ECONOMICS: The “rich” can move to avoid taxes; what about the “little” people

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

https://jeffjacoby.com/27330/jeff-bezos-moves-to-florida-leaving-washington

Jeff Bezos moves to Florida, leaving Washington — and its rising tax burden — behind
by Jeff Jacoby  — The Boston Globe  — November 8, 2023

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But as the Tax Foundation’s lead researcher, Jared Walczak, immediately observed, Bezos is almost certainly going to save money — a lot of money — once he is no longer subject to Washington’s tax laws.

To begin with, Washington has a new capital gains tax, which was upheld by the state’s highest court in March. The tax takes a 7 percent bite of all investment gains above $250,000. In 2020 and 2021, when Bezos sold several million shares of Amazon stock, the proceeds totaled $15.7 billion. Assuming he disposed of stock he had owned since Amazon went public in 1997, Walczak calculated, Bezos “saved nearly $1.1 billion in taxes by selling those shares before the new state capital gains tax went into effect.” By relocating to Florida, he ensures that future stock sales will likewise remain untouched by Washington’s new capital gains levy.

That’s not all.

Washington had no estate tax during the years when Bezos was building Amazon into a commercial giant, but that changed after 2005. Now Washington has the steepest death tax in the nation, with a top rate of 20 percent on estates worth more than $9 million. Florida, on the other hand, has no estate tax at all. For a man with a personal fortune of more than $160 billion, the move from Washington to Florida could be worth $30 billion or more to his heirs.

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The “rich” can move to avoid taxes; what about the “little” people … …

… … who can’t afford to move.  Don’t think that the taxes are only on the “rich”.  Inflation ensures that everyone is hit.  Maybe not equally, but enough to hurt.  And, they have no choice but to stand and take it.

Argh!

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ECONOMICS: Axiom — Rent control makes everyone poor except politicians!

Saturday, February 4, 2023

https://jeffjacoby.com/26719/as-any-economist-can-tell-mayor-wu-rent-control

As any economist can tell Mayor Wu, rent control never works
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
January 29, 2023

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From the other side of the aisle, the renowned conservative economist Thomas Sowell agrees. Rent control policies, he said in a 2019 interview, turn everyone into losers:

“The tenants lose because they can’t find a place to stay. Landlords lose because they don’t make the profit they would have made otherwise. The builders lose because there’s no demand for apartment buildings if no one can make a profit on them.” By and large, observed Sowell, politicians are the only class of people who come out ahead. “They get the reputation of being for the poor and the downtrodden [and] preventing the evil landlords from raising the rent.”

As if that isn’t enough, rent control is infamous among economists for other negative impacts. It exacerbates racial discrimination in housing. It multiplies bureaucracy. It disproportionately hurts those it is intended to help. And what is true in America is true everywhere. When rent control has been tried in other countries, from Canada to Germany to Sweden, the outcomes have been dismal. Even communist Vietnam abandoned rent control after its destructive impact became apparent.

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Why do “we” have to keep reinventing the wheel?  “We, The Sheeple” should immediately give any politician or bureaucrat that mentions “rent control” the pitchfork and torches treatment.

Argh!

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RANT: Repeal REALID and reduce Gooferment powers; the politicians and bureaucrats abuse them!

Saturday, December 31, 2022

https://jeffjacoby.com/26644/real-id-was-a-real-mistake-and-congress-should

Real ID was a real mistake and Congress should scrap it at last
by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
December 28, 2022

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“If fully implemented, the law would facilitate the tracking of data on individuals and bring government into the very center of every citizen’s life,” warns the American Civil Liberties Union. Real ID would make Americans’ personal information available to a vast network of federal, state, and local officials — an irresistible lure to overreaching government snoops, to say nothing of a mother lode for identity thieves. Even worse, the requirement that all driver’s licenses and ID cards have an unencrypted barcode puts that personal information within the grasp of anyone with an electronic scanner.

In authoritarian countries, it is taken for granted that citizens must always have their identification forms with them and that governments have a presumptive right to demand information about any individual at any time. That is not the American way. Here, the presumption is that the national government does not have an automatic claim to personal information and may not track individuals at will without probable cause to suspect wrongdoing.

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“Where are your papers!” 

Every Nazi-involved movie always had this trope in it.  And, it should be a warning of the slippery slope.

Americans don’t need Gooferment “papers” to exist.

And, after we have seen how respectful the Deep State is to the First Amendment, why would we give them anything that could be misused.

#repealrealid #endthefed #endthefbi #endthecia

And on … and on … and on!

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? . . .”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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