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  • ‘Estonia, the little country that could’

    George Rebane

    A friend and RR reader emailed me the link to a Washington Times article by Richard Rahn that summarizes the economic history of Estonia.  Readers may recall my posts from our 15-29jun08 visit back to the old sod (see posts under ‘My Story’, right column).  Misplaced modesty prohibits my adding anything to the Rahn article.  I only draw your attention to it as a part of the larger apologetics that may be seen to underpin my socio-economic biases expressed in these pages.  As such, the source may all be in my double-helix, or perhaps in the water I drank as a young child.  Hard to tell.

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  • Keachie Again Misreads Rebane

    George Rebane

    Mr Douglas Keachie is a loud voice in the community and on local blogs.  A man of progressive persuasion, he is also a sometime commenter on these pages.  In his latest effort he attempts to reveal “three fatal flaws” in my 11jun11 Union column ‘Entrepreneurship 2011’.  His revelation was published as an Other Voices submission in the 21jun11 Union (here).

    Mr Keachie launches his piece with the devastating deduction that I claimed the tax rate to be 100% (confiscatory) for all earnings above $250,000 – “The tax on net income above $250,000 is not 100 percent.”  It is easy to verify that nowhere in my column do I make such claim or anything that remotely resembles it.  From that point of departure Mr Keachie proceeds swiftly downward in his displayed comprehension of what I wrote, and in his understanding of the entrepreneurial enterprise in general.

    There are two possible explanations for such errors.  The first is that Mr Keachie is among the many who have been short-changed by our public educational system.  And that would explain why his remarkable conclusions fall into the lower categories as documented in the longitudinal National Adult Literacy Survey   that is conducted every ten years by the National Center for Educational Statistics.  As the record shows, this is not the first time that Mr Keachie has had trouble understanding what I write.  (I have reported extensively on adult numeracy and literacy on these pages – RR keywords ‘numeracy’, ‘adult literacy’.)

    The other explanation is that Mr Keachie is taking a page from Saul Alinsky’s manual of political discourse, and simply fabricating a set of ‘facts’, attributes, or other characteristics that can be ascribed to a person to be denigrated.  Such characteristics, derived from whole cloth, go on to serve as the ridiculed targets for the remainder of the presentation.  The reader, unfamiliar with the original, is then at the author’s mercy.

    As to why The Union so prominently published Mr Keachie’s article, one can only guess.  Perhaps, through their over-worked editorial filter, my column represented an ideological bias that had to be ‘balanced’, and the Keachie piece was the only one at hand – any port in a storm.

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  • More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures

    George Rebane

    [This piece is the third of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, 'The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers', 'Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues',  'More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures', 'Employment and Income Inequality'.]

    The left controlled lamestream has long touted the spawn of California’s AB32 as being the salvation of an economic new age for the state.  Well, as some of the shouted down voices attempted to inform the public (RR being one), not only has the heralded venture capital pulled out, but now we have the green companies themselves doing everything they can to minimize their California footprint.  They are either relocating, or expanding their subsidized operations in friendlier climes.  Consider the following from Kurt Brower’s Marketwatch Blog

    1. Aptera Motors:

    …the North County Times reported that Aptera, “which once had big plans to hire thousands to design and manufacture ultra-efficient cars in Oceanside, is trimming costs by moving its headquarters to Carlsbad while it searches for a factory in the auto-rich region east of the Mississippi River. ‘We are really scrutinizing our business,’ said Paul B. Wilbur, president and chief executive of Aptera Motors …. Wilbur said Aptera is likely to end up in a factory east of the Mississippi River …. Wilbur had previously said that Aptera would eventually employ 2,500 people. He also said 10,000 jobs would be created indirectly for component suppliers, retailers and other companies involved with Aptera. Source: North County Times story, May 17, 2011, “Manufacturing: Aptera to move headquarters to Carlsbad, place car factory out of state.”

    2. Calisolar Inc.

    …Calisolar Inc., a “green” company, is making a $750 million investment in Ontario, Ohio… Construction is expected to begin by October at a former General Motors plant. The Bucyrus Telegraph Forum reported that the company “would create 831 full-time positions at an average wage of $45,000, generating $37.3 million in annual payroll” with priority given to hiring local workers. Also, “About 1,000 construction jobs will be needed to ready the former GM plant” that will “marry an industrial process into a green energy solar sector .… Source: Bucyrus Telegraph Forum April 6, 2011 story “Calisolar in final stages of talks for Ontario site.”

