Ocasio-Cortez: let’s help the workers by losing them some potential jobs
But oh, we can all feel so self-righteous about it, as AOC does:
Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed, its worker exploitation, and the power of the richest man in the world. https://t.co/nyvm5vtH9k
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 14, 2019
Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez rather perfectly embodies the point Margaret Thatcher was making here about the far left:
Even Mayor de Blasio seems upset with AOC:
A hot-under-the-collar Mayor Bill de Blasio tore into Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday as he blistered both the online giant and local politicians who opposed bringing it to Queens.
“As a progressive my entire life — and I ain’t changing — I’ll take on any progressive anywhere that thinks it’s a good idea to lose jobs and revenue because I think that’s out of touch with what working people want,” the mayor said on WNYC radio.
Ocasio-Cortez exemplifies the average millennial progressive/socialist almost perfectly: a self-righteous blowhard whose ignorance of economics (and history and political philosophy) is exceeded only by her insatiable ability to spew leftist talking points. Her ignorance is so profound I truly believe she thinks she is brilliant (Dunning-Kruger?) and contributing novel, creative, serious ideas to the national discourse.
Her persona is akin to most millennial SJWs I’ve encountered. Their attitudes and arrogance are almost an Americanized version of the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution; doubtlessly few would have any clue (or care one whit) what that was.
De Blasio and other “mainstream” Democrats should be very wary and very worried. They encouraged and nurtured this SJW behemoth. It might just swallow them whole.
One story I saw said that the projection was that, counting all the prospective jobs that the new Amazon HQ would have created in New York city, there would actually have been a total of 125,000 new jobs created, with 25,000 of those jobs being high paying ones.
AOC’s “victory” is, in reality, a disaster for a New York city that could certainly have used those many thousands–and potentially, all told, more than a hundred thousand new jobs, and all the new spending and taxes those new job holders would have contributed to the city.
Where is the “victory” in turning down all those jobs, in all the people who will now not have the opportunity to make a living, to feed their families, to rent or buy places to live, to buy cars, groceries and clothing, and to go out and spend some of their earnings on entertainment and other things in New York city?
Absolutely insane.
I love this topic. The left eats their own. A left wing darling “robber” baron tries to create 10’s of thousands of jobs in the heart of left-land. And this land desperately needs those jobs as billions in tax revenue is flooding towards Florida. But SJW Sandy-O and those community organizers she has agitated have put a stop to it because the process was unfair.
The process is unfair, even though I think people in NY are nuts for stopping it. The governments in left-land create high taxes and onerous regs. and the little businesses must obey every detail. Then the big hot-shots get loads of special treatment. So much for their claim to care about the little guy. Instead, it’s about helping those who can punch back.
NY state has spent a huge bundle of advertising cash over the last few years trying to coax (and bribe with temp. tax breaks) new business into the state. Now this fiasco.
The Thatcher bit tackles the gap between the rich and poor. Here we usually talk about the quintiles, or 20% brackets. This video speaks of deciles. I don’t know the stats from the 1980’s but in the early 21st century the U.K. has had a very high immigration rate.
What happens to the income quintiles or deciles when one or two million people are brought in with zero incomes? Of course, how this changes from decade to decade is their point. But stopping the inflow of zero income people will obviously reduce the gap between rich and poor.
The U.S. historically (the late 20th century) has had a very high mobility from the lowest quintile into the higher quintiles. Then we keep refilling the lowest quintile with zeros (in income).
The Boston U. Econ department must be so proud.
AOC and all of her tribe inevitably prefer to shrink the pie rather than let someone make more money. To them it’s a zero sum world. They have not the slightest idea of how wealth is created. They only feel that it isn’t fair that some people get rich while most will be middle class or even poor. What they fail to see is that the poor in this country have a higher standard of living than a large part of the rest of the world. And that is because the size of the pie keeps growing in spite of their efforts to shrink it. (Although Barack Obama did a pretty good job of slowing the growth.)
