Thank you for making this point. But two wrongs don’t make a right.

Respectfully,
Justin Logan

Tom Daschle has joined Timothy Geithner in the not-so-exclusive club of Obama Cabinet appointees who evaded tens of thousands of dollars in federal taxes until they were vetted for their Cabinet nominations.

It’s too bad Leona Helmsley can’t be nominated as Commerce Secretary.

I sympathize with anybody trying to hold down his tax bill. Government is too big and too expensive, few of us feel we get our money’s worth from our taxes, and we all have better uses for our money than bridges to nowhere and free condoms. But honestly, shouldn’t people who want to increase taxes on the rest of us — like Daschle, Geithner, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Chairman Charles Rangel, Al Franken, Governor David Paterson’s top aide, Democratic National Convention staffers, Al Sharpton, and so on — pay their own taxes?

I was asked by a radio host more than once this week what I thought of the fact that some big business leaders were standing by President Obama in his pursuit of the gargantuan “stimulus” package. There is an unfortunate public perception that supporters of free markets are knee-jerk supporters of anything that could be perceived as benefiting “big business.” As the thinking apparently goes, because free marketers favor business, and members of the business community favor the stimulus, shouldn’t free marketers therefore favor the stimulus?

Hardly. In his book, The Myth of the Robber Barons, historian Burton Folsom differentiates between market entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs:

A key point about the steamship industry is that the government played an active role right from the start in both America and England. Right away this separates two groups of entrepreneurs — those who sought subsidies and those who didn’t. Those who tried to succeed in steamboating primarily through federal aid, pools, vote buying, or stock speculation we will classify as political entrepreneurs. Those who tried to succeed in steamboating primarily by creating and marketing a superior product at a low cost we will classify as market entrepreneurs. No entrepreneur fits perfectly into one category or the other, but most fall generally into one category or the other. The political entrepreneur often fits the classic Robber Baron mold; they stifled productivity (through monopolies and pools), corrupted business and politics, and dulled America’s competitive edge. Market entrepreneurs, by contrast, often made decisive and unpredictable contributions to American economic development.

This afternoon I was forwarded an article regarding IBM chairman and CEO Sam Palmisano’s public endorsement of the “stimulus” package alongside President Obama. According to Palmisano, “We need to reignite growth in our country. We need to undertake projects that actually will create jobs.” 

But as the reporter noted:

Since November, Palmisano has been making a pitch to Obama’s transition team that investing $30 billion in expanding rural broadband access, computerizing health-care records and improving the electrical grid could create 949,000 U.S. jobs. [ The stimulus package] could also create billions in revenue for Big Blue, which specializes in the technology and services used for health-care IT and smart-grid infrastructure, not to mention its recent $9.6 million contract to provide broadband service in rural America.

What we see here is IBM as the political entrepreneur. 

While IBM would stand to make a killing on the “stimulus,” those companies unlucky enough to be left off the government gravy train, the market entrepreneurs, will get stuck partially financing the profligacy. According to Chris Edwards, “The U.S. statutory [corporate income tax] rate is the second highest of the 30 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and by one estimate, the effective rate is the highest.” Of course, corporate taxes mean bad news for consumers, employees, and investors — not just the corporate owners, as many forget (or ignore).

The preliminary GDP estimate for the fourth quarter of 2008 is $11,599.4 billion (in 2000 dollars). That was 0.965% smaller than the third quarter — a figure commonly multiplied by four to convert it into a more dramatic 3.8% annual rate. But these quarterly rates are highly erratic, even in recessions, so converting them into compound annual rates is misleading if not foolhardy.

The table below compares recent quarterly GDP figures with those of 2000–2001.

The first quarter of 2001 and second quarter of 2008 look no worse than the third quarter of 2000. The second quarter of 2008 was stronger than the fourth quarter of 2000. Yet the entire years of 2001 and 2008 are labeled recessionary and 2000 is not.

Percentage Changes in Real GDP

Looking at any extended period, such as the 2000–2001 figures or the 2008 figures, shows why annualized quarterly changes are a very poor guide to future trends. It makes no more sense to use this figure to suggest the economy will keep falling at a 3.8% rate than it would have been to cite the second quarter figure as evidence the economy would keep rising at a 2.8% rate.

The annualized fall in GDP in the first quarter of 1982 was 6.4%, yet the overall drop between the peak and trough quarters of that deep recession was only 2.3%. The annualized drop in first quarter of 1975 was 4.7%, yet that overall cyclical decline was 3.1%.

Politico noted that those opposing the stimulus plan:

…say that borrowing more money to finance a stimulus package will pass a crushing and possibly permanent debt load on to the next generation. “The question is,” says Chris Edwards, the director of tax policy studies at Cato, “is this morally proper?” Edwards says no. “Policymakers are saying: ‘Screw the future generations.’”

Some people are skeptical of such statements, asking how government debt can impose a cost on future generations — after all, don’t we “owe it to ourselves?”

There is an economics answer to this, but you can also consider the basic libertarian theme of voluntarism vs. coercion.

Suppose there are three groups in society: beneficiaries of government programs, taxpayers, and creditors. Now suppose that in year one the government borrows $800 billion for a spending plan, which must be paid back in year two.

In year one, government beneficiaries are better off, taxpayers are not affected, and creditors are better off because they entered a voluntary financial exchange with the government. Since voluntary exchanges are mutually beneficial, nobody is worse off in year one.

The burden of deficit spending must be moved elsewhere — to year two. In year two, government beneficiaries are not affected and creditors receive their repayment. But taxpayers are hit with a bill for $800 billion plus interest, and this is no voluntary exchange. This is an $800 billion extraction with the full coercive power of the government coming into play.

Deficit spending pushes burdens into the future because it delays the use of coercive power. And unfortunately, there is a growing amount of federal coercion awaiting the next generation of young Americans, given that federal public debt is $7.2 trillion and rapidly rising.

“Small Government Returns as [Republican] Maxim,” headlines the Washington Post.

The unanimous vote by House Republicans against President Obama’s stimulus plan provided an early indication that the GOP hopes to regain power by becoming the champion of small government, a reputation many felt slipped away during the high-spending Bush years.

But small-government voters may not be persuaded that the GOP has returned to its principles on the basis of one vote against a bill proposed by the other party, which happens to be, in the words of Republican whip Eric Cantor, likely “the largest spending bill in history.”

Like a wife whose husband has strayed dozens of times over the past eight years, small-government voters may not feel that one Valentine’s Day present is enough to restore trust. Especially when some of the prodigal Republicans are even now saying that they might vote for the largest spending bill in history on final passage.

In addition to the terrible ‘Buy America’ provisions in the stimulus package (blogged about by Dan here and here) comes news that vendors in the Capitol Visitor Center are being forced to remove items made in China from their shelves. In the words of Rep. Bob Brady (D, PA), the chairman of the House Administrative Committee that oversees the Capitol Visitor Center, it is wrong (you get that? wrong) for people to take home souvenirs made abroad. If operators have to pay shipping costs to return the iniquitous goods to China, then, he says, “if we have to lose a little bit, we’ll lose a little bit.” Indeed.

HT: Jason Vines.