More Sense on the President’s Speech
I’m busy dealing with the fallout from the President’s address to students yesterday, especially the cheap-shot smearing as kooks or right-wing zealots anyone who dared question the propriety of the event. That has left me with little time to blog about the speech. Fortunately, I don’t have to: Over at Cafe Hayek, Cato Adjunct Scholar Donald Boudreaux has penned a terrific explanation of why very reasonable people could object to the president’s speech. Here’s the best part:
The idea that we should be ‘inspired’ by winners of political elections — the notion that successful politicians have some special wisdom to impart — the stupid consensus that high political office renders its holders unusually trustworthy when delivering clusters of cliches — is intolerable to men and women who value freedom and individuality.
Trapped Inside the Mime’s Box
Kevin Carey, policy director at the think tank Education Sector, asserts that when it comes to higher education libertarians are boxed in, unable to find a solution to out-of-control college costs that won’t violate at least one, basic libertarian principle:
This puts libertarians in somewhat of a box. On the one hand, they tend to be hostile toward the tens of billions of public dollars that flow into colleges every year. The more colleges cost, the greater the claim on the average citizen’s hard-earned money and thus reduction in their precious liberty etc., etc.
But the best way to bend down the long-term higher education cost curve and thus reduce government spending is to increase government regulation in the form of mandatory reporting. So it’s a pick your poison situation for the Cato folks — would you rather have Big Brother’s hand in your wallet or his eye on your business? You really can’t avoid both.
Now, I don’t want to seem obnoxious about this. After all, in the same piece that produced this quote, Carey notes that “while my politics are pretty far from Cato’s and I often think they’re wrong, they tend to be wrong in interesting ways.” I thank him for that (I think), though I should note that the impetus for his piece is a paper that comes from the John William Pope Center – the same paper I discuss here – not from Cato. So it might not even be Cato that Carey finds interesting. Regardless, here’s my potentially obnoxious-sounding reply:
McAuliffe-nomics
Good news for Virginia taxpayers! Turns out that gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, longtime Democratic fundraiser and former national chairman, understands the power of tax cuts. At a forum on Wednesday, he said that $1.25 million in tax cuts could generate $80 million in economic activity. I’m not sure even Art Laffer or Christina Romer would claim that much return on tax cuts. But here’s McAuliffe:
At George Mason University yesterday, McAuliffe said Virginia’s appeal to Hollywood filmmakers could improve the state’s economic picture. McAuliffe said he became familiar with the potency of the film industry while serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee.
During a roundtable discussion with local filmmakers and producers at George Mason, he unveiled a proposal to offer additional tax incentives and other benefits to film crews making movies in Virginia. He said the state has been losing out to such states as North Carolina and Georgia, which offer greater benefits and have seen their film industries flourish.
He pointed to the HBO miniseries “John Adams,” about the nation’s second president, as an example of a film project that had benefited the state. The miniseries, filmed partly in Williamsburg and at the College of William and Mary, cost Virginia $1.25 million in tax breaks, but it boosted the local economy by $80 million and created 3,500 jobs, he said.
Unless . . . wait a minute. Could it be that McAuliffe only favors targeted tax cuts, tax cuts that would direct economic activity in a particular direction, tax cuts that would in fact help his Hollywood fundraising friends? Hard to say. He’s not calling for tax increases during his gubernatorial campaign, but of course he helped President Clinton raise taxes and he supports President Obama’s tax-spend-and-borrow policies. According to this liberal blogger, McAuliffe tells liberals privately that he can’t run for governor of Virginia on a tax-increase platform . . . if you get my drift.
But hey, if a $1.25 million tax break can generate $80 million of economic activity, what could a $125 million tax break do for Virginia?
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