders.”

But here’s where Jacoby administers a knock-out punch. He looks at evidence from other states and shows that there’s no plausible alternative explanation to the proposition that more gun control is correlated with more crime.

…why didn’t the gun-control lobby warn legislators in 1998 that adopting the toughest gun law in America would do Massachusetts no good unless every surrounding state did the same thing? Far from explaining why the new law would do nothing to curb violent crime, they were positive it would make Massachusetts even safer.  …But crime in Massachusetts didn’t just continue, it began climbing. As in the rest of the country, violent crime had been declining in Massachusetts since the early 1990s. Beginning in 1998, that decline reversed — unlike in the rest of the country. …Guns-across-borders might have explained homicide levels in Massachusetts continuing unchanged. But how can other states’ policies be responsible for an increase in Massachusetts homicides? Relative to the rest of the country, or to just the states on its borders, Massachusetts since 1998 has become a more dangerous state. …In 1998, Massachusetts’s murder rate equaled about 70 percent of the rate for Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York. Now it equals 125 percent of that rate. Clearly something bad happened to Massachusetts 15 years ago. Blaming the neighbors may be ideologically comforting. But those aren’t the states whose crime rates are up.

Game. Set. Match.

But just in case you’re still not convinced, check out some of the empirical work generated by John Lott.

• Lott explained how anti-gun laws facilitated the terrorist attack at Fort Hood.
• Writing after the Tucson shootings, Lott explained the benefits of concealed-carry laws.
• In the aftermath of the Heller decision, Lott explained how more guns resulted in less crime in DC.
• Lott explained how gun control made Jamaica a more dangerous country.
• Lott debunked myths about so-called assault weapons.

Or check out some of the fact-based research on guns and crime by David Kopel.

In other words, even if you don’t care about the Constitution, there’s no case for gun control. Jeff Jacoby’s column is simply the 100th nail in the coffin.

P.S. Since I usually try to include something at least  vaguely amusing in my posts, click here to see some of my favorite examples of gun control humor.

P.P.S. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that cops overwhelming agree that gun control  is ineffective.

P.P.P.S. Jacoby does very good work and deserves more attention. Here are links to some of his columns that caught my eye.

Read Full Post »

Debunking Elizabeth Warren’s Class Warfare

Running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, Harvard professor and former Obama appointee Elizabeth Warren got her fellow leftists excited when she said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody” and added that “…part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay it forward for the next kid who comes along.”

She specifically pointed out that successful people depend on government-provided “public goods” such as roads, police, and education.

Given that the government is doing a terrible job with education, spending huge amounts of money for rather mediocre results, that was probably a foolish addition to her list. Regardless, she’s basically making a point that public goods benefit everybody. And she would like us to think that the “rich” benefit more than the rest of us, so they should pay more.

I had a couple of reactions when this story broke.

1. The rich already do pay a lot more, with the top 10 percent shouldering about 70 percent of the income tax burden. At what point would Ms. Warren be satisfied?

2. If you want a system where people pay proportionately more for public goods, isn’t that an argument for a simple and fair flat tax?

3. People get rich by providing value to the rest of us. Is it wise to subject those people to disproportionate tax penalties when that may discourage them from utilizing their talents?

4. If some people get rich illegitimately because of special handouts and subsidies from politicians, isn’t the solution to get rid of the bad programs rather than indiscriminately penalize all high-income households?

But I didn’t do a blog post, at least back when the story broke, because it seemed those points were rather obvious.

But Professor Russ Roberts of George Mason University wrote a column for yesterday’s Wall Street Journal that is so excellent that it must be shared. Here are some key passages from his WSJ column.

There’s much truth in Ms. Warren’s statement. But if government stuck to what it does fairly well—roads, police, fire and the courts; enforcing contracts that help businesses interact with their customers and other businesses—the federal government wouldn’t need to spend over $3.5 trillion a year, as it now does. And of course it’s state and local governments—and not Washington—that primarily fund police, fire and education, so it’s a bit strange to ask the rich to pay their fair share of federal income taxes because they enjoy police protection.

I especially like how Russ identified the federalism angle, noting that core public goods largely are provided by state and local governments, which makes Ms. Warren’s demand for higher tax rates from Washington even more absurd.

Unfortunately, as Russ notes, most federal spending goes for other purposes.

Much government spending supports activities that are ineffective or even harmful to the economy, often helping the politically powerful at the expense of the rest of us. Wouldn’t it be great for the federal government to stop federal export subsidies, propping up financial institutions, meddling in the education system, and trying to engineer the entire health system from the top down?

And a big part of the problem is that big chunks of the federal budget actually are handouts that benefit the rich.

If the feds stopped all that, Ms. Warren would have a stronger point. We could all feel some gratitude for government’s role in helping us live better lives. All of us, rich and poor, would look at government differently. …Ms. Warren is certainly correct that some rich people aren’t carrying their weight—those who live off the rest of us by twisting the rules of the game in their direction: the sugar farmers who benefit from sugar quotas, the corn farmers who benefit from ethanol subsidies and those sugar quotas, and especially the Wall Street executives who have managed to convince both parties that the survival of their firms, even when they make disastrous loans to each other, benefits the rest of us. …The symbiotic relationship between politicians and the super-rich is destructive of democracy and our economy. Let’s not make it worse. To close our deficit, let’s spend less rather than tax anyone more.

What a good idea: “…spend less rather than tax anyone more.” That’s what this fight is really all about.