I hope that AOC and her cohort manage to rip the party apart. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
I support my local professional soccer club. There were rumors that Sinclair Broadcasting might pick the club to have their season televised, the first ever for the club with the potential to bring it to a wider audience and gain much needed visibility within the city and its metro area. All the rest of the city’s professional sports were able to broadcast their season on either ESPN or ABC/NBC/TBS. A partnership with Sinclair would’ve been a step in the right direction. But the most vocal supports said no. Reason being that Sinclair Broadcasting had a history of being Trump friendly. The broadcasting agency was accused of being a pro-Trump network (compared to what, anti-Trump MSNBC and the other alphabet soup networks?).
Soccer, at least US soccer, has arguably the most liberal fans (right after baseball) so it came to no surprise that they knew almost every business that Trump was affiliated with or anyone that was affiliated with Trump. An example would be Joe Ricketts. He isn’t anti-Trump; it can be said that he isn’t pro-Trump. But he has done business with him and that’s enough for Cubs fans of the lefty bent to have a sour taste in their mouth. As one Cubs fan put it “I may not agree with Ricketts but . . . ” I thought to myself what does Ricketts’ business decision has anything to do with how well the Cubs performed since all the cash that had any relation to Trump wasn’t even baseball related. But Big Bad Orange Man.
My point is you can’t necessarily win with the AOC’s of the world. They’ll hate you for something. They’ll hate you for non “progressive” business decisions. They’ll hate you for being not like them (read: not sharing the same regressive beliefs) if you broadcast your beliefs in the first place. They’ll hate you for your successful business because somewhere a part of it reminds them of “the man.” And they’ll think their hatred is sound. Try to remind of objectivity and fairness and you’ll be accused of supporting hatred and bigotry.
She got to that position, the one that allows her the salary, the fancy clothes, the attention, because only 4% of her constituents chose to vote.
I bet there is record turnout in a couple years.
Ackler: Thanks for bringing up the Cultural Revolution. Exactly what this is beginning to remind me of. Really dangerous.
What is being left out is the discussion of Union workers. DeBlasio told Amazon that the workers would have to be unionized. Amazon does not have union workers.
So big Dem supporter doesn’t want unions? Face palm.
There is the old chestnut, “ignorance is bliss”. In the case of AOC one could say that “ignorance is arrogantly blissful.”
Another old saying apropos an opponent that is actually a gift that keeps on giving, “If Y did not exist, X would have to invent Y”. Trump and the GOP could hardly have invented a more serendipitous foil than AOC and her mob. Well, I hope that there are enough thinking folk left in the country who can see that her foolishness portends the broader progressive agenda; if not, we are toast. AOC also illustrates the truth of Michael Kinsley’s observation: “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth – some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” She is letting the cat out of the bag, and the Old Guard doesn’t like it one bit.
Good point Ackler. Between fits of laughter I have also thought of the cultural revolution. When I do, and then think of the indoctrination that is going on in our classrooms, I feel a chill. But, it couldn’t happen here–could it?
AOC is the wave of the future, I don’t to live there, nor my children/grandchildren. It will all come down to who becomes dust first.
The Albany nomenklatura are inveterate practitioners of begger-thy-neighbor crony capitalism with public money. That’s not a proper function of the state government or any other public authority. It’s perfectly proper to tell a commercial company that they’re not getting any candy from public treasuries.
What New York needs to be doing is working on producing better value for your tax dollar in generating those things which are the true functions of a public authority: to restrain violence, theft, fraud, disorder, vice, and immorality through the police and civil inspectorates, to promote transparency in market transactions through those same agents, to produce public goods, to ration the use of common property resources, to contain the costs imposed on 3d parties by externalities, and to animate the principles of common provision in society. Tossing bon bons to commerical companies does not come under any of those headings.
The Boston U. Econ department must be so proud.
