Bad Earth Day / "We've gone insane"

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dan_s
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Joined: Fri Apr 23, 2010 8:22 am

Bad Earth Day / "We've gone insane"

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MY TAKE: If the U.S. raises the corporate tax rate and the capital gains rate, companies and jobs will leave.
The middle class will suffer and the rich will move out.


Bad Earth Day: No More Beef, Much Higher Taxes
By LAWRENCE KUDLOW, Special to the Sun | April 26, 2021

Stocks in the past few days have moved higher across the board. Mr. Market has apparently decided that President Biden’s sweeping tax hikes won’t be passed. We’ll just have to see.

Remember, Democrats will have two bites out of the 51 reconciliation process that these tax hikes will have to be put through. So caveat emptor. Be warned.

I’m still suffering economic shock from Bad Earth Day. It was bad because Mr. Biden announced a 50% cut in carbon emissions in only a few years. That is going to throw a wet blanket over this booming economy.

Of course it will wreck the fossil fuel sector, which still accounts for 70% of our power.

Speaking of stupid, there’s a study coming out of the University of Michigan that says that to meet the Biden Green New Deal target, America has to stop eating meat, poultry, fish, seafood, eggs, dairy, and animal-based fats.

OK? No burgers on the the Fourth. No steaks on the barby. I’m sure Middle America is going to love that. Can you grill Brussel sprouts? Get read. You can throw back a plant-based beer with your grilled Brussel sprouts and wave your red, white, and green American flag.

I’m making fun of this because I intend to. This kind of thinking comes from a bunch of ideological zealots who don’t care one whit about America’s well-being. Not one whit.

And just to round out Bad Earth Day, we’re going to take a more detailed look at President Biden’s doubling of the capital gains tax. That is part of the administration’s assault on investment and capital formation, including the corporate tax hikes, and please don’t forget that 70% of the corporate tax burden falls on blue-collar middle-class Americans or those with even lower incomes.

So this investment assault is a middle class assault. Reversing the Trump tax cuts has basically nothing to do with rich people. It has to do with inflicting enormous damage on the middle class in order to meet the opinion of some ideological zealots.

As professor Steve Koonin has told us, even the United States government’s own climate assessment showed that over the next 70 years, worst-worst case climate estimates would lose five one-hundredths of a percent of gross domestic product. That’s five one-hundredths of a percent in the word-worst case.

Lower taxes and regulatory rollback would more than overcome it and give us faster growth apart from the climate issue. As far as the Bad Earth Day global summit convened by Mr. Biden, rest assured China will never play ball.

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, is jaw-boning American banks to stop investing in coal-fired power plants and other fossil fuel projects. He’d love to codify it in regulations or in legislation.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Americans might pay $20 a year to deal with climate change — although 32% of respondents said zero.

The Biden Green New Deal would cost $1,200 per household per year. I mean, this is nutty stuff. You couldn’t make it up. Except that we’re not making it up. It’s presidential policy.

The Tax Foundation has modeled the doubling of the capital gains tax, and it shows over ten years the government would lose $124 billion. The average capital gains tax in Europe is 19.3%. We would be at 43.4%.

Senator Bernie Sanders favorite country, Sweden, would be at 30% So we beat them all. Isn’t that great? Let’s celebrate by throwing back another plant-based beer regarding our assault on investment, which would damage the economy, generate lower wages, and decimate family incomes.

Bjorn Lomberg, president of the the Copenhagen Consensus, estimates that Mr. Biden’s new plans would reduce warming by the end of the century by 0.07 degrees fahrenheit.

Mr. Biden says it will make American more prosperous. Mr. Lomberg says that’s implausible. I’m with Mr. Lomberg. Besides wrecking burgers, steaks, beef, poultry, fish, and who knows what else, so that we can have lettuce for breakfast, it turns out that 80% of the population still prefers non-electric cars.

And, of course, China is not gong to play with these Paris climate, Biden-Kerry targets. Mr. Lomberg wants smart green innovation and private entrepreneurial, technological adbances to deal with the climate agenda.

And he’s right.
Dan Steffens
Energy Prospectus Group
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