Read Full Post »

Taxes Are for the Little People, not John Kerry

In the future, all dictionary publishers should get rid of their existing definitions for “hypocrisy” and replace them with a photo of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. He’s just been caught committing the horrible sin of saving his family more than $500,000 by domiciling his new yacht in Rhode Island (which is a tax haven for such luxuries) rather than his home state. Or at least Senator Kerry says that tax planning is a horrible sin with conducted by “Benedict Arnold” companies and facilitated by those wicked tax havens. But I guess that it’s not such a bad thing when Senator Kerry is protecting his wealth. For the rest of us peasants, it’s our job to meekly get in line and submit to whatever taxes Senator Kerry graciously decides to impose.

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I. Isabel – Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage – was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine. But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern. Could the reason be that the Ocean State repealed its Boat Sales and Use Tax back in 1993, making the tiny state to the south a haven – like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Nassau – for tax-skirting luxury yacht owners? Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000. …state Department of Revenue spokesguy Bob Bliss confirmed the senator “is under no obligation to pay the commonwealth sales tax.”

Read Full Post »

A Comedy Classic

All I can say is that I wish I had done this.

Read Full Post »

Four Lessons from Massachusetts

While there is always a tendency in Washington to over-analyze the meaning of elections, I think that we can draw the following conclustions from Scott Brown’s victory:

1. Obamacare is an albatross for the Democrats. The White House wants to blame Coakley for being a bad candidate, but Massachusetts is a very left-wing state. Every single member of its congressional delegation is a Democrat. It went for Obama by 26 percentage points. It has sent reflexive statists like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry to the Senate for decades. Yes, Scott Brown was a good candidate, but good GOP candidates normally lose 60-40 in the Bay State. It’s hard to draw any conclusion other than the fact that voters were registering disapproval with what is happening in Washington, and healthcare was at the top of their list.

2. Democrats should ram through government-run healthcare. I hope they don’t, of course, but smart Democrats understand that Obamacare is not (and never has been) about health care, but rather about creating more dependency on government. Yes, Democrats will lose more seats in November if they move forward, but they presumably will strengthen their long-term political status by making more people rely on politicians.

3. Obama is not a centrist. A few people were under the illusion that Barack Obama was something other than a doctrinaire statist. This always struck me as absurd, since a quick look at the NTU vote ratings reveals that he received an “F” every single year and generally was graded as being worse than even Ted Kennedy. I suppose the charitable interpretation of why people got snookered is that Obama’s rhetoric during the presidential election was very bland and he projects a thoughtful demeanor. But so what? Obama and his strategists knew the Republicans had spent their way into a ditch and that voters wanted a change. Obama simply had to appear semi-reasonable to win, and that’s exactly what he did. Ever since he took office, though, he has pushed to make government bigger and more oppressive. Voters don’t like that. They rejected Republicans for being for big government. Now they’re rejecting Democrats for the same reason.

4. The GOP succeeds when it presents a conservative alternative. Scott Brown is presumably not another Jim DeMint, but his campaign rhetoric was very conservative by Massachusetts standards: For lower taxes, against government-run healthcare, for less spending. That message has worked very well for the GOP when it is a national theme, as it was in 1980 and 1994. When Republicans try to be “compassionate” (with other people’s money, of course), by contrast, they get debacles like what happened in 1992, 2006 and 2008. This doesn’t mean Republicans will always win by being conservative and it doesn’t mean squishy Republicans never win, but it does mean that the GOP’s long-term success is tied to whether taxpayers perceive Republicans as protecting America from big government. I’m not sure the national GOP really understands this, but they’re at least pretending to be for small government again. That’s a start.

Read Full Post »

The First Shot of the Second American Revolution

I must confess that I didn’t think Scott Brown was going to win the election in Massachusetts, even though I predicted a 50-48 GOP victory. This is a monumental development. It doesn’t necessarily mean Obamacare can be stopped. And it may be that Brown turns out to be a big government squish, like Snowe in Maine. But his election does show that the American people do not want Obama’s statist agenda. The interesting thing to watch now is whether Democrats flee Obama’s sinking ship and scuttle the statist healthcare scheme. Here’s an AP report on Brown’s upset:

In an epic upset in liberal Massachusetts, Republican Scott Brown rode a wave of voter anger to defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in a U.S. Senate election Tuesday that left President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul in doubt and marred the end of his first year in office. The loss by the once-favored Coakley for the seat that the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy held for nearly half a century signaled big political problems for the president’s party this fall when House, Senate and gubernatorial candidates are on the ballot nationwide. More immediately, Brown will become the 41st Republican in the 100-member Senate, which could allow the GOP to block the president’s health care legislation and the rest of Obama’s agenda. Democrats needed Coakley to win for a 60th vote to thwart Republican filibusters.

Read Full Post »

Election Prediction

Regular readers of this blog already know that markets are not always right. Our message is the more limited argument that markets simply do the best job of creating wealth and maximizing liberty (especially compared to government!).

So with this caveat in mind, the market prediction at intrade this morning says that Scott Brown has a 75.0 percent chance of winning today’s Senate race in Massachusetts and Martha Coakley has a 26.5 percent chance (yes, I realize that those numbers add up to more than 100 percent, but these numbers are the result of independent bets on the likelihood of either candidate winning).

A Brown victory does not guarantee that Obama’s government-run healthcare scheme will be defeated. As a matter of fact, it’s likely that something awful will get enacted regardless of what happens in Massachusetts. But the chances of stopping this fiscal and health nightmare will be much greater if Democratic Senators and Representatives become more scared that voters will throw them out in November.

For what it’s worth, I’m predicting Brown, 51-48.

Read Full Post »