She was an IR major, which commonly requires you take a portion of the introductory sequence in economics (prinicples, micro, macro) and then a course in international trade and international monetary economics. She took a course or two extra in that department and declared a minor.
De Blasio wasn’t just an innocent blind-sided bystander, according to this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-15/the-amazon-in-new-york-lesson-for-cities-don-t-be-arrogant
And I loved their footnote *:
"Amazon did do one really stupid thing that served to inflame its critics: It made plans to build a helipad, which would allow its executives to avoid the always-terrible New York traffic."
Wait — now it’s all the fault of Robert Moses —
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/02/15/amazon-new-york-225077
Liberal Activists Didn’t Kill the Amazon Deal. Robert Moses Did.
The most lasting legacy of New York’s power broker is that it’s now impossible to build anything in the city.
By MARC J. DUNKELMAN February 15, 2019
Just because it’s AOC — and per the PowerLine Post today wherein she explains how much tNew York City can do with the money they aren’t giving Amazon….
https://libertyunyielding.com/2019/02/12/the-tax-system-explained-in-beer-a-lesson-so-simple-even-aoc-can-follow-it/#!/back
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/with_amazon_nyc_second_hq_deal_cancelled_ocasio_cortez_now_officially_is_a_huge_problem_for_dems.html
“As Marc Thiessen first noted, Sandy apparently thinks there was three billion dollars in a bank that was given to Amazon, so it is available to be used elsewhere on all the goodies she mentions. But of course, the three billion was merely a rebate on taxes that otherwise would have been paid by Amazon over a period of years. With no deal, there will be no such tax payments. Not the three billion, nor any of the taxes above that amount that Amazon would have been paying.
The spectacle of someone this ignorant having a vote in Congress on the laws governing taxation would be hilarious if it were not so frightening. Amazon clearly realizes that there is no upside in dealing with any governmental unit under the sway of Sandy and her supporters. The other tech giants watched and learned. That is why Pelosi, Cuomo, de Blasio and the other ruling-class stooges in the Democratic Party must be rid of her.
My bet is that she will never even see it coming.”
https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/14/scuttling-amazon-deal-aoc-just-opened-primary-challenge/
“There’s a reason the old saying, “be careful what you wish for,” is an old saying. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may wind up learning that the hard way. In the wake of Amazon’s decision last year to plant one of its new headquarters in New York City, and with it 25,000 jobs in exchange for generous tax breaks, Ocasio-Cortez did what any good socialist would do. She slammed the deal.
At the time, it seemed like a pretty safe bet. The jobs were already coming, so why not take the opportunity to stick your finger in the eye of the big, mean, nasty corporation? Today, all that changed. She fished what she wished and Amazon decided not to bring tens of thousands of jobs to New York City after all. Today, her effective opposition to the deal is a much different story, one in which she has to defend creating less opportunity for working New Yorkers.
This afternoon, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez said she would not be taking any interviews. One can see why. But the real question is whether this could hurt her politically. In fact, there is good reason to believe that this debacle has opened the door to a potential primary challenge. Given that almost the entire New York Democratic Party machine, from Mayor Bill de Blasio to Governor Andrew Cuomo were desperate for the Amazon deal; a challenge to AOC might well attract some serious backers.”
Watching the Dems disagree with AOC is amusing, but she is only the most lovely, most photogenic face, on the same old socialist envy which powered Bernie Sanders’ support. Her ignorance is like that of a sophomore, literally sophomoric. (Literal is a word being literally stolen by misuse). She’s perhaps as photogenic as Che, the socialist murderer so popular on so many T shirts.
The socialist anger against the rich, against the successful, against the responsible, this happens when their plausibly justifiable rage against the super rich (like Bezos) can’t be acted upon, so it’s turned towards rage against more accessible targets. Like the Red Guards in China, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Hutus in Rwanda (in tribalist genocide against the more successful Tutsis), the Malays against the Chinese (May ’69), and of course the Nazis against the Jews. We might even see more of the Holodomor in Ukraine, the killing and pillaging of all successful farmers as “kulaks”, supported by Stalin, resulting in the starvation of millions.
