Brothers Judd Blog

If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)

W

Neoconomics W

TAXES WHAT YOU DON’T WANT, NOT WHAT YOU DO:

Trump Should Finish What He Started (Jason Harrison, Nov 26, 2024, Cremieux Recueil)

Back in 2005, the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform, established by President George W. Bush, rolled out proposals that echoed the principles underlying the DBCFT. Their plans included lowering marginal tax rates, eliminating certain deductions, and promoting saving and investment—concepts that resonate with the DBCFT framework. Interestingly, aspects of this tax reform have found nods of approval from both sides of the political aisle. Jason Furman, who served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Obama, has highlighted the merits of specific components, particularly those that promote simplicity in the tax code and encourage economic growth. In fact, many Democratic lawmakers and advisors, whether openly or in quieter conversations, have also recognized the value of this approach, underscoring their bipartisan appeal. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, the eventual enacted policy born out of “A Better Way” and signed by President Donald Trump, included provisions that have been recognized for their positive impact and could serve as common ground for future bipartisan tax policies. It’s true, parts of the TCJA genuinely are worth hanging onto.

When you peel back the layers, the tax reform plan put forth by the Republicans that was later embodied in the TCJA isn’t so much a radical leap into the unknown as it is the culmination of a long journey through scholarly research and policy evolution. It reflects a convergence of ideas from economists, policymakers, and bipartisan commissions, all wrestling with the never-ending challenge of designing a tax system that promotes efficiency, fairness, and growth. In an era where the United States faces increasing competition from countries like China, mounting national debt, and the challenges of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the urgency of effective tax reform is undeniable. A tax system that enhances international competitiveness, supports long-term wage growth for workers, and simplifies the complex web of current tax regulations is essential, and the DBCFT offers a compelling framework to address these issues.

Advocacy for a Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax is really advocacy for consumption taxation in disguise, so it makes sense to first actually address what consumption taxes are, or, more importantly, what people mistakenly think they are (spoiler: they’re not just taxes on your latte habit.)

When you peel back the layers, the tax reform plan put forth by the Republicans that was later embodied in the TCJA isn’t so much a radical leap into the unknown as it is the culmination of a long journey through scholarly research and policy evolution. It reflects a convergence of ideas from economists, policymakers, and bipartisan commissions, all wrestling with the never-ending challenge of designing a tax system that promotes efficiency, fairness, and growth. In an era where the United States faces increasing competition from countries like China, mounting national debt, and the challenges of profit shifting by multinational corporations, the urgency of effective tax reform is undeniable. A tax system that enhances international competitiveness, supports long-term wage growth for workers, and simplifies the complex web of current tax regulations is essential, and the DBCFT offers a compelling framework to address these issues.

Advocacy for a Destination-Based Cash Flow Tax is really advocacy for consumption taxation in disguise, so it makes sense to first actually address what consumption taxes are, or, more importantly, what people mistakenly think they are (spoiler: they’re not just taxes on your latte habit.)

The future al every policy is the past of W, in this case Neoconomics.

One Economy to Rule Them All Ownership Society

BRING BACK W’S PERSONAL ACCOUNTS:

The Biggest Winners in the Stock Market (Ben Carlson, 7/21/24, A Wealth of Common Sense)

The stock market is hard to beat because picking the winning stocks is hard. Index funds own them regardless.

Winners > losers. Index funds also own the losers, of which there are many.

But the winners more than make up for the losers.

That’s the beauty of the stock market.

Compounding over decade-long periods is like magic. There are no stocks for the long run with crazy 20% or 30% annual returns over 8-9 decades.

From 1926-2023 the S&P 500 was up 10.3% per year so it’s not like the best-performing survivors crushed the market by leaps and bounds.

But those above-average returns compounded over 98 years added up to incredible growth over that time.

That compounding has been magic for the stock market.

Crusader State W

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:

The Iraq War was a Success (Simon Maass, June 13, 2024, Providence)

In terms of its objectives, Operation Iraqi Freedom was a clear success. Saddam Hussein was deposed, tried and executed with ease. “We achieved our goals,” as John Bolton put it. Even so, the Iraq War is usually characterized as the poster child for American failure in foreign affairs, a perception based on questionable assumptions. […]

Eli Lake lists several indicators of Iraq’s progress since the invasion. In the two intervening decades, the country’s GDP ballooned approximately tenfold, while life expectancy, literacy rates, and the prevalence of cell phone plans also increased. According to the World Bank, Iraq’s GDP per capita declined from 2000 to 2003, but rose quite swiftly thereafter – that is, it actually started to grow following the invasion. Currently, it is nearly at an all-time high. The suicide rate remained roughly unchanged by the war, while infant mortality continued to diminish.[…]

As Alan Dowd writes, “it pays to recall that Saddam murdered 600,000 Iraqis.”If one includes deaths incurred during his war of aggression against Iran, that figure is reasonable. Human Rights Watch famously estimated the number of people “disappeared,” then killed, by the Ba’athist regime at “between 250,000 and 290,000 people.” This number was based on just the government’s major sprees of detentions and killings.