    3. Fallbrook Technologies Inc.

    …The Austin American-Statesman reports that Fallbrook Technologies Inc., a company offering “green” technology improvements, which “has run its operations division from Cedar Park since 2002 , would agree to spend $5.5 million on a larger corporate operations center that would add at least 65 jobs by 2013 …. The company would use it for light manufacturing, engineering development and testing …. Fallbrook currently employs 60 people in Cedar Park …. the company will agree to maintain a combined payroll of $9.5 million by 2019 …. the company has two facilities in Cedar Park, one housing a test lab and a second for design engineers, both of which it has outgrown. “They’re both extremely crowded,” said a company spokesman. “We’re hiring people every month and we’re wondering where we’re going to put them.” Source: Austin American-Statesman, May 25, 2011 story, “Cedar Park to weigh $1.68 million incentive package for Fallbrook Technologies.”

    4. Sharp — Solar Energy Solutions Group

    …According to The Columbian, this “green” group will relocate from Sharp’s western regional office in Huntington Beach to its campus in Washington State…. Sharp Corp. is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of solar cells and has been mass producing solar cells since 1963. It produces solar cells at two factories in Japan, and uses the cells to manufacture solar modules in five factories around the world, including one in Tennessee. Its website says the company created the world’s first solar-powered calculator and that its products power more homes and businesses than any other manufacturer.” Source: The Columbian, June 10, 2011 story, “Sharp Solar to move to Camas.”

    5. WindStream Technologies, Inc.

    …The company created small wind turbines designed for residential energy use, and Bates said WindStream is on pace to produce more than 40,000 units in three years …. New Albany could benefit from the 105 new positions WindStream plans to add …. A California native, Bates said several states vied for WindStream when the company launched. Source: New Albany News and Tribune, June 6, 2011 story, “Vote on Windstream loan likely to be tabled by New Albany council.” Additional Information: The New Albany News and Tribune reported earlier WindStream Technologies, Inc. will develop a multi-million dollar investment production facility in the New Albany and Purdue Research Park of Southern Indiana … by 2012. “The company — currently located in California — manufacturers wind turbines called TurboMills.” Source: New Albany News and Tribune, Nov. 23, 2009 story, “WindStream Technologies bringing 260 jobs to Purdue Research Park in New Albany by 2012″

    And your Lucky Strike Extra is that California companies’ bums rush for the exits has now become a gallop.  Today there are thriving companies consulting to the state’s businesses wishing to relocate elsewhere – talk about a hot sunset industry that you might want to get into.  The exit rate today has grown to five times the 2009 rate, and it is still increasing as reported by The Business Relocation Coach.

    Meanwhile, as these pages witness, the progressives are all arguing for raising more income tax from the state’s ‘rich’ who already account for about 70% of state revenues.  Anyone have any idea when the left will get a clue?

    (H/T to RR reader for the latest heads-up.)

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  • Ethanol – Insanity Ensconced

    George Rebane

    A perennial wet dream of the liberals is a world of internal combustion engines, all running on renewable and sustainable ethanol.  This unsanitary and polluting notion was unmasked years ago, but as with global warming, science had nor has anything to do with government mandated ethanol in our lives.  An early piece that describes this rank idiocy is ‘Ethanol Faces Facts’, and since then the evidence against converting food crops into fuel has become a torrent.

    A reader sent me this report from Europe detailing how those environment loving Germans have come to reject ethanol – ‘German Ethanol Requirement Turns Into a Debacle’.  There we learn that –

    Never mind that burning ethanol is an environmental debacle that leads to the destruction of forests and food shortages that lead to higher prices and more hunger worldwide, but it also burns less efficiently and causes damage to many cars. It is yet another well-intentioned program that is making things only worse. Nobody in Germany wants the stuff – neither the drivers nor the environmentalists.

    This is one more topic that progressives would rather not talk about.  But there is a snowball’s chance in hell that Congress will remove federal ethanol subsidies.  Before popping a cork to celebrate, we recall that the government’s mandate to include an increasing percentage of ‘renewable‘ fuel in our gasoline is still firmly in place – Damn the torpedoes and all that!!

