Richard Epstein, in a very important paper published in the Spring issue of National Affairs, discusses the many ways in which the modern administrative state has by-passed a uniform rule of law in favor of permitting regulatory bodies to negotiate a variety of terms and concessions in areas affecting broadcast licensing, labor relations, prescription drug licensing, health care, and so on.
Epstein cites, as a particularly striking example, the kind of negotiations which have become customary in the case of building permits.
These days, to begin any new building project, every developer must obtain a sheaf of permits that go far beyond the relatively mundane functions of avoiding falling bricks or aligning curb cuts to secure entryways for indoor parking. Indeed, today’s new norm calls for exhaustive hearings before planning commissions and community boards; these investigations are intended to probe the size of a project, its exterior design, the number and type of apartment units, access for the disabled, the amount of affordable housing (with complex subsidies from both the government and the developer), project financing (with government guarantees), proper hiring practices (with appropriate set-asides for women and minority workers), and multiple inspections for just about everything.
Yet just as all these requirements can be imposed, they can also be waived. The waivers, though, often come at a price — or, more accurately, a land-use exaction. For instance, a cash-strapped local government may be willing to waive the requirement that a developer set aside a certain percentage of apartment units to rent at below-market rates to the poor. The catch, however, is that the developer must agree to provide funding to build or refurbish a public school, a public park, or a nearby train station. The developer almost inevitably yields to the exaction, because he knows that, if he does not, he faces prolonged resistance and constrictive red tape from the government — obstacles that could eventually sink his project. But the requests for exactions may come from many varied groups with different expectations and demands. Parents may want a new school or park, commuters may want a new train station, cyclists may want new bike lanes, the arts community a new public performance space, homeless advocates a new shelter, and so on. It may not be possible for the government or the developer to satisfy all of the groups simultaneously — and the attempt to do so can tie up development for years, or cause projects to be scrapped altogether. This phenomenon drives up the number of project failures, which in turn shrinks the supply of housing, which then drives up housing costs and puts even greater pressure on both the developers and the regulators.
For the Russian billionaire, Narcosyndicate chief, or Third World dictator who has everything: a diamond-encrusted, single button suit designed by Stuart Hughes of Liverpool, purveyor of the “world’s most luxurious communications and bespoke elements.”
Hughes specializes in solid gold iPhones and similar knickknacks and tailoring is a new area for him, so the actual cutting, sewing, and fitting are being done by Richard Jewels, a 27-year-old Manchester designer of Nigerian extraction who opened his own fashion house last year.
Referred to as the “R. Jewels Diamond Edition,” the world’s most expensive suit is “made from a blend of Cashmere wool, silk & diamonds, and requires 600 man hours of assembly. 480 diamonds (0.5cts, colour G, VS2 quality, totalling 240cts) are “strategically positioned” around the suit. Clients receive all expenses paid trips to luxury destinations such as the Arc en Ciel in St Lucia, presumably for fittings, as part of the deal.
It is not actually mentioned, but the photos suggest that the lucky Mafioso will receive a diamond-trimmed pocket handkerchief accessory as well.
Three of these suits are planned at a cost each of £599,000.00 ($892,250). Buyers can soothe their consciences by reflecting that 10% of the price will be donated to Haitian relief.
Stuart Hughes demonstrates an impressive yobbo accent, and inability to stop saying “OK,” as he proudly displays gold iPhones, iPads, and Blackberries.
This morning at 6:45 AM (2 hours and 45 minutes late), a single mortar round was fired (from Fort Moultrie) marking the 150th Anniversary of the commencement of the bombardment of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor by Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre Gustave Toussaint Beauregard, the military action which both initiated the American Civil War and made practically possible the Confederate states’ conquest and defeat.
Decades of sectional rivalry, animosity, and ever-increasing friction provoked by Northern hostility toward, and demonization of, the Southern institution of Slavery were followed rapidly by, first, a terrorist attack on the civilian population of Virginia and the arsenal at Harper’s Ferry by a murderous fanatic armed and funded by some of the wealthiest and best-educated citizens of the Northern states, then by the minority election of a prominent Northern radical to the presidency.
Firebrand South Carolina responded with secession on December 20th, followed by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana in January, and Texas on February 1th. On the 8th and 9th of the same month, an Alabama convention of the seceded states adopted a Constitution forming a new Confederacy, and elected former Secretary of War and hero of the Mexican War, Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, as its president.
