My father, Professor Robert Dinkin, the presidential election historian thinks that Clinton will likely emerge the Democratic Party nominee due to her organization and ties to prominent Democratic Party leaders. This despite having recently voted for Obama in the Florida so-called–delegateless–primary. Here is where they stand as of your page load in trading for who will be nominee (security of winner pays $1) on Intrade:
Clinton:
Obama:
My pick for the Presidential race, Giuliani, has bowed out. I like his tax policies. Not that I thought that he could get them adopted, just that I thought that he could achieve what Bush achieved–slightly lower marginal and average taxes for 10 more years. Before you write me off as an elitist who doesn’t like graduated income taxes (which I don’t deny–but bear with me), I agree with Laffer on this point. Taxes are above the monopoly rate. This is expected since there are four (or more) toll takers: Federal income taxes, state income or sales taxes, county sales and/or property taxes, and city sales, income and/or property taxes. When you add up the various employer and employee taxes (federal only) on receiving the last dollar (ignoring the sales and capital gains taxes associated with saving or spending it), they add up in the top bracket to 35% federal + 2.9% Medicare including employer match. That is, if I get $100 in gross in the top tax bracket, I’ll have to pay $36.45 in tax and my employer will have to pay $1.45. If we frame the percentage like sales tax, I am taking home $63.55 and together, my employer and I are paying $37.90. That is a equivalent to a 59.6% sales tax on everything I buy. In other words, to get a dollar, we have to pay 59.6 cents to the government. I assert that this portion of total taxation alone is above the monopoly rate. Tax cutters would have a very easy time getting tax rates cut (and, perhaps counter intuitively, taxes increased) if they could re-frame the tax code to show tax as a percentage of net income at the margin instead of gross.
Do we really despise envy so much that we would rather have the rich indulge in additional leisure than provide the maximum amount to the Treasury?
My pick for the Presidential race, Giuliani, has bowed out. I like his tax policies. Not that I thought that he could get them adopted, just that I thought that he could achieve what Bush achieved–slightly lower marginal and average taxes for 10 more years. Before you write me off as an elitist who doesn’t like graduated income taxes (which I don’t deny–but bear with me), I agree with Laffer on this point. Taxes are above the monopoly rate. This is expected since there are four (or more) toll takers: Federal income taxes, state income or sales taxes, county sales and/or property taxes, and city sales, income and/or property taxes. When you add up the various employer and employee taxes (federal only) on receiving the last dollar (ignoring the sales and capital gains taxes associated with saving or spending it), they add up in the top bracket to 35% federal + 2.9% Medicare including employer match. That is, if I get $100 in gross in the top tax bracket, I’ll have to pay $36.45 in tax and my employer will have to pay $1.45. If we frame the percentage like sales tax, I am taking home $63.55 and together, my employer and I are paying $37.90. That is a equivalent to a 59.6% sales tax on everything I buy. In other words, to get a dollar, we have to pay 59.6 cents to the government. I assert that this portion of total taxation alone is above the monopoly rate. Tax cutters would have a very easy time getting tax rates cut (and, perhaps counter intuitively, taxes increased) if they could re-frame the tax code to show tax as a percentage of net income at the margin instead of gross.
Do we really despise envy so much that we would rather have the rich indulge in additional leisure than provide the maximum amount to the Treasury?