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  • Ruminations – 18jun2011

    George Rebane

    – Wynton and the boys come to town
    – Nevada City Soapbox Derby premiers

    Last night Jo Ann and I joined friends George and Christine for a delicious and well-served dinner on Holbrook Hotel patio, and then drove to the Grass Valley Veterans Memorial Auditorium for a world class event.  We and an SRO audience were delighted beyond words to attend a concert of contemporary jazz performed by Wynton Marsalis and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra of which he is the Music Director.  The compositions were breath-taking and their performance exquisite.  Every member of the orchestra, starting with Mr Marsalis, is a virtuoso on his instrument(s) and the program allowed ample demonstration of this.

    At the end of the scheduled concert, we would not let them go and kept up a rhythmic applause until Marsalis along with piano, base, percussion, and sax returned to perform an extended improvisation of a piece that allowed every musician to demonstrate his considerable prowess.  It was an evening to remember, right here in Nevada County, and with no need to fly to New York, or even drive to the Mondavi Center in Davis where they are performing tonight.

    NCSoapBoxDerby2011 

    This weekend is the 51st annual Father’s Day classic bicycle race in Nevada City.  As an integral part of the professional racing tour, the Nevada City race circuit is the shortest but also the most difficult of the whole tour.  The town fills with visitors and tourists for the yearly event that heralds the real start of our county’s summer doings – Marsalis, annual Bluegrass Festival, and other sundry delights.  To put a fine ribbon on it, this year Nevada City added an important and exciting event to the weekend’s entertainment – the inaugural running of the Nevada City Soapbox Derby (more in The Union).

    This ‘race’ featured over forty entries competing in the ‘speed’ and ‘artistic’ categories.  The cars were built by various enterprises – businesses, clubs, individuals, … .  All the cars were custom built using lots of love, laughs, and at most $400.  Of course we had to be there, so with our puppy in tow, there we were with more friends bellying up to the hay bales to see them come down Nimrod Street next to Pioneer Park on a well laid out downhill course.

    Seeing as how it was the first time and all, a lot of the rules governing the goings on were, shall we say, in flux.  One of the problems to be fixed for next year is to run the heats in a tighter interval – lots of folks were getting a bit antsy waiting for the next batch of great looking speedsters and funsters come rolling down the hill.  We and the neighbors thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, and we see this event becoming another summer draw for visitors to our mountains.  (Now if we could only figure out a way to start a pari-mutuel betting scheme that would benefit local charities and not run afoul of the state’s gaming laws.)

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  • Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues (updated 22jun2011)

    George Rebane

    [This piece is the second of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, ‘The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers’, ‘Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues’,  ‘More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures’, ‘Employment and Income Inequality’.]

    The progressives’ calcified mindset does not admit to the truth of the title, no matter the data that supports it.  This reconfirms to many conservatives and those of libertarian bent that there is a larger agenda at work here which involves the economic castration of America – they can’t all be that stupid.

    An example of the right/left debate that highlights this is found on these pages in the comment stream of ‘The Liberal Mind – Tax Rates Don’t Affect Earnings’.  There we find the tired and well-worn liberal arguments citing Eisenhower era rates and the belief that more taxes on the rich increase government revenues.  Some liberals actually do believe that such higher revenues could then be applied to their conceptions of ‘social justice’.  But I’m afraid that the globalists among them know better, and pursue higher taxes in America under that façade as an effective avenue to their one-world objective.

    Taxes&Revenues 

    In the 16jun11 WSJ Alan Reynolds of Cato again presents US government data, and argues ‘Why 70% Tax Rates Won’t Work’ with a note to Robert Reich (the ‘70% man’) that says – “The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest rate was 28%.”  (see nearby table from the article)

    Reynolds goes on to detail the history of revenue production from tax rates reaching back to 1951.  He concludes with –

    … the Joint Committee on Taxation recently reported that 51% of Americans no longer pay federal income tax.
     
    Since the era of 70% tax rates, the U.S. income tax system has become far more “progressive.” Congressional Budget Office estimates show that from 1979 to 2007 average income tax rates fell by 110% to minus 0.4% from 4.1% for the second-poorest quintile of taxpayers. Average tax rates fell by 56% for the middle quintile and 39% for the fourth, but only 8% at the top. Despite these massive tax cuts for the bottom 80%, overall federal revenues were the same 18.5% share of GDP in 2007 as they were in 1979 and individual tax revenues were nearly the same—8.7% of GDP in 1979 versus 8.4% in 2007.
     