Envy is the desire to bring down the top, the successful. In Africa, it is called “cutting the tall poppies”. Most socialism is driven by envy.
However, while Thatcher was very correct that the practice of socialists is to accept greater poverty among the poor, as long as the rich are getting poorer, there is a real truth about wealth creation and income inequality. The only “free market” tax regime is totally unrealistic as 0% on income. (I favor much less gov’t spending, and a single tax on Land Value, see Henry George).
It is quite reasonable to have as a goal the following: the income of the bottom 20% should be increasing faster than the income of the top 80%, the British guy’s comment would be 90%/10%. Similarly, the income of the median worker (50%) should be increasing faster than the income of the top 1%.
Watching these 80/20%, 99/50%, or the 90/10% ratios, and how they change over time, is a good exercise. My own current goal is to have the median income increase at the maximum rate. Meaning the social economy is helping ever larger number of people make more income than the median.
That includes lowering the tax rate on income, now about 24%, down to the same level as capital gains, now about 14% (what Buffett & Romney pay on most of their cap gains income). As the USA gets richer, shifting more of the tax burden onto capital, and especially semi-unearned land value, should make ever greater sense. Yes, often silly Warren with a 3% wealth tax is starting to talk about this. And she’s right in this case. It’s better to have reduced income taxes (income & production are socially good, should not be punished), even it means more wealth taxes.
Higher death taxes (double! triple! taxation, bad yech, no no no, say the Libs) are preferable to higher income taxes on current workers. In all cases, the push for more taxes is to allow the gov’t more money than is optimal — but it’s the Free Lunch (paid for by Other People’s Money) that so many voters want enough to vote for.
The indoctrination of AOC and so many millennials is due to the “open secret” of discrimination against hiring Republican Professors.
Wait.
First of all, the jobs aren’t lost anymore than when taxpayers refused buy the Oakland Raiders a new stadium. The Raiders simply moved to a city willing to give them their welfare. And the jobs go there in instead. America’s unemployment rate doesn’t go up in such scenarios. It’s just a displacement.
More importantly these deals are socialism. Amazon’s included “$897 million from the city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP) and $386 million from the Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program (ICAP). It will receive an additional $505 million in a capital grant and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits if its job creation goals are met. That brings the total amount of public funds granted to $2.988 billion—in other words, the city and state will pay Amazon $48,000 per job.”
This is welfare for the rich. Even the tax breaks don’t pass free-market principles. Why should the government decide who wins and looses. If you want tax breaks, it should be for everyone. Let the market decide.
WTF RightWingers? Do I have to teach you your own principles?
Will the human foibles of envy and resentment, along with the decline of religion, the only fixed guide to virtue, lead us to a dystopian future? I would not bet against it. At my age I may be immune to its repercussions, but not my son or his progeny.
What’s even sadder is that AOC has so little comprehension that she seems to think NYC is now free to spend the $3b in tax breaks, as if they exist on some level as cash on hand instead of tax breaks on future taxes.
Finally.
Someone more repugnant than DeBlasio.
You go, girl! Grrrrl power!!!
Pelosi has her hands full with these freshmen Congressmen, eh?
AOC is the wave of the future, –Parker
LOL! Ridic.
Do I have to teach you your own principles? –Manju
Tell it, Manju. It’s hard to know which side is being stupider on this. But this is where excess taxation and deficits lead — to negotiations in which only power and dollars talk, the principles left long ago.
Envy is the desire to bring down the top, the successful. In Africa, it is called “cutting the tall poppies”. Most socialism is driven by envy.
Megan McArdle has a column today (behind a paywall) that makes a very good point. The love affair between the tech billionaires and the political left may be over. One reason Amazon is looking for another location is the heat they have been getting from the leftist city government in Seattle. Now, they have hit the same barrier in Socialist New York City, Communist Mayor and all.