My pick for the Presidential race, Giuliani, has bowed out. I like his tax policies. Not that I thought that he could get them adopted, just that I thought that he could achieve what Bush achieved–slightly lower marginal and average taxes for 10 more years. Before you write me off as an elitist who doesn’t like graduated income taxes (which I don’t deny–but bear with me), I agree with Laffer on this point. Taxes are above the monopoly rate. This is expected since there are four (or more) toll takers: Federal income taxes, state income or sales taxes, county sales and/or property taxes, and city sales, income and/or property taxes. When you add up the various employer and employee taxes (federal only) on receiving the last dollar (ignoring the sales and capital gains taxes associated with saving or spending it), they add up in the top bracket to 35% federal + 2.9% Medicare including employer match. That is, if I get $100 in gross in the top tax bracket, I’ll have to pay $36.45 in tax and my employer will have to pay $1.45. If we frame the percentage like sales tax, I am taking home $63.55 and together, my employer and I are paying $37.90. That is a equivalent to a 59.6% sales tax on everything I buy. In other words, to get a dollar, we have to pay 59.6 cents to the government. I assert that this portion of total taxation alone is above the monopoly rate. Tax cutters would have a very easy time getting tax rates cut (and, perhaps counter intuitively, taxes increased) if they could re-frame the tax code to show tax as a percentage of net income at the margin instead of gross.
Do we really despise envy so much that we would rather have the rich indulge in additional leisure than provide the maximum amount to the Treasury?
Global warming will lead to an increase in zombie attacks.
I blame George Bush.
Fortunately, some of us have been prepared for a while.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Saved by the sun:
The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.
Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun.” In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.
This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.
Take that, undead!
Zombies and vampires. Is there any problem the sun can’t fix?
Global warming will lead to an increase in zombie attacks.
I blame George Bush.
Fortunately, some of us have been prepared for a while.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Saved by the sun:
The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.
Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun.” In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.
This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.
Take that, undead!
Zombies and vampires. Is there any problem the sun can’t fix?
Global warming will lead to an increase in zombie attacks.
I blame George Bush.
Fortunately, some of us have been prepared for a while.
[Mid-afternoon update]
Saved by the sun:
The Canadian Space Agency’s radio telescope has been reporting Flux Density Values so low they will mean a mini ice age if they continue.
Like the number of sunspots, the Flux Density Values reflect the Sun’s magnetic activity, which affects the rate at which the Sun radiates energy and warmth. CSA project director Ken Tapping calls the radio telescope that supplies NASA and the rest of the world with daily values of the Sun’s magnetic activity a “stethoscope on the Sun.” In this case, however, it is the “doctor” whose health is directly affected by the readings.
This is because when the magnetic activity is low, the Sun is dimmer, and puts out less radiant warmth. If the Sun goes into dim mode, as it has in the past, the Earth gets much colder.
Take that, undead!
Zombies and vampires. Is there any problem the sun can’t fix?
Armed Liberal writes about the anti-American left (if that’s not redundant), and its inability to see anything through other an anti-western fun-house prism.
Andrew Ferguson has an interesting history of presidential campaigning and the relatively recent (and to me, bizarre) phenomenon of the need for “fire in the belly.”
I don’t have to wait until spring to miss Fred Thomson. His absence was quite obvious, even glaring, in the last two debates.
Thompson didn’t give off the usual political vibe: the gnawing need to please, the craving for the public’s love. A few voters and journalists found this refreshing, many more found it insulting.
I think that this is one of the reasons that reporters and pundits often acted as though he didn’t exist–they were trying to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, and unfortunately, they succeeded. But I think that there were other reasons that the press didn’t like Fred Thompson. For one thing, unlike John McCain, he was a true straight talker, and it wasn’t the kind of centrist “liberal” “straight talk” that they liked to hear.
But I also think that they felt their livelihoods and stature threatened by him. After all, the conventional wisdom had become that the campaigns now had to start two years before the election, and if that’s the case, it gives journalists a lot more to cover for a longer period of time. By his late entry, Fred stood to potentially upset that applecart. If he could enter late, and still win, it would not only show the pundits who proclaimed the need for early campaigning to be laughably wrong, but it would also make people think twice about wasting time and money campaigning for a year before New Hampshire in the next cycle, and then what would the political reporters have to do?
Nancy Cartwright gave ten megabucks to the Church of Scientology. P. T. Barnum had nothing on L. Ron Hubbard.
Like cocaine, this is life’s way of telling you that you make too damn much money.