Deductions are the Cheez Doodles of tax policy: Everyone likes them; everyone who studies the matter knows they are not good for us; and nonetheless, most people will get very indignant if you attempt to replace them with something more wholesome.
This is why deductions rarely go away, no matter how stupid and detrimental to the fiscal and economic health of the republic. For example, virtually every wonk in Washington, from radical libertarian to fervent socialist, can agree upon at least one thing: the tax deductibility of employer-sponsored health insurance is a terrible idea. On the one hand, it costs the government a packet of money every year, money that has to be raised by higher taxes on someone else. On the other hand, it encourages employers to load as much compensation as possible into the health benefit package, which distorts our economy and contributes to ballooning costs. There is nothing nice to be said about this particular tax deduction, except that it undoubtedly seemed like a good idea during World War II.
And yet, when it comes time to, say, pass a major health-care reform, or reform the tax code, do our nation’s legislators start with the obvious, and get rid of this egregiously stupid deduction? I regret that there is no way to convey my hollow, despairing laugh in pixel form. Of course they don’t touch it. The very egregiousness of its immense costs, the massive distortions it has induced in American consumption patterns, mean that getting rid of it would be far too disruptive.
Megan McArdle, “Republicans Turned the Tax Code Into a Weapon”, Bloomberg View, 2017-11-03.
December 27, 2019
QotD: The perils of tax reform
December 26, 2019
The Origins of the Christmas Star?! – December 25th – TimeGhost of Christmas Past – DAY 2
TimeGhost History
Published 25 Dec 2019What did Mark Twain have in common with Genghis Khan and William the Conqueror? And how is this all tied into a Christmas Miracle? Well, much of this can be answered by a bright bulb of light, that astronomer Johann Palitzsch observed on Christmas Day 1758…
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Rune Væver Hartvig and Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Rune Væver Hartvig
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek KaminskiColorizations:
Julius Jääskeläinen – https://www.facebook.com/JJcolorization/Sources:
King William I (“The Conqueror”), courtesy of National Portrait Gallery
Comet Halley and the Milky Way, courtesy of ESO (https://www.eso.org/public/images/com…)Soundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “A Sleigh Ride Into Town”
Leimoti – “The Christmas Thieves”A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Top 12 Fictional Pseudo-Christmases
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 24 Dec 2019Happy holidays, one and all – even those of us from fictional universes where Christmas isn’t celebrated! Let’s celebrate by comparing twelve fictional Definitely Not Christmases and ranking them from lamest to best!
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
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“Make Gas Cans Great Again”
At Ace of Spades H.Q., Buck Throckmorton offers a simple, yet fiendishly clever policy for Donald Trump to secure millions of votes in the next election:
If Donald Trump wants to ensure he recaptures the 2020 electoral votes in the Great Lakes states he won in 2016 — and possibly add Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Maine — there is one simple thing he could do that would make him a hero to every snow-blowing American — issue an executive order to restore functioning gas cans.
To be clear, this would also make him a hero to tens of millions of other Americans throughout the country who use lawn mowers, power tools, etc around their homes or in their jobs. In 2009 the EPA banned the sale of gas cans that functionally pour gas. To be specific, the scientifically illiterate bureaucrats at the EPA outlawed gas cans with vents, mandating that all new gas cans must have crazy contraptions that require three hands to operate. Unlike the old gas cans, the new ones spill gas all over the user and onto the ground. The result of the EPA’s incompetence is a new gas can that is much worse for the environment than the one it replaced. The incompetent regulators at the EPA are so scientifically illiterate that they honestly believed that the vents on gas cans were there to allow gas fumes to escape, rather than the actual purpose of allowing air to flow in to the can so that gas can be poured out. Having received their “science” education in Oppression Studies classes at Grievance State University, these morons making rules for how we gas up our power tools have likely never handled a tool more powerful than their own personal groomers.
The government-mandated non-functioning gas can may be the most unpopular government-imposed regulatory rule since the 55 mile per hour speed limit. If you don’t know someone who mocks and despises these stupid red canisters, then you are living a very sheltered urban or upscale lifestyle. Most all working-class and middle-class Americans deal with these awful containers, and they mock the government for imposing them on us.