Even manju gets it. The left’s envy is more powerful even than its desire for graft.
Joel Kotkin has a good column on this, too.
The oligarchs are now reaping what they sowed from allying themselves with the progressive Left. They have been eager to promote themselves as loyal followers of the Left’s party line on issues of racial diversity, trans-awareness, and feminism, but that line now has moved toward economic policies that stress egalitarian solutions. Amazon may well be a great expression of capitalist innovation, but Ocasio-Cortez considers the very existence of billionaires like Bezos “immoral.” Rather than accommodating capitalists like Bezos, her Green New Deal envisions a socialist ecotopian commonwealth, with no place for even the most enlightened billionaires.
Venezuela, here we come!
But of course, the three billion was merely a rebate on taxes that otherwise would have been paid by Amazon over a period of years. With no deal, there will be no such tax payments. Not the three billion, nor any of the taxes above that amount that Amazon would have been paying.
The appropriate principle for business tax burdens is as follows: ‘no special favors’. Every party in a given jurisdiction is properly liable for the same rates on final sales, value-added, and corporation taxes. Excises on particular commodities go into dedicated funds (e.g. motor fuel taxes go into road-maintenance funds) or they are used only for changing relative prices and are rebated in toto to the general public (the proper destination for vice levies and Pigou levies). Dispensations on property taxes should be crafted to contain the environmental damage such taxes can do, and would apply to all parties located in a particular catchment; such a dispensation wouldn’t apply unless Amazon located in a slum (and would apply equally to every other property owner in that slum).
It is simply not fair to be giving ‘rebates’ to amazon and not to the dry cleaner down the street.
WTF RightWingers? Do I have to teach you your own principles?
Stu on February 16, 2019 at 7:56 am at 7:56 am said:
Stuff it. Donkey-Chompers has no objection to constructing patron-client relations with public money. No Democrat does. She just doesn’t want Bezos and Amazon in her client pool. (Solyndra would be more to her taste).
See Cloward-Pliven…
If you need to offer tax breaks to attract business, your taxes are too high.
Just imagine how much money they would have it AOC could drive all the businesses out of New York!!
Stupid is as Stupid does.
Was at a Sierra Club auction once (girlfriend made me do it), where the local director noted that the tree spikers make the Sierra Club look reasonable. No doubt AOC will be used by the rest of the Dems to claim they are reasonable. The only question is: is AOC in on it? Or is she really that uneducated?
The usual ploy of demagogues from Huey Long to Obama is to point at the kooks and claim if you don’t give the demagogues what they want, the kooks will take power.
Now, I’m reading a biography of Huey Long. He was the Willie Brown of the 1930s.
I don’t like O-C any more than the rest of you do. And I don’t much care what New York does with its money. But I tend to agree with the result of this affair, if not with O-C’s reasons. See this:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/new-yorks-corporate-welfare-boondoggle-flops/
“The city and state’s money should go towards genuine public goods, not to a direct cash transfer from ordinary New Yorkers to one of the richest companies in the world.
Good riddance to a terrible deal.”
AOC isn’t stupid. Her goals are not Cumo’s goals. He wants jobs & economic success. As a communist, AOC wants revolution. Jobs will make people happier & harder to get into the streets to help her overturn our culture.
The fact that it has been so easy for AOC to be elected, made so visible & important in the Dem party, & has the MSM catering to her every moment tells me she has someone very powerful behind her, pulling her strings & clearing her path.
What are Obama & his minions up to these days? You don’t suppose…
Bill M:
I believe that AOC is very very sincere, as well as full of herself.
But I would never call her “uneducated.” She is a fairly typical product of today’s system of “higher” education, unfortunately, which is a process of indoctrination rather than actual education. She learned her lessons very well.
She isn’t addressing you and me. For us (as with Joe Lieberman), she says “Who dis?” She is addressing her fellow millenials and the left in general. I know a number of aging leftists who think she’s the best thing since Trotsky, and that he was pretty darn good.
