The Associated Press reports:
Declaring a new direction in energy policy, the House on Saturday approved $16 billion in taxes on oil companies, while providing billions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives for renewable energy and conservation efforts.
You can be pretty sure the economic incidence of these taxes will not fall on the oil companies. A paper at the Tax Foundation has a nice explanation of how this works. Their example deals with a tax directly on gasoline, but the same principle applies either way:
In effect, corporations are “tax collectors” in the sense that they are required to send tax payments to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). But this requirement implies only statutory incidence, or which party is responsible for writing checks to the tax authority. Economic incidence, on the other hand, refers to those individuals that actually bear the cost of the tax. Keep reading →
Categories: Economics · News · Politics
I’ve been reading Brian Doherty’s Radicals for Capitalism, an interesting book that covers some of the lesser-known corners of the history of the libertarian movement, and I want to share an amusing little song I came across.
From 1935 through the late 1950’s, a religious-based group called Spiritual Mobilization promoted free markets by distributing pamphlets to churches. One of these pamphlets contained a song celebrating what was, in 1950, the only county in the United States that did not have a single civilian federal employee - Armstrong County, South Dakota. Here’s the song. Keep reading →
Categories: History · Politics
Express health clinics opening inside retailers such as Wal-mart have given people an alternative to expensive and time-consuming visits to a doctor’s office. So it was only a matter of time before the special-interest groups mobilized to do what they do best - use the government to hurt their competitors. Newsweek reports:
Critics complain that the clinics lead to “fragmentation” of care and incomplete medical records. Some doctors fear having to clean up messes left when clinics misdiagnose conditions (though so far no one can cite a single malpractice claim). Last month the American Medical Association called for an investigation into the clinics, based partly on the potential conflict of interest regarding drug sales.
The AMA is run by doctors. These clinics are stealing customers from doctors. Call me a cynic, but I don’t think the AMA is calling for an investigation of the clinics out of concern for patients. Keep reading →
Categories: News · Politics
A friend of mine recently won the lottery… over $100 million. He stopped by my house to tell me in person.
It’s interesting how news like this affects people. At first it felt like a dream - it just didn’t seem real. It was especially strange for me, because I have often repeated the saying that the lottery is “a tax on people who are bad at math”. That wore off after a few minutes, and my thoughts turned to how he was going to manage that much money. The investor in me took over, and I started discussing investment options and returns with him. Apparently my reaction was fairly mild. He said that some people he told had not been able to sleep the night after. I had to be at work that night for a scheduled server outage, so we cut our conversation short, and he went on his way. Keep reading →
Categories: Philosophy
This is a response to Greg’s latest blog.
It’s true that saying you’re “not capable of a relationship” is a cop-out. It’s more accurate to say you no longer want to be in a relationship with that person. Of course, that sounds pretty harsh, so many people take the cop-out route. I wonder if Greg’s friend would really want to know the truth. What if her boyfriend said something like…
“Sorry, but when you said or did xxxxxxx, I realized that our values are fundamentally different and I can’t spend my life with someone like that.”
“Sorry, but over the last 5 months I’ve realized that you constantly say or do xxxxx and it annoys the hell out of me so much that I’d rather not see you anymore.” Keep reading →
Categories: Relationships
First, how about some full disclosure. I have never voted for a Republican candidate for president. I actually voted for Clinton in ‘92, since that’s what gays were supposed to do, but then he tried to socialize the health care industry. Since then I have never been able to stomach voting Democrat, and have instead voted Libertarian in every presidential election since. I have voted for various Republicans in state and local elections, however.
The condescending attitude that many people, gay or straight, have toward gay republicans is pretty disgusting. This attitude is epitomized by people like the author of this post, entitled “Being a Gay Republican is Like Being a Black Klansman”. It’s digusting because it reflects a very one-dimensional view of politics.
There’s a lot more in the platform of any Democrat than “I like the gays”. Unfortunately, when you vote for a particular candidate, you don’t get to pick the issues you agree with and let them act on only those issues. You’re getting the whole package deal. For example, since Hillary seems to be very popular with the gay Democrats right now, let’s take a look at a few of her ideas from her campaign web site, bills she has introduced into Congress, and CNN’s summary of her positions: Keep reading →
Categories: Philosophy · Politics
Cho Seung-Hui killed 32 people including himself this week. He explained in his ‘manifesto’ that “You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy’s life you were extinguishing. Thanks to you, I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and the defenseless people.” He continues, “You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn’t enough.”
This is a guy who was getting a college education in America, an opportunity that many people would love to have. He bemoans their “Mercedes” and “gold necklaces”, but if you make $25,000 a year, you already make more money than 90% of the world (http://www.globalrichlist.com/). It’s a safe bet he would have made at least that much with his college education. Keep reading →
Categories: News · Philosophy · Politics
Roleplaying games are something I’ve been into for about 20 years. The purpose of a roleplaying game is to pretend to be someone else. It’s almost like improvisational acting given structure by certain rules. The really fun thing about a traditional roleplaying game like D&D is that you can literally try to do anything you want. Fight the evil dragon or help him, depose the ruler of a kingdom or protect him, start a regional war or prevent one, burn an entire city to the ground or help one rebuild. There are no boundaries. When you’re living day-to-day in a world where you have very little power to affect massive society-altering changes, a roleplaying game is a refreshing opportunity to wield worldwide power and influence. Unfortunately, a lot of the charm of a tabletop RPG is lost in the translation to electronic games, and even moreso in an MMORPG.
For one thing, you’re no longer one of a few exceptional heroes in the world. Instead, there are several thousand other heroes competing with you for status and recognition. In D&D, you’re the only person in the world who has ever slain the evil dragon and fashioned his scales into magical armor. In an MMORPG, everyone in the world has the magical dragon armor if they’ve worked hard enough for it themselves, have the right friends, or bought it on ebay. Keep reading →
Categories: Games
This poem was posted to the Cato Institute blog, and it struck a chord with me. I thought I’d repost it here since I don’t have the energy to write a new post of my own right now. 
Here’s the original link.
—–
And I ask you
Speak to me of freedom? You know not what it means
but take its name and shackle those with whom you disagree
You wave a flag of righteousness; you bellow and you scream
That those who are not as you are they never should have been
Speak to me of god and tell me what he thinks
of bigotry and hatred for the love each person makes
A fellowship, a flock for which you try to build a wall
The blackest sheep is slaughtered as an offering to them all
Speak to me of love and tell me what it takes
to make a love and test it true, the arrow to be straight
One path is true one path is tried one path we will allow
Two people bound in heart and mind but cannot give a vow
Speak to me of law and tell me what is just
a chance for those with tyrant tendencies to run amok
A forum for the many to oppress a hapless few
Virginia is for lovers, but there’s no room here for you.
Nathan Revere (Nov. 2006).
Categories: Philosophy · Politics
In a conversation today, someone was ridiculing another person for being concerned about financial stability in a potential spouse. Someone else even called these concerns ’shallow’. I would argue that such concerns are actually the opposite of shallow.
First, I should probably discuss what I consider love. My concept of love is pretty much the typical objectivist idea of love. It’s not something that could ever be ‘unconditional’. What do people mean when they say they want unconditional love. They want to be loved regardless of whether they are a good or terrible person? Some sort of love where instead of loving them for who they are, they are loved in spite of it? If such an emotion exists, ‘love’ isn’t the right term for it. I don’t know why anyone would want someone else to feel this toward them, unless maybe, as Ayn Rand suggested, they thought they were dispicable and no one could possibly love them for who they are. Keep reading →
Categories: Philosophy · Relationships