General Winfield Scott (who had had trouble with Davis over his expenses) remarked: “I am amazed that any man of judgment could hope for the success of any cause in which Jefferson Davis is a leader. There is contamination in his touch.”
Davis was an able man, intellectually gifted, honorable, and dignified, but prone to self-righteousness. He was, in almost every respect, his adversary Lincoln’s polar opposite. Abraham Lincoln was a cunning and flexible Machiavel, who skillfully concealed a razor-sharp, minutely calculating and selfish intelligence behind a populist masque of warmth and folksy humor. Davis was aristocratic, formal and austere. Sam Houston thought him “cold as a lizard.”
Seven states had left the union and formed a new government before Abraham Lincoln was even inaugurated.
As secession fever raged, back in December, William Tecumseh Sherman, A West Point graduate and Ohioan serving as superintendent of the Louisiana State Military Academy, exploded to a Southern guest at hearing of South Carolina’s secession:
You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing!
You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it… Besides where are your men and appliance of war to contend with them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with on of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical and determined people on earth — right at your doors.
You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people would stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.
Sherman resigned his post in February, came North, and was introduced to Lincoln in late March.
“How are they getting along down there?” inquired the recently inaugurated president.
“They think they are getting along swimmingly,” Sherman replied. “They are preparing for war.”
Lincoln’s expressed confidence was, however, at odds with his dilemma. If Lincoln moved to assert federal authority over the seceded states, he would test the limits of both his constitutional authority and of his political support. Moreover, any attempt to initiate force, to make war on the seven seceded states, would very probably precipitate the secession from the Union and addition to their numbers of Virgina and other slave-owning states outside the Deep South.
The only immediate, natural conflict between the new Confederacy and the government of the United States lay in the basically trivial territorial issue of sovereignty over four Federal forts located within Confederate territory: Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, Pickens off Pensacola Bay, Taylor at Key West, and Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas.
Possession of none of these was of vital necessity to anyone.
During mid-March, President Lincoln’s cabinet voted 5 to 2 to abandon Fort Sumter. Secretary of State Seward felt strongly that civil war might yet be averted, as long as a confrontation was avoided and passions allowed to cool. But second cabinet vote at the end of March tied 3-3, and Lincoln decided to employ the fort in Charleston Harbor as bait.
On April 8th, South Carolina’s governor was notified that the federal government would attempt to resupply Fort Sumter with provisions only.
When the Confederate cabinet in Montgomery debated, Robert Toombs of Georgia warned President Davis:
The firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen… Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and you will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornets’ nest which extends from mountains to ocean. Legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary. It puts us in the wrong. It is fatal.
But President Davis ignored this counsel, trusting that the world would realize that President Lincoln was the real aggressor. Davis, of course, could hardly be more wrong.
Fort Sumter was reduced to defenselessness, its guns silenced, by the fire of more than 4000 rounds from 47 howitzers and mortar over a day and half. The only casualty occurred during the fort’s honorable capitulation, when a spark from the fifty gun salute to the descending US colors fell into a barrel of gunpowder producing an explosion which took the life of Private Daniel Hough, the first of more than 600,000 Americans to be killed in the Civil War.
Abraham Lincoln had his causus belli. He could call for 75,000 men to serve for 90 days against “combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.”
Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina seceded and joined in the defense of the Confederacy rather than participate in the conquest and subjugation of sister states. Kentucky and Missouri and Maryland were kept in the union by force.
Robert Toombs was perfectly correct. The decision of Jefferson Davis to assert Confederate authority by force made the Confederacy into the aggressor, infuriated the North, and freed Lincoln to act. In essence, Jefferson Davis’s unwise decision broke open a stalemated situation in which delay operated entirely in favor of the newly-formed Confederacy, providing it with a longer period to ready itself with supplies, training, and defensive preparations and making the new republic into ever more of a fait accompli, accepted by both foreign and domestic opinion.
Firing on Fort Sumter assured a Northern military response against an attack on US soldiers and the US flag, and transformed the role of its great adversary, Abraham Lincoln, from that of aggressor to defender.
This single bad decision represents a perfect metonymy for the differences in judgment and temperament between Davis and Lincoln explaining precisely why the latter was ultimately successful in overcoming enormous difficulties as a war leader, while the former led his cause to ruin.
