Why they’re so lousy; they’re grown in eggs.
This always seemed to me like a very inefficient, 20th century manufacturing technique.
Category Archives: Economics
Corporate Taxes
I’ve been saying this for years as well:
corporations don’t pay taxes — they collect them. Any taxes are actually paid by customers (higher prices), employees (lower wages), shareholders (smaller returns), etc. The ideal corporate tax rate is therefore zero, but politically that would never fly. Instead we have a tangled mess of corporate tax law, which benefits large corporations with their armies of lawyers and lobbyists. Small corporations which can’t afford all that are put at a competitive disadvantage, not to mention sole proprietorships which pay through the nose on everything.
But since we can’t get an ideal corporate tax rate, a flat and transparent corporate tax would be the next best thing. Our current system is the worst of all possible worlds: It diverts resources and manpower away from investment and innovation, and stifles entrepreneurs to the benefit of established interests.
On the other hand, our system creates endless possibilities for corruption and graft. So it has that going for it. Which is nice for Washington.
One other point: People are saying that most of the benefits of the tax bill go to the upper percentage. Ignoring the fact that you can’t cut taxes without cutting them on the people who pay the most taxes, cutting corporate taxes in fact effectively reduces indirect tax costs for all the people above, who are in all income brackets (particularly the employees and customers). As I wrote years ago, we can’t cut taxes, we can only cut (or increase) tax rates.
Military In Space
Nothing really new here for people who follow this sort of thing, but here’s as good an overview of Pentagon plans as you can get without a clearance. I think that if BFR and Blue Origin’s vehicles come to be, they’ll dramatically open new capablities and change a lot of doctrine and strategy.
[Update a few minutes later]
This seems related. A new report, titled Escalation and Deterrence in the Second Space Age. Looks interesting.
[Via Leonard David]
About That Federal Climate Report
It’s “the usual mix of half truths, exaggerations, omissions and outright lies.”
In other words, what we’ve come to expect from government climate reports.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Oops, Naomi Oreske caught with biased numbers on “Exxon knew.”
Gee, it’s almost as thought they have a political agenda.
Scott Pace
Lee Billings has an interview with him. This is Scott’s (whom I’ve know well for 35 years) standard response when asked about SLS:
Heavy-lift rockets are strategic national assets, like aircraft carriers. There are some people who have talked about buying heavy-lift as a service as opposed to owning and operating, in which case the government would, of course, have to continue to own the intellectual properties so it wasn’t hostage to any one contractor. One could imagine this but, in general, building a heavy-lift rocket is no more “commercial” than building an aircraft carrier with private contractors would be.
He never explains how a rocket that almost never flies, and costs billions per flight, if and when it does, is a “strategic national asset.” It seems more like a liability to me, in the modern age of commercial spaceflight.
[Update Tuesday morning]
More thoughts from Eric Berger.
[Late-morning update]
NASA’s safety Kobayashi Maru.
This is insanity.
[Update mid-afternoon]
Bob Zimmerman righteously rants. I really find it hard to believe that this thing will ever fly with crew.
Trump As Reagan
Steve Hayward writes that the Trump administration is arguably more conservative than Ronald Reagan’s. But to be fair, Reagan never had control of the House.
Idiot Conservatives
Eric Berger has the story on how, in attacking SpaceX, they’re ripping off the taxpayer and actively damaging national security.
[Update a while later]
Meanwhile, the target launch date for Falcon Heavy is now late December.
This would be a nice Christmas present to space enthusiasts and the nation at large. https://t.co/C9MtND81vD
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) November 1, 2017
Mike Griffin
The guy who ignored the advice of the Aldridge Commission and industry to utilize commercial providers for the Vision for Space Exploration, instead issuing no-bid cost-plus contracts for Constellation, that were overrunning and slipping more than a year per year when it was canceled, seems like an odd choice to be put in charge of reforming procurement at the Pentagon.
Getting Off The Rock
Sarah Hoyt has an interview with Jeff Greason (part 1, part 2 will be tomorrow).
[Tuesday-morning update]
NASA’s Risk Aversion
Remember when they were insisting on new-car-smell Dragons for CRS missions? Well, they’ve now approved flight-proven boosters. As I’ve long said, there will come a day when customers will demand a discount to fly on an unproven vehicle.
[Update a while later]
With today’s launch, SpaceX will double its record for annual launches.
[Update half an hour before launch]
You can follow launch and landing at the webcast.