    In short, reductions in top tax rates under Presidents Kennedy and Reagan, and reductions in capital gains tax rates under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, not only “paid for themselves” but also provided enough extra revenue to finance negative income taxes for the bottom 40% and record-low income taxes at middle incomes.

    Of course, none of this will make a dent in the progressive chorus, because they are singing to voters already embracing the Peter/Paul Principle, and those for whom such information is not accessible.

    [22jun2011 update – the following letter in the 22jun11 WSJ rebuts Robert Reich’s criticique of Reynold’s analysis, and extends the argument presented.]

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  • The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers

    George Rebane

    [This piece is the first of a four part series on taxes, jobs, and income that includes, in order of posting, ‘The Administration Discovers Shortage of Engineers’, ‘Higher Tax Rates = Lower Revenues’,  ‘More Green Companies Heading for Greener Pastures’, ‘Employment and Income Inequality’.]

    The shortage of native technical talent in America has been known to those who read for at least twenty years.  The shortage became apparent during the Reagan administration, but the hullaballoo created by the personal computer and interactive multimedia technologies overshadowed the acknowledgement that it was the engineers and other techies who created that new wealth engine – it was not the MBAs and the lawyers.

    Engineer But institutional venture capitalists helped promulgate the myth that propeller heads did only, you know, propeller head stuff, whatever that was before they finally showed up with a marketable product.  The real wealth was created by business suits and legal beagles.  Besides, it is much easier to get an MBA or a law degree.  So native enrollments in tech schools started dropping, but not to worry, kids from overseas flocked to our excellent university programs in technology.

    As the years passed and young people graduated from high schools with advanced placement programs in self-esteem, they began to discover that it was even easier to get degrees in black studies, environment management, comparative social justice, and God knows what else.  And what the hell, with one of those sheepskins in your shorts you could always BS your way into a government job.

    Well, the world changed in the interval.  The Great Doubling came and no one noticed – they still don’t because it’s not visible from where they stuck their heads (RR keyword ‘Great Doubling’).  The foreign graduates began more and more to go back to their own countries instead of Silicon Valley to start their businesses.  With the US headed for European socialism and their own lands heading toward capitalism, the decision on where to start a business was easy.

    Now we have the situation where no one gives that big rat’s asset if you’re a lawyer or have an MBA.  You need an MBA today to be seriously considered to run a Jiffy-Lube, and lawyers are making as little as $35/hr in New York just to get some part time work.  Most certainly, nobody overseas wants to hire such Americans for a ‘fair day’s wages’.  And forget it if you have a degree in Latino Perspectives.

    So now President Obama sagely informs the nation that we need at least 10,000 new engineers every year – I am sure that is a brown number.  But it finally acknowledges a desperate national need, and a need that cannot be filled with the crap they teach kids in our public K-12 grades.  Other nations are graduating many times that number of engineers and technical workers annually, and it is they who now build the fastest computers, best cars, smartest robots, and merrily hack their way into our nation’s most sensitive financial, industrial, and defense networks.  (That last one is perhaps the scariest story of all for another time.)

    Our kids still proclaim that they ‘don’t do numbers’, instead they are being taught their ‘rights’ and the ‘rights of nature’ under new systems of international social justice.  When was the last time any of us examined the qualifications of our unionized K-12 teachers, or spoke up at a board of education meeting?

     

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  • Ruminations – 15jun2012

    The experiment that said “the bigger the state, the more just the society” clearly failed. There is no point pretending that it didn’t. – Tony Blair

    George Rebane

    – It’s the Sun, stupid!
    – Dems put bad stuff on hold til 2012
    – Mexican right of return

    Russ Steele at NC Media Watch reports here the latest real news on climate change – ‘it’s the sun, stupid.’  The AGW true believers are having to run around in ever tightening circles as they try to paper over every piece of new data that belies their political theory of manmade global disaster.  Every day it is more apparent that the only misery man is yet able to afflict on fellow man is through bad politics.  It was ever thus.

    Sheeple2 The perversion of the progressives is nowhere more visible than in the hiatus that the Obama administration is taking from its own agenda.  All those social and stimulus programs that were designed and passed by the Democrats to get the country back on its economic track have proven to do exactly the opposite.  And the social(ist) engineers in Washington know it in spades.  With the election coming up and the economy on its butt (second cheek is hitting the ground now), these hypocritical leftwingers are pulling back the enforcement of literally every piece of damaging legislation they have passed.  The dirtbags aren’t repealing any of it, only putting it on hold until after 2012 (details here).