Civilian spectators watched the bombardment from the Battery. (click on image to see larger version)
Paul Samuelson describes the dynamic of self-interest which has driven the federal government to the brink of bankruptcy and which inherently repels reform.
We in America have created suicidal government; the threatened federal shutdown and stubborn budget deficits are but symptoms. By suicidal, I mean that government has promised more than it can realistically deliver and, as a result, repeatedly disappoints by providing less than people expect or jeopardizing what they already have. But government can’t easily correct its excesses, because Americans depend on it for so much that any effort to change the status arouses a firestorm of opposition that virtually ensures defeat. Government’s very expansion has brought it into disrepute, paralyzed politics and impeded it from acting in the national interest. …
[D]espite superficial support for “deficit reduction†or “tax reform,†few Americans would surrender their own benefits, subsidies and tax breaks — a precondition for success. As a practical matter, most federal programs and tax breaks fall into one of two categories, each resistant to change.
The first includes big items (Social Security, the mortgage interest deduction) whose benefits are so large that any hint of cuts prompts massive opposition — or its specter. Practical politicians retreat. The second encompasses smaller programs (Amtrak, ethanol subsidies) that, though having a tiny budget effect, inspire fanatical devotion from their supporters. Just recently, for example, the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns defended culture subsidies (“an infinitesimally small fraction of the deficitâ€) in The Post. Politicians retreat; meager budget gains aren’t worth the disproportionate public vilification.
Well, if you can’t change big programs or small programs, what can you do? Not much. …
Government is suicidal because it breeds expectations that cannot be met. All the partisan skirmishing over who gets credit for averting a shutdown misses the larger issue: whether we can restore government as an instrument of progress or whether it remains — as it is now — a threat.
Harvard’s 1899 football team passed that kind of exam.
Eve Binder, Managing Editor at Ivygate and Yale ’11, reports on earlier admissions examinations at Harvard and Columbia with altogether excessive frivolity and dismisses the Classics with proud Philistinism. (Reverend Davenport would not be pleased.)
The New York Times recently unearthed a Harvard entrance exam from 1899, and man, is it ugly. The text spans three major disciplines–classical languages, history and math–and requires its victims to jump through flaming hoops in topics like Greek Composition, Random-Ass Geography, and Hard Numbers. Take, for instance:
[in Logarithms and Trigonometry] 9. Find by logarithms, using arithmetical complements, the value of the following:
[(0.02183)2 x (7)2/5]/[√(0.0046) x 23.309]
Remember, folks, there were no calculators in 1899. Nor, apparently, was there mercy.
[In History and Geography] VI. Leonidas, Pausanias, Lysander.
Evidently this is a question, not just a list of people you’ve never heard of. Oh, wait, we’ve heard of Leonidas–but that’s only because we’ve seen 300, which someone living in the 1800s would most likely not have seen. Wonder if you’d get partial credit for identifying Lysander as “that dude in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.“
[In Greek Composition] [Insert ancient cryptic mumbo-jumbo here]
Hey, it’s all ελληνικά to us. Can you imagine if this were on the SAT?
Speaking of the SAT, it’s hard to tell whether the replacement of questions like “bound the basin of the Po†with ones like “find the noun in this sentence†has been a good or bad thing. A good thing for us, certainly, because if we’d been forced to draw the route of the Ten Thousand on a map in order to get into college, we’d have been working at the 1899 equivalent of a Chick-Fil-A faster than you can say “Gay Nineties.†But perhaps not such a good thing for the overall intelligence quotient of our nation’s youth, which would unquestionably have been strengthened by the knowledge of “Pharsalia, Philippi and Actium.†All of which, by the way, sound like sleep medications.
In an interesting final coup, Columbia Spectrum columnist Thomas Rhiel has noted that the 1899 Harvard entrance exam pales in comparison to that of Columbia, which apparently required knowledge of French, German, and the following works:
Milton’s Paradise Lost, Books I and II; Pope’s Iliad, Books I and XXII; the Sir Roger de Coverley Papers in The Spectator; Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield, Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Carlyle’s Essay on Burns, Lowell’s Vision of Sir Launfal, Hawthorne’s The House of the Seven Gables, […] Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Burke’s Speech on Conciliation with America, De Quincey’s The Flight of a Tartar Tribe, [and] Tennyson’s The Princess.