James May’s Toy Stories – Peter Snow’s Attic
Megan T
Published 26 Apr 2015
QotD: “Saving” a special bottle of wine
If you find yourself earmarking a bottle of wine as particularly special, go a step further and decide immediately what you’re saving it for. Don’t expect a suitable event to materialize later, because our psychology is working against us and as time goes by the exalted wine becomes harder to open.
Richard Best, The Frugal Oenophile, 2004-12-09.
December 25, 2019
The Wildest Christmas Party Ever? – December 24th – TimeGhost of Christmas Past – DAY 1
TimeGhost History
Published 24 Dec 2019The first day of TimeGhost of Christmas is about a legendary Christmas Party bearing the equally legendary name of “the Eggnog Riots”, which took place on Christmas Eve in 1826 at the Military Academy at West Point, New York.
Join us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TimeGhostHistory
Hosted by: Indy Neidell
Written by: Joram Appel and Spartacus Olsson
Directed by: Spartacus Olsson and Astrid Deinhard
Executive Producers: Bodo Rittenauer, Astrid Deinhard, Indy Neidell, Spartacus Olsson
Creative Producer: Joram Appel
Post-Production Director: Wieke Kapteijns
Research by: Joram Appel
Edited by: Mikołaj Cackowski
Sound design: Marek KamińskiColorizations by:
Norman Stewart – https://oldtimesincolor.blogspot.com/
Dememorabilia – https://www.instagram.com/dememorabilia/Sources:
NYPL Digital Collections
From the Noun Project:
Wine by Ayub Irawan
Drunk by Ates Evren Aydinel
Whisky by Made by Made
Rum by Andreja Kirma
clock by Maurício BritoSoundtracks from Epidemic Sound:
Howard Harper-Barnes – “A Sleigh Ride Into Town”
Etienne Roussell – “A Winter’s Night”
Mike Franklyn – “Christmas Bliss”A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Repost – The market failure of Christmas
Not to encourage miserliness and general miserability at Christmastime, but here’s a realistic take on the deadweight loss of Christmas gift-giving:
Christmas gifts under the tree.
Photo by Kelvin Kay via Wikimedia Commons.
In strict economic terms, the most efficient gift is cold, hard cash, but exchanging equivalent sums of money lacks festive spirit and so people take their chance on the high street. This is where the market fails. Buyers have sub-optimal information about your wants and less incentive than you to maximise utility. They cannot always be sure that you do not already have the gift they have in mind, nor do they know if someone else is planning to give you the same thing. And since the joy is in the giving, they might be more interested in eliciting a fleeting sense of amusement when the present is opened than in providing lasting satisfaction. This is where Billy Bass comes in.
But note the reason for this inefficient spending. Resources are misallocated because one person has to decide what someone else wants without having the knowledge or incentive to spend as carefully as they would if buying for themselves. The market failure of Christmas is therefore an example of what happens when other people spend money on our behalf. The best person to buy things for you is you. Your friends and family might make a decent stab at it. Distant bureaucrats who have never met us — and who are spending other people’s money — perhaps can’t.
So when you open your presents next week and find yourself with another garish tie or an awful bottle of perfume, consider this: If your loved ones don’t know you well enough to make spending choices for you, what chance does the government have?
Repost – “Fairytale of New York”
Time:
“Fairytale of New York,” The Pogues featuring Kirsty MacColl
This song came into being after Elvis Costello bet The Pogues’ lead singer Shane MacGowan that he couldn’t write a decent Christmas duet. The outcome: a call-and-response between a bickering couple that’s just as sweet as it is salty.
QotD repost: Sir Humphrey’s bureaucratic holiday wishes
Jim Hacker: Are you trying to say “Happy Christmas,” Humphrey?
Sir Humphrey: Yes, Minister.
December 24, 2019
It’s 2019 and Drew Magary still hates Williams-Sonoma
He’s been hating on the company for a while, but it’s still doing the things that got him riled up in the first place:
Oh, hello there! Welcome! Come on in! Come on in! Dust your boots off in the breezeway. I have a special mat you can use for it that’s woven from human hair sourced from the tribes of the South Pacific. Best snow-wiping hair ever designed, by God. Once you’ve cleaned up, I have a splendid repast of beggar’s purses and dolloped lobster turnovers awaiting you in the dining room. You may begin eating these haute goodies at 7:45 pm and no sooner. Please do not touch ANY of the decorations in the hallway as you proceed toward the food. My decorations are for admiring only. If you mar them in any way, I will grate off your genitals using a microplane. I am the Joneses. You cannot ever keep up with me.
