Couldn’t Help But Notice (011807)

Here’s more on Rudy’s tax plan, following up on yesterday’s post, from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

The latest bidder is Rudy Giuliani, who last week offered his plan to cut taxes by $6.3 trillion over 10 years. The former New York City mayor wants to cut the corporate income tax rate to 25% from 35%, bringing that rate close to the average of our major trading partners. Mr. Giuliani would chop the capital gains rate to 10% from 15%, and he’d allow capital gains to be indexed for inflation so investors no longer paid tax on phantom gains. He’d also index the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) for inflation, and on top of all this he wants to create a one-page, 11-line tax return that would eliminate most deductions and tax credits and install three lower rates of 10%, 15% and 30%.

Filers would have the option of choosing this “fast form” or the current code with its 13,000 pages of rules. Mr. Giuliani would retain the mortgage and charitable deductions on his alternative tax form, no doubt because he fears their political power. In this sense, his plan is inferior to Fred Thompson’s optional flat tax (two rates: 10% and 25%), which is the simplest and best reform in the field. (See “Flat Tax Fred,” Nov. 28.) But Mr. Giuliani’s ideas are a big improvement that would boost the economy.

This will fall on deaf ears, but Congress shouldn’t wait for a possible Giuliani Administration to do what Rudy is suggesting.

_____________________________________________________

Thomas Sowell writes on an unfortunate and unreported side-effect of enviro-nonsense. Brilliantly, as usual (bolds are mine):

It was front-page news on the January 14th issue of the San Francisco Chronicle that blacks by the tens of thousands have left the San Francisco Bay area since the 1990 census.

….. Skyrocketing housing prices are forcing out families with children, as well as blacks and other people with low or even moderate incomes.

But these runaway housing prices in California did not just happen for no reason.

Prior to 1970, California housing prices were very similar to housing prices in the rest of the country. In more recent times, it has not been uncommon for California homes to cost three times what homes cost nationwide.

What happened in the 1970s was that severe government restrictions on building became common in coastal California. With supply restricted and demand not restricted, it was inevitable that prices would soar beyond many people’s ability to pay.

The main impetus behind severe restrictions on building is environmentalist zealots who demand that vast amounts of land be set aside as “open space” on which nothing can be built.

….. Behind much of the lofty and pretty talk are some ugly and selfish realities.

People who already own their homes in an upscale community pay no price for making it hard for others to move into their community. On the contrary, the value of the homes they already own shoots up when they restrict the supply of new homes.

In other words, they can keep out the less affluent people — or, as they put it, “preserve the character of the community” — while benefiting themselves economically in the name of green idealism.

“Open space” laws are just one of the weapons in their arsenal. Other legal impediments to building include so-called “smart growth” policies, historical preservation laws, and zoning boards and coastal commissions with arbitrary powers to limit or forbid building.

….. When a business sets standards or policies with adverse effects that fall disproportionately on minorities, courts call that a “disparate impact” and equate it with discrimination.

But the same liberals who applaud that approach when it comes to businesses would be appalled if the same standard were applied to their own environmentalist restrictions that force vast numbers of blacks out of their own upscale liberal communities.

Environmentalism: The new segregation.

Many Enviro regs: The new Jim Crow laws.

Yours truly covered the topic without the racial tinge in late 2005:

Very clever. In the name of “quality of life,” what those restricting development are doing is simply reducing the supply of available housing. Reduce supply in the face of persistent demand and you get…. rising prices for existing homeowners, and huge difficulties for potential first-time homebuyers (does anyone even build “starter homes” any more?).

It’s a great investment strategy for existing homeowners. Whether it’s good public policy is debatable. One thing development restrictions definitely lead to is first-time and cash-strapped buyers heading as far out into the countryside as they can to find housing they can actually afford. Then they get to listen to elitist homeowners in the inner rings decry the “sprawl” and “waste” of gasoline caused by the long commutes that the development restrictions they put into place caused.

________________________________________________

Speaking of enviro-nonsense, these headlines were up at Drudge this morning:

Here are the links: Maryland, Greenland (different from Drudge’s, since his link has apparently gotten overloaded by his traffic).