Times sure have changed, haven’t they? Back then you actually had to read all these books in order to get anywhere in life. Now all you have to do is Google the ending and lie. Yeah, sorry we’re not sorry.
It’s understandable that the educated classes, force-fed for generations on the Classics, finally rebelled against the older system in favor of the more utilitarian, more flexible, and more modern. But the older I get, the more strongly I tend to believe that higher education made a gravely wrong turn when it made the decision to discard Classics as its foundation.
Serious and extended study of Latin and Greek reliably conferred a sort of grace and skill in written expression which has largely vanished from more contemporary prose. I routinely find the memoirs of colonial administrators and retired colonels produced before WWI far better written than the essays of the most admired current writers in today’s Spectator and New York Review of Books.
Reading the ancient authors also characteristically broadened the perspective of members of the educated elite of that earlier time. Rivalries between great powers, the outrages and brutalities performed by barbarian tribes, the forms of perfidy committed by foreign adversaries were all far more familiar and comprehensible to minds steeped in Xenophon and Thucydides.
Ivy League education today more commonly narrows the outlook of members of the contemporary elite, turning them into provincial conformists and uncritical followers of the fashionable consensus, lacking in sympathy for, or identification with, not our civilization’s past, but any past. Today’s commentariat is characteristically unable to consult the examples set by nations and leaders in conducting war during WWII when discussing current military operations, let alone reflect on what Alcibiades or Caesar might have done.
As we enjoy a nice spring day, punctuated by the voices of happy songbirds, as well as by the clamor of unhappy liberals moaning and wailing over the budget cuts (which they describe as “Draconian,” “damaging,” proof that “our democracy has been irretrievably lost,” the kind of result only possible through “hostage-taking“), you can get a good picture of fiscal reality from the graphic below.
Our friend Bird Dog, added a slight addendum to this illustration from Gateway Pundit, making clear just how dramatic the Obama Administration’s contribution to the $1.65 trillion deficit is, indicating how comparatively insignificant the budget deal’s reduction of $38.5 billion is by comparison.
This week, on Tuesday, we will reach the 150th anniversary of the opening shots of the American Civil War. The left these days is continuing to fight that war at every opportunity. On the editorial page of yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, Fergus W. Bordewich offered a rather partisan interpretation of history.
Bordewich complains that Southern states “routinely denied freedom of speech, press and assembly” to abolitionists, but neglects to mention Abraham Lincoln’s forcible closure of dozens of newspapers, his illegal imprisonment (without warrant or trial) of thousands of Americans including elected officials, his unconstitutional suspension of habeus corpus and so on.
Bordewich goes on to extol the ultimate Northern victory, theorizing in the kind of leap that takes far too much for granted, that without the conquest and forcible reincorporation of the seceded states, the United States might not have intervened in WWI and WWII or won the Cold War.
Perhaps, on the other hand, one could equally easily argue, if the South had won and established the example of a successful aristocratic and conservative republic, European culture would have been moved in a better direction. There might have been no rise to power of the popular ideologies of Nationalism and Socialism and no Fascism or Communism at all. No rule by pseudo-intellectuals turning the 20th century into an abattoir. It is easy to spin that kind of theorizing in any direction you prefer.
The video below, featuring footage from 1913 to 1938 when veterans of the great conflict were still alive, represents the very different, once traditional, approach to the memory of the war, which emphasized recognition of the heroism and good faith of the men who fought on both sides of a war which only one side could win.
Dornier 17 bomber lying inverted in the Goodwin Sands.
A largely intact casualty of the Battle of Britain, a Dornier 17 fast bomber, referred to affectionately by the Germans as the Fliegender Bleistift “flying pencil,” was found two years ago when a fishing boat snagged its net on the wreck.
The RAF Museum plans to raise the aircraft and place it on display.
A rare German wartime bomber which was discovered on a sandbank 70 years after it was shot down during the Battle of Britain is to be raised, it was announced today.
The twin-engined Dornier 17 first emerged from Goodwin Sands, a ten-mile long sandbank off the coast of Deal, Kent, two years ago, a spokesman for the RAF Museum said.
Since then, the museum has worked with Wessex Archaeology to complete a full survey of the wreck site, usually associated with shipwrecks, before the plane is recovered and eventually exhibited as part of the Battle of Britain Beacon project.