“I know a number of aging leftists who think she’s the best thing since Trotsky…”
So do I. In addition to disdaining their mental ability, I feel a little embarrassed for them. There’s a groveling, obsequious quality to their enthusiasm. They seem to be grasping one last time at the idea that Youth!! somehow carries with it clarity and purity of vision, and should and must sweep away the old and corrupt. Well, there’s no fool like….
Netflix is paying Cortez $10 million for her campaign documentary “Knock Down the House.” https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-buys-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-documentary-knock-down-the-house-2019-2
Related: Barack and Michelle signed a $60 million deal to produce shows for Netflix. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/barack-and-michelle-obama-sign-multi-year-deal-with-netflix.html
Also related: “Under capitalism the rich become powerful. Under socialism the powerful become rich.” ~ Rush
The people of Queensbridge Houses and Ravenswood will remember her in their NYCHA prayers…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensbridge_Houses
Queensbridge is the largest public housing development in the Western Hemisphere..
now that property might be considered some of the most wanted in the WORLD…
Carolyn Maloney (D) Slams Ocasio-Cortez’s Opposition to Amazon: ‘Now We Are Protesting Jobs?’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=nnVS-Zah54k
I was going to apply for a job there as I already live a comfortable distance from the location, and would have traded working in midtown with working in queens and seeing blue sky….
Related: Barack and Michelle signed a $60 million deal to produce shows for Netflix. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/21/barack-and-michelle-obama-sign-multi-year-deal-with-netflix.html
Congress in 1958 provided for pensions for former Presidents because Harry Truman was rather cash poor at the time. The advent of the Medicare program incorporated a bit of ceremony in which Mr. and Mrs. Truman were the very first to sign up. They did benefit from the insurance. Quite a bit.
Nowadays, it’s amazing the 8-figure sums which stick to quondam officials. Albert Gore, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama had at the time they departed office no demonstrable skills or experience in any kind of business enterprise. (Unless you count Gore’s tour as a negligent rural landlord). Rahm Emmanuel, who at the age of 37 had never worked for a commercial company other than Arby’s as an adolescent and who had no training in business, was over a period years paid $16 million by Wasserstein, Perella for ‘investment banking services’. Our elite federal politicians make the Daley Machine look prissy.
“Most socialism is driven by envy.” – Tom Grey
“Thou shalt not covet” is a pretty old recognition of human nature.
The Commandments also note humanity’s endemic problem with “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”
Recent examples abound; we’ll see how this latest one plays out.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/02/two_nigerian_immigrants_to_be_charged_for_jussie_smollett_hate_crime.html)
Bill M on February 16, 2019 at 12:53 pm at 12:53 pm said:
…
The usual ploy of demagogues from Huey Long to Obama is to point at the kooks and claim if you don’t give the demagogues what they want, the kooks will take power.
* * *
I’m trying to flip that to the Republican side and having some trouble.
Generically, the closet-socialists (demagogues pretending to be centrists) will point to the open-socialists (kooks) and make threats, then deliver what the open-socialists were advocating anyway (at least in the most recent iteration).
We don’t have any closet-conservatives (pretending to be centrists) pointing to open-conservatives, making threats, and then delivering conservative policies.
What we seem to have instead are centrists pretending to be conservatives, and threatening us with real ones, then delivering socialist policies.
Do your remember when Richard Nixon (who had overdue legal bills) was chastised for accepting $600,000 for 29 hours of unstructured interviews with David Frost? (A contextually similar sum today would be about $4,000,000). People like James Fallows (Harvard ’68) pretended to find it an example of Mr. Nixon’s indelibly crass character (“who else would have asked for a fee?”). Mr. Fallows offered any complaints about the amount of cash the Clintons, Gores, and Obamas have been hoovering up?