David French compares Iraq to neighboring Syria, which also had a Ba’athist dictatorship. That tyranny was not overthrown. When the Arab Spring swept across the Middle East, Syria was plunged into a civil war which has made the country “a charnel house.” We can supplement this point with some numbers. According to the UN, the decade from 2011 to 2021 saw over 350,000 deaths in the Syrian Civil War. Combined with Iraq Body Count’s figure, this implies that, despite having a smaller population, Syria experienced more deaths from falling into civil war than Iraq experienced from an American invasion. This illustrates that the lack of American intervention does not mean many people will not suffer. Furthermore, the Syrian Network for Human Rights currently estimates that “Syrian regime forces and Iranian militias” are responsible for 87% of the war’s civilian casualties. Note also that Syria’s population plummeted after its civil war began, whereas Iraq’s kept rising fairly smoothly after the invasion.

The critics generally prefer dictators keeping their Third World populations quiet to messy democracies.

Cheeto Jesus W

THE FUTURE OF ALL POLICIES IS ALWAYS THE PAST OF W:

Trump’s covid response was even worse than you remember: In a sane country, it would disqualify him from ever again holding office (STEPHEN ROBINSON, APR 19, 2024, Public Notice)


The first recorded case of covid in the US was in January 2020. A few weeks later Judd Legum at Popular Information posted on Twitter, “I feel like more people should be talking about the fact that Trump fired the entire pandemic response team two years ago and then didn’t replace them.”

Indeed, the Trump administration gutted the infectious disease defense infrastructure through shortsighted cost-cutting measures starting in 2018 — a year after passing a trillion-dollar tax giveaway for his billionaire buddies. The administration specifically canned the executive branch team that would’ve coordinated a response.

Trump then spent most of February 2020 minimizing covid’s threat. He called the coronavirus Democrats’ “new hoax” at a campaign rally in South Carolina. By April, when everything was going to hell, he lamented that the pandemic was “something that nobody expected.” However, former President George W. Bush had warned in 2005 that “if we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare.” Bush compared a pandemic to a forest fire: “If caught early it might be extinguished with limited damage. If allowed to smolder, undetected, it can grow to an inferno that can spread quickly beyond our ability to control it.”

Bush paved the way for pandemic planning, which the Obama administration continued. Only Trump was simultaneously arrogant and stupid enough to demolish what his predecessors had built.

Conservative Thought W

RETURNING TO COMPASSIONATE CONSERVATISM:

Conservatism’s Path Not Taken: In the age of Trump, the right should revisit the neglected Humanist Conservative tradition (JEFFERY TYLER SYCK, JAN 10, 2024, Persuasion)

This brief sketch highlights the five main strands of Humanist Conservatism.

First, it is committed to compassionate capitalism. Humanist Conservatives believe that free market competition is vital to a healthy economy, but that the sometimes-brutal tendencies of capitalism must be offset with generous welfare and jobs programs. Instead of slashing welfare (as Fusionists want) or drastically expanding the regulatory state (as National Conservatives want), Humanist Conservatives long for a more efficient entitlement system that gives money to those who deserve it without unnecessary bureaucratic bloat. Through a generous, semi-public healthcare system, solvent retirement plans, jobs programs for the unemployed, and other reforms, the United States can work to revitalize all geographic areas and not just its urban centers.

Second, Humanist Conservatism seeks to preserve communities. It directs much of its energy towards ending the gradual collapse of American civil society. It adopts this stance partly out of the conviction that human life is best lived in a community with others, but also out of a belief that genuine self-government can only exist in those institutions we inhabit in our daily lives. In practice, this means using government to support and shield what Edmund Burke called the “little platoons”—those intermediary institutions that stand between the individual and the state such as school, church, trade union, town hall, and so on.

Third, Humanist Conservatism stands for pragmatic internationalism. It understands that no nation can simply ignore the universal struggle for freedom across the globe. But Humanist Conservatives also appreciate that promoting international harmony and human rights is no easy task—that to advance such goals requires a painful awareness of our own limitations. In our current moment this would mean providing critical support to allies like Ukraine and Israel. However, it would also mean avoiding the hawkish war mongering that is common on the right. There is no reason to level all of Palestine, provoke a coup in Iran, or goad Vladimir Putin into attacking NATO. Humanist Conservatives understand better than most that as bad as things are now, they can always get worse. The goal of foreign policy is not just to improve the international situation but to prevent it from deteriorating.

Fourth, Humanist Conservatism promotes a pluralist society. It seeks to build a state whose main purpose is to protect the rights of individuals and ensure a multitude of cultural communities can live in harmony. Rather than arrange a battle royale between secular progressivism and our distinct cultural traditions, as National Conservatives do, pluralism permits both to exist harmoniously.

