Month: July 2010

Mr. Rangel, lauded here in a previous post, is an example of the reason people don’t want to pay taxes.  He treated himself better than most people could treat themselves, thanks to the power of his office.  His success came thanks also to his friendliness and love for people, to be sure, but he broke the rules.

So people distrust their representatives who write Federal tax laws and want to keep their power down.

Our work is cut out for us.  The Democrats could gain a lot of credibility by trying Mr. Rangel and voting against him not on friendship but on the merits.

As the public resists taxation,  end games for our democracy are foreseeable, though the timing is beyond me.  The military leads the list of institutions that Americans have confidence in (76 percent) followed by small business (66 percent) and the police (59 percent).  The Presidency and the Supreme Court tie at 36 percent, while Congress brings up the rear with 11 percent.  http://www.gallup.com/poll/141512/congress-ranks-last-confidence-institutions.aspx

So here’s the result: eventually unable to borrow and still unable to tax, States and the Feds cut spending to the point where passable roadways, crime-free neighborhoods, and then clean water go missing.  The military steps in for the benefit of the public.  The Constitution is suspended.  The military takes what assets it needs to fund a government.  Police units help out.

Another end game is conflict with China as we renege on our debts, maybe by fast or slow devaluation.  The military will need all the confidence it can get in that scenario, too.

I’m for balancing the budget, like many Republicans from the middle of the 20^th century were.

[An updated version appears as part of http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1741735.]

While marijuana helps some people with illness, I am very wary of exemptions, lower rates, or special rules for marijuana when it’s said to be medicinal.  No proscription, no prescription.

First, any special rule puts the government in charge of making decisions about individual people.  The government can distinguish, however awkwardly, among substances, so as to tax wine with an alcohol content of 13.9 percent at a lower rate than wine with an alcohol content of 14.0 percent.  But putting human beings into categories can be more difficult.  To be sure, there are easy cases, like the extra Federal tax exemption for individuals 65 and over (you just produce that birth certificate or otherwise prove your birth date as Mr. Obama has done to the satisfaction of most).  But even the extra tax exemption for blindness on the Form 1040 creates a regulatory tangle and even a few disputes.  Deciding whether someone has some ailment as subjective as chronic pain is a task that I hate to see government taking on.  Folks who are distrustful of government ought to be especially careful about this kind of official categorization of individuals.

Second, any special rule rewards hypocrisy with a special right. Folks who pretend to be sick get something that honest folks won’t allow themselves to get.

Third, providing even any perceived benefit, even a placebo, to folks who say they are sick encourages people to think of themselves as victims.  (The argument back is that we all may have chronic pain in our souls: it’s the human condition.)  Having people think of themselves as victims has a positive aspect:  it encourages them to seek help (and it encourages others to try to get them help).  But such thinking tends to weaken the thinker.

Fourth, any special rule adds complexity.

Finally, any special rule diminishes the tax base.

A new Rand corporation study, “Altered State?  Assessing How Marijuana Legalization in California Could Influence Marijuana Consumption and Public Budgets,” estimates revenue from the California proposals.  http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2010/RAND_OP315.pdf

It’s quite elaborate.  I’m working through it, but it seems to do a good job of spotting the issues.

A couple of quick reactions:

The uncertainty in Rand’s conclusions makes the case for having the State be the sole retailer (and maybe having the State own the whole supply chain).  Rand finds it hard to estimate elasticities and can’t pin down bootleggers’ reactions or even current price.  Setting a tax rate too firmly fixes a probably incorrect rate in place.  So following the lottery model, where the State can adjust prices quickly, looks appealing.

Their analysis makes the case for measuring potency and taxing on the basis of it.  First, they note the incentive, long noted on this blog, that a per-ounce tax gives to produce more intoxicating cannabis.  But second, there’s more to it.  Measuring potency officially by the State will give consumers certainty about what they are getting.  Bootleggers can’t supply that certainty.  Folks will pay a premium for it.

The imprecise statement that potency testing will cost $100 per test needs elaboration.  The cost must include fixed and variable costs, and they need to be stated.

Still, this is the most thorough and serious look at revenue I’ve seen.  And I’ve just started to study it.

The NYT of July 4 points out that we are subsidizing big oil, and undertaxing it.  “As Oil Industry Fights a Tax, It Reaps Billions From Subsidies,”  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?ref=global-home.  Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon that caused all the trouble, is one of what John Kerry called those Benedict Arnold corporations that escaped the USA to avoid tax.

That brings to mind a controversy in the 1980s about whether a pamphlet describing some tax break for the oil industry that was to be issued by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation would use the phrase “Drain America first.”  Friends of the oil industry at the Member level didn’t like the phrase:  I don’t think it got printed in the pamphlet.