All posts by Rand Simberg

How Do You Cap A Tax Cut?

Seriously.

Yesterday, according to the WaPo, the Senate voted to halve the President’s tax cut proposal. Has anyone seen the actual wording of the amendment?

I ask because the government really has no power to increase or decrease tax revenues with any precision. All it can do is prescribe rates. It’s like a video game controller that can change velocity, but can’t control the cursor position directly. All estimates of revenue from tax rate changes are just that, and the discussion about the size of a tax cut is a fiction, because in reality no one knows what the true implications of a rate change will be–it’s too dependent on things like the future state of the economy and changes in peoples’ behavior that might result from the change.

So, just how did the Senate propose to limit the tax cut to a specific dollar amount? Was it like declaring pi to be three by fiat?

Shocking

Back from San Bruno.

The Sun is reporting (I’m shocked, shocked I tell you) that its institutional colleague, the BBC, is biased.

In one blast, he storms: ?Who dreamed up the line that the coalition are achieving ?small victories at a very high price??

?The truth is exactly the opposite.

?The gains are huge and the costs still relatively low. This is real warfare, however one-sided, and losses are to be expected.?

The BBC has come under attack for describing the loss of two soldiers as the ?worst possible news for the armed forces?.

One listener asked: ?How would the BBC have reported the Battle of the Somme in World War I when 25,000 men died on the first day??