Finally, Humanist Conservatism embraces moderate politics. Polling data shows that most voters are relatively moderate on issues like abortion, transgender rights, and guns. Humanist Conservativism reflects the views of this largely neglected demographic.

These five principles offer a viable alternative to Fusionism and National Conservatism alike. Humanist Conservatism is moderate, broadly appealing, and committed to human flourishing.

The future of all American policies is the past of W.

Ownership Society

O’NEILL ACCOUNTS NOW:

Every adult a share-owner (Shirley R. Letwin & William Letwin, 3/08/24, CapX)

USO would, first of all, give every adult a sense of increased independence in relation to his economic environment, a sense at present confined to a few. Unlike a bank deposit or an insurance policy, a share gives its owner a direct stake and active voice in the management of an enterprise of his choice. It gives its owner a definite relationship to a business. A firm that would otherwise be a remote abstraction – a name, a set of buildings seen from the outside if seen at all, an entity enigmatically discussed in the back pages of the newspaper, an organisation directed by unknown magnates – becomes instead an operation in which the shareholder has a measurable interest, and which, as an active participant, he comes to see more clearly, closer to the inside.

Just as voters in a democracy sense that they exercise some control over how they are governed because they have the power, at the very least, periodically to turn the rascals out, so shareowners acquire an enlarged sense of being in control of their lives. By being a shareowner, a person becomes a freer man.

To value freedom is to hold that every adult ought to have a sense, accurate rather than illusory, of controlling his own life. In the past, certain advocates of free government maintained that nobody could enjoy real political or economic independence unless they owned land. Today, in an industrialised society, this is no longer feasible nor necessary. The ideal of independent proprietor-farmers has yielded to the ideal of a property-owning democracy.

Not all forms of property however can serve that ideal equally well. Title to one’s dwelling – which some 60% of British households now possess, thanks partly to the policies of the present Government – is in many ways desirable and commendable. But it does not give one a direct interest in, or what is more important, a right of control over, productive enterprises. In other words, owning one’s home does not, like owning shares, involve one in public economic life.

Further, the vast majority of British adults own investments in bank accounts, life insurance, unit trusts, and pension funds; and they thereby, though often unknowingly, possess indirect claims on shares owned by such financial intermediaries. But here again, however rewarding such investments are financially, they do not and can not give their owners a sense of enjoying a rightful and potentially active voice in determining the policies of the nation’s enterprises. In short, the ideal form of a property-owning democracy in today’s world is a share-owning democracy.

The future of all American policvies is the past of W.

Ownership Society W

THE PROPHET:

The Missed Opportunity of George W. Bush’s ‘Ownership Society’ (Kevin D. Williamson, Dec 22, 2023, The Dispatch)


The Wall Street Journal reports: “More Americans than ever own stocks.” In fact, a majority of U.S. households—58 percent—are corporate shareholders, either directly or indirectly through retirement accounts or managed funds. That is up from 53 percent in 2019—many Americans became investors, or more active investors, during the COVID-19 shutdowns and disruptions: Not all of those stimulus checks were spent on rare whisky and expensive sneakers.

One way of understanding the “ownership society” is this: The best way to spread the wealth is to spread the wealth.

If you are concerned that returns to labor are not keeping pace with returns to investment, then you could try to goose the labor market in various ways and pray to the gods of central planning that the unintended consequences of your monkeying around do not cost more than the value of whatever benefits you are able to achieve. Alternatively, you could encourage people who work for wages and salaries to invest in equity—and here I do not mean equity as the social-justice knuckleheads use the word but real equity—so that returns to capital end up in their pockets. Progressives talk about “putting people over profits,” but the “ownership society” understands that the relationship is not, or need not be, fundamentally rivalrous.

Napoleon supposedly spat that England is “a nation of shopkeepers,” being so ensorcelled by the prospect of la gloire that he could not appreciate what a fine thing it was to be a nation of shopkeepers—thrifty, prudent, commercial, not given to urgent enthusiasms. To be a nation of shareholders would be a very fine thing as well, for similar reasons.

We have, of course, been doing this with some success for many years, not only in the United States but around the world, with a great share of the world’s business enterprises being owned not by men with pinstriped suits and manicures but by ordinary people of ordinary means, in large part through retirement accounts and similar funds. The top 20 worldwide owners of assets—which hold something on the order of $27 trillion in investments—include the Government Pensions Investment Fund of Japan (which has long been at the top of the list), the Government Pension Fund of Norway, and the National Pension of South Korea, along with such U.S. representatives as the Federal Retirement Thrift and the public employees of California. The typical corporate shareholder in the United States does not look like Gordon Gekko—more like a retired teacher from Sacramento departing Port Canaveral on a weeklong cruise.

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THE CRYING ENDS:

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