An underwater side scan of a twin-engined Dornier 17 German wartime bomber, which has been discovered on a sandbank off Deal, Kent, 70 years after it was shot down during the Battle of Britainy
The spokeswoman said the aircraft – known as a Flying Pencil due to its sleek design and stick-like lines – was part of a large enemy formation which attempted to attack airfields in Essex on August 26, 1940 but was intercepted by RAF fighter aircraft above Kent before the convoy reached its target.
The plane’s pilot, Willi Effmert, attempted to carry out a wheels-up landing on Goodwin Sands but, although he landed safely, the aircraft sank.
He and one other crew member were captured but another two men died.
The spokeswoman said the plane was found in ‘remarkable’ condition considering the years it has spent underwater, and is largely intact with its main undercarriage tyres inflated and its propellers still showing the damage they suffered during its final landing.
Mark Steyn comments acidly on Barack Obama’s estrangement from reality and the democrats’ futile politics of denial.
The other day, Barack Obama was in the oddly apt town of Fairless Hills, Pa., at what the White House billed as one of those ersatz “town hall†discussions into which republican government has degenerated. He was asked a question by a citizen of the United States. The cost of a gallon of gas has doubled on Obama’s watch, and this gentleman asked, “Is there a chance of the price being lowered again?â€
As the Associated Press reported it, the president responded “laughinglyâ€: “I know some of these big guys, they’re all still driving their big SUVs. You know, they got their big monster trucks and everything. . . . If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting eight miles a gallon — (laughter) . . . â€
That’s how the official White House transcript reported it: Laughter. Big yuks. “So, like I said, if you’re getting eight miles a gallon you may want to think about a trade-in. You can get a great deal.†…
America, 2011: A man gets driven in a motorcade to sneer at a man who has to drive himself to work. A guy who has never generated a dime of wealth, never had to make payroll, never worked at any job other than his own tireless self-promotion literally cannot comprehend that out there beyond the far fringes of the motorcade outriders are people who drive a long distance to jobs whose economic viability is greatly diminished when getting there costs twice as much as the buck-eighty-per-gallon it cost back at the dawn of the Hopeychangey Era.
So what? Your fault. Should have gone to Columbia and Harvard and become a community organizer.
Another ten years of this, and large tracts of America will be Third World. Not Somalia-scale Third World, but certainly the more decrepit parts of Latin America. There will still be men with motorcades, but they’ll have heavier security and the compounds they shuttle between will be more heavily protected. For them and their cronies, the guys plugged in, the guys who still know who to call to figure out a workaround through the bureaucratic sclerosis, life will be manageable, and they’ll still be wondering why you loser schlubs are forever whining about gas prices, and electricity prices, and food prices.
What’s about to hit America is not a “shock.†It’s not an earthquake, it’s not a tsunami, it’s what Paul Ryan calls “the most predictable crisis in the history of our country.†It has one cause: spending. The spending of the class that laughs at the class that drives to work to maintain President Obama, Senator Reid, Senator Baucus, Senator Harkin, and Minority Leader Pelosi’s “communications director†in their comforts and complacency.
The Democrats’ solution to the problem is to deny there is one. Unsustainable binge spending is, as the computer wallahs say, not a bug but a feature: We’ll stimulate the economy with a stimulus grant for a Stimulus Grant-Writing Community Outreach Permit Coordinator regulated by the Federal Department of Community-Organizer Grant Applications. What’s to worry about?
Pallets of mustard gas shells similar to those sold by Libyan rebels to Hamas and Hezbollah
Mossad leak source DEBKAfile reports on what our freedom-loving friends, the Libyan rebels, have been up to.
Senior Libyan rebel “officers†sold Hizballah and Hamas thousands of chemical shells from the stocks of mustard and nerve gas that fell into rebel hands when they overran Muammar Qaddafi’s military facilities in and around Benghazi, debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report.
Word of the capture touched off a scramble in Tehran and among the terrorist groups it sponsors to get hold of their first unconventional weapons.
According to our sources, the rebels offloaded at least 2,000 artillery shells carrying mustard gas and 1,200 nerve gas shells for cash payment amounting to several million dollars.
US and Israeli intelligence agencies have tracked the WMD consignments from eastern Libya as far as Sudan in convoys secured by Iranian agents and Hizballah and Hamas guards. …
[S]ome of the poison gas may be intended not only for artillery use but also for drones which Hizballah recently acquired from Iran.