I got that microplane from the Williams-Sonoma catalog, by the way. True, I COULD have bought a microplane at your local Pathmark. They have a rack of them hanging above the Pop-Tart shelf for some reason. But why buy one there when I can support my local (international) mom-and-pop (publicly traded) store (merchandising oligarchy) instead? I’m no fool. I know what’s best for America, and what’s best for America is ignoring every horrible thing going on and, instead, assigning two entire months on the calendar to spoiling myself, cutting down precious wildlife, and indulging in retail spending practices so irresponsible that every accountant on the planet cries their eyes out at night just thinking about it all.
I am hardly alone in such rituals. Try as you might, Christmas fiends, you cannot kill Williams-Sonoma. I know because I’ve been shitting on this company’s catalog every Christmas for YEARS, as a matter of both tradition and moral principle. But all of my efforts to drown this yuppie trinket hive in the toilet have seemingly been in vain. In fact, last year, I myself nearly died before this company did. And I’m a sturdy fellow. I work out an elliptical trainer five times a week and occasionally eat fruit. I am strong. I am invincible. I AM MAN. Alas, I am no match for a company wily enough to sell Star Wars Le Creuset roasting pans for $450 (HOLY LIVING FUCK) and somehow make it work. How does W-S do it year after year?
Well, according to an article I just Googled, the company is strong in something called “omnichannel retailing,” a term I will look no further into because I don’t hate myself. Also, millennials apparently LOVE West Elm, which W-S also owns. West Elm is IKEA for people who don’t want to say they bought their furniture at an IKEA, so that all tracks. I have West Elm furniture in my house. It’s alarmingly small furniture. Really, only my dog can fit on the chair we got. He weighs 15 pounds.
Also, the company has shuttered a lot of brick-and-mortar Williams-Sonoma locations in favor of selling designer chicken coops directly to hotels, banks, and other industrial concerns. OH WOW DID I JUST SEE THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT METER ON SANTA’S SLEIGH SPIKE INTO THE RED? You know I did. According to every Christmas movie I’ve ever watched, Christmas spirit is in great peril every year. That’s why we need overpriced fondue pots more than ever.
Remy: “The First Noel” (Ballot Access Parody)
ReasonTV
Published 23 Dec 2019Remy is creeped out by restrictive ballot access measures. Also by Prince Andrew.
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Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/reason
Subscribe to our podcast at Apple Podcasts: https://goo.gl/az3a7aReason is the planet’s leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Go to reason.com for a point of view you won’t get from legacy media and old left-right opinion magazines.
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Written and performed by Remy.
Produced and edited by Austin Bragg.
Music tracks and mastering by Ben Karlstrom.LYRICS:
The first Noel I heard early one day
As I tried to run as a new candidate
My cheeks were wetter than Prince Andrew’s shirt
When the man spoke to me and he told me these words:No “L,” no “L”
No “L,” no “L”
No room for me on the ballot, oh wellI looked up a party wherein
I could join but was told “There’s no room at the inn”
No bed to lay and I heard “take a hike”
Like the time I bought my wife an exercise bikeNo “L,” no “L”
No “L,” no “L”
No room for me in the parties, oh wellMy wish this year is to feel content
At the ballot and not—to be frank—incensed
Must it be so hard to boot folks we don’t like
But they claim it is lawful and I think that’s right, but …No “L,” no “L”
No “L,” no “L”
Seriously, how creepy is Prince Andrew?
Repost – Hey Kids! Did you get your paperwork in on time?
If you hurry, you can just get your Santa’s Visit Application in before the deadline tonight!
Holiday Tales: Christmas
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 25 Dec 2017Merry Christmas, all! In honor of this complex and multifaceted holiday, today let’s talk about some of the many and varied influences and major historical turning points that sculpted this holiday into what we know and love (or lose our minds at Starbucks over.)
Nobody tell Blue that this video is mostly historical.
PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4664797
Find us on Twitter @OSPYouTube!
QotD: Fairy tales
Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.
But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty, and Was Locked Up.
Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told “This Didn’t Happen, OK? Does Anyone Want To Argue?”
Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time, 2001.