I must say I agree with Kai on the merit of manju’s comment. On February 16, 2019 at 9:59 am at 9:59 am, Kai wrote:
Do I have to teach you your own principles? –Manju
Tell it, Manju. It’s hard to know which side is being stupider on this. But this is where excess taxation and deficits lead — to negotiations in which only power and dollars talk, the principles left long ago.
.
Meanwhile, from Artfldgr:
Thanks for the link, Artfl.
Especially since “Donkey Chompers” (great appellation, Deco! She comes close to being horse-faced in fact) managed to winkle Ms. Maloney’s constuency right out of their crack at all those jobs. (IF in fact that is the case. I’m taking her word for it.)
.
Tax breaks as incentives for businesses to operate in locales offering them:
Communities of all sizes are gung-ho to offer tax breaks in order to get businesses to open up operations in their towns. Sometimes it works out well, but often enough it just creates problems. Still, if in the long run the community is ahead financially, whether as a jurisdiction benefitting from increased tax revenue OR, more importantly, as individuals in the community improve their health — financial, emotional, or physical — because of the new operation, with the rest of the community not unhappy about it, then I don’t see a problem with it in today’s real world.
The simple reason for not offering tax breaks to businesses already in operation in the district is simply that there’s no need to offer incentives to get them to locate there — as is obvious. The taxing authority, however, should feel itself incentivized to decrease, or at least not to increase, the tax burden on resident business; and also on the individuals in the jurisdiction. Lest these concerns and people go elsewhere, as is notably happening in my Great-Frog-forsaken state of ILL-inois. (There are many people protesting our state govt.’s policies that are driving away businesses and residents … and taking their dough with them, thus diminishing the tax base.)
.
Personally, I still believe there are other ways to pay for the necessary-and-proper operations of government than through taxation, and I include tariffs in that. I won’t get into here, though. It’s certainly not going to happen in our lifetimes, and likely not in the next millenium. But it’s also the Holy Grail of true libertarianism, and one of the things we all should be supporting and, depending on our circumstances and personal proclivities, working toward.
The Left is not “eating its own.”
The Left is more and more resembling the French Revolution of 1793, whose early rebels included Lafayette and others who sought to emulate the American Revolution. That of course ended with Robespierre and the mindless slaughter of tens of thousands of the bourgeoisie, including killing forcibly assembled throngs of French men and women with cannon grapeshot because the guillotines could not keep up.
The ascendancy of AOC, Omar and the like is a similar shift. They intend to kill us figuratively and literally, by GND, socialism’s obscene excesses, and stuff and nonsense. The Liebermans and Humphreys are long gone; the Pelosis and Schumers are trying to stay in the lead lest they too get overrun by the raging, racing mob, like a tsunami, behind them, a tsunami of their own creation.
Cicero, I think there is something to the comparison with Robespierre. I have read quite a bit about him and the French Revolution. He was a militant prude. There is no record of him ever showing an interest in women or any sort of domestic life Danton had a wife and three sons. Robespierre had a brother and two sisters but never showed any interest in anything but politics. His ambition was to establish a “Republic of Virtue.” The intolerant left today does reassemble him somewhat.
Mike K:
Please see this post of mine on Robespierre and the tyranny of “virtue.”
Speaking of the French Revolution….Victor Davis Hanson does it very well.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/remodeling-america-modern-day-jacobins/
Aesop,
And now I’ll have a double mug of hemlock tea to go with my arsenic-buttered toast, please.
:>(
There’s this article on Sandy-O and the push-back from Dems like Chuck Todd and de Blasio. Then I saw the actual video clip on TV that they are responding to. I don’t have a link.
Sandy-O said something like: “There are so many better things that this $3B could have been spent on, such as education …”
This is really a profound level of ignorance. The plan, for the future, was that Amazon was going to pay a large amount of taxes instead of a huge amount of taxes; and that savings to Amazon amounted to $3B. All contingent on Amazon actually coming to NY.
As de Blasio said, “There is no $3B.”
One of the commenters said that while Sandy-O may have taken an economics course, her major was IR, International Relations.