Tehran threw its support behind the anti-Qaddafi rebels because of this unique opportunity to get hold of the Libyan ruler’s stock of poison gas after it fell into opposition hands and arm Hizballah and Hamas with unconventional weapons without Iran being implicated in the transaction.
Shortly after the uprising began in the third week of February, a secret Iranian delegation arrived in Benghazi. Its members met rebel chiefs, some of them deserters from the Libyan army, and clinched the deal for purchasing the entire stock of poison gas stock and the price.
The rebels threw in a quantity of various types of anti-air missiles.
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DEBKAfile subsequently boasts of unnamed parties taking out a couple of senior people in charge of the weapons transfer.
[A]ccusing Israel of killing the two passengers of a Hyundai Sinai near Port Sudan Tuesday, April 5, the Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti alleged a missile was fired from an aerial drone or a vessel on the Red Sea. debkafile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources reveal that a special operations unit landed by sea and used a surface missile to hit the car and kill two top handlers of the Iranian-Hamas arms smuggling network in Sudan. The assailants waylaid the vehicle as it drove through the Kalaneeb region on the only blacktop road running through the Sudanese desert between Khartoum and Port Sudan.
Megan McArdle quotes her reader Trimalchio‘s explanation of why the Left’s Tax-the-Rich rhetoric is fraudulent.
For anyone who wants to discuss the revenue side of the budget debate knowledgably, I highly recommend spending some time with the IRS’s Statistics on Income. Table 1.1 under Individual Statistical Tables is a good place to start: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi…
You can see, for example, that total taxable income in 2008 was $5,488 billion. Taxable income over $100,000 was $1,582 billion, over $200,000 was $1,185 billion, over $500,000 was $820 billion, over $1 million was $616 billion, over $2 million was $460 billion, over $5 million was $302 billion, and over $10 million was $212 billion. Effective tax rates as a percentage of taxable income seem to top out around 27%.
You can estimate the effects of various proposals in the best case, which is that each percentage point increase in the marginal rate translates to an equal increase in the effective rate. Going back to 2000 (“Clinton era”) marginal rates on income over $200,000, let’s call it a 5 percentage point increase in the marginal rate, would therefore yield $59 billion on a static basis. Going from there to a 45% rate on incomes over $1 million (another 5 percentage point increase) yields an additional $31 billion. Or, instead, on top of 2000 rates over $200,000, 50%/60%/70% on $500,000/$5 million/$10 million? An extra $133 billion, or nearly 1% of GDP. That’s not accounting for the further middle class tax cuts that are usually proposed along with these “millionaires’ taxes.”
Now, compare this to deficits of $1,413 billion in 2009 and $1,293 billion in 2010, and using optimistic White House estimates, $1,645 billion in 2011 $1,101 billion in 2012, $768 billion in 2013, and continuing at over $600 billion after.
Alternatively, you might also notice that while taxable income in 2008 was $5,488 billion, adjusted gross income on all returns was $7,583 billion on taxable returns only (with an additional $680 billion on untaxable returns), which means that $2,095 billion isn’t even in the tax base. $592 billion of that difference is exemptions, which are not tax expenditures, and $1,512 billion is deductions, which are mostly tax expenditures.
My point is just that I don’t see how deficits this large can be closed with income taxes on the rich, even at marginal rates far higher than anything we’ve seen in the post-1986 era. Paying for spending at near-term levels, not even considering entitlement and interest payments that will accelerate a decade out, would have to include meaningful base broadening by eliminating tax expenditures like the mortgage interest deduction or the employer health case deduction, or would have to rely on new taxes like a VAT.
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Even if we outright confiscated the wealth of all of this country’s billionaires, we couldn’t break even for this single year.
The grand total of the combined net worth of every single one of America’s billionaires is roughly $1.3 trillion. It does indeed sound like a “ton of cash†until one considers that the 2011 deficit alone is $1.6 trillion. So, if the government were to simply confiscate the entire net worth of all of America’s billionaires, we’d still be $300 billion short of making up this year’s deficit.
That’s before we even get to dealing with the long-term debt of $14 trillion, which if you’re keeping score at home, is between 10 to 14 times the entire net worth of all of the country’s billionaires, combined.