    That there is no public outcry about any of this will hopefully again explain my ongoing use of Bryan Kaplan’s ‘sheeple’ for a large fraction of America’s electorate.  In his Myth of the Rational Voter – Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies Kaplan presented ample evidence of how the democratic process goes awry the more direct democracy we instill at the cost of removing the republican safeguards bequeathed by our Founders.  (See ‘How Elections Really Work’)

    As these pages have noted for the last several years, the Great Divide (here and here) is not just an apprehension of conservatives who view as hopeless the reunion with progressives.  A major force promoting the GD is the latino Reconquista movement (here and search RR with ‘Reconquista’).  The lamestream media has successfully subverted any coverage of the progress of Reconquista.  Now it has advanced to where it is openly taught in American public schools.  As reported in the 20jun11 National Review –

    “Mexican-American Studies” in Tucson schools now include “Rodolfo Acuna’s Occupied America, which proposes that the US southwest become a “Chicano nation” and quotes without disapproval Hispanic activist Jose Angel Guiterrez saying that “we have to eliminate the gringo, and what I mean by that is if the worst comes to the worst, we have got to kill him.”

    Shhhh, the sheeple are sleeping.

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  • ‘Saving the American Dream’

    George Rebane

    That is the short title to a landmark plan that Heritage Foundation published about a month ago.  In the popular media, it has received scant attention.  I believe this is so because it presents an utterly reasonable way for us to rescue America from its current financial freefall, and its ideological bedfellows are stuck in the NIH mode.  They want to get re/elected, Heritage just wants to put good policy on the table for all to draw from.   The socialists wouldn’t touch this plan with a ten-foot pole, its implementation may delay their global goals indefinitely. But we’ll come back to ‘Saving the American Dream: The Heritage Plan to Fix the Debt, Cut Spending, and Restore Prosperity’ in a bit.

    So, has anyone read the 20jun11 Time magazine’s cover article ‘What Recoverey? – The Five Myths About the Economy’?  Time started coming to our house spontaneously about three months ago; we have no idea how that happened since we did not order it.  But since it is a prominent national rag for liberal thought, we throw it on the ottoman with the other front room reading materials, and peek at it now and then to confirm our assessment of its direction and depth – beats watching MSNBC.

    Time acknowledges that, given Obama’s policies so far, recovery from the Great Recession is nowhere in sight.  And it predictably concludes that more of the same is what’s required to pull us out of this insipient depression that was all Bush2’s fault.  In the process the magazine argues that placing our false hopes on any combination of its five myths is futile.  The myths are – 1. The downturn is a temporary blip, 2. The Fed can save us, 3. The private sector will make it all better, 4. We can move where the jobs are, and 5. Entrepreneurs are our greatest strength.

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  • The Liberal Mind – Tax Rates Don’t Affect Earnings

    George Rebane

    According to the progressive worldview, you will work just as hard and take just as much risk when the government takes 80% of your earnings as you will when the government takes only 30% of those same earnings.  That simple proposition is the left’s basis for funding any additional revenues they deem government to need.  Just raise tax rates until the numbers come out as required by your spending programs.

    UncleSamGimme And it isn’t only the sheeple in their ranks that fervently believe this.  It is also a phalanx of credentialed economists (some Nobelists included) and behavioral sociologists.

    That the historical data does not support this conclusion is ignored by the apologists who see all fiscal problems solved by simply raising taxes.  Most people will instinctively understand the insanity of such a belief, at least when they put themselves into the earner’s shoes.  ‘Why should I work just as hard for the dollar from which the government will let me keep twenty cents, than I do for the same dollar from which I got to keep seventy cents?  I think I’ll just take some extra time off and figure out where to put my energies so I can keep more of what I earn.’

    And that such thoughts are beyond rocket science to the collectivist is borne out by their constant surprise of why government revenues fall when tax rates approach confiscatory levels.  Yet, as we can see today, their tax hike solution is in stasis, trotted out every time the debt burdens and unfunded liabilities of governments are discussed.  ‘We’ll just tax the rich, they’re so stupid that they won’t notice, and we’ll get all that extra money that they will continue earning no matter what we do.’

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33 comments on ‘Estonia, the little country that could’