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Buried in too much work. Meanwhile, how many tons of CO2 were released by flying hundreds of politicos and their flacks to a climate confab in Glasgow?

I could not find “The Great Global Warming Swindle” as a single YouTube video, but here it is segmented into 8 videos. Let’s see if I can embed a playlist:

LASERS, IS THERE ANYTHING THEY CAN’T DO? Self-Driving Farm Robot Uses Lasers To Kill 100,000 Weeds An Hour, Saving Land And Farmers From Toxic Herbicides.

QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Can Feminist Robots Challenge Our Biases?

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE! Exposed: The plague of fake medical trials putting lives in danger as experts reveal a FIFTH of studies published each year could contain invented or plagiarised results. “According to bombshell allegations from a group of highly respected experts, the medical world is rife with research fraud. Their investigations suggest up to one in five of the estimated two million medical studies published each year could contain invented or plagiarised results, details of patients who never existed and trials that didn’t actually take place. The problem is ‘well known about’ in science circles, says Richard Smith, former editor-in-chief of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) – yet there is a reluctance within the establishment to accept the scale of the problem.”

Flashback: We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong. When I published this piece I got emails from people accusing me of lending aid and comfort to “anti science” forces, and undermining confidence in scientists. Um, it’s not me who’s doing that . . .

The number of republican, conservative and libertarian faculty members have plummeted at most schools in the last twenty years. Many top law schools have only a couple conservative faculty members and we have discussed the startling increase in attacks on faculty, trustees, and students (including student publications, editors and columnists) over dissenting views on subjects ranging from critical race theory to police abuse. Nevertheless, the American Association of University Professors’ Journal of Academic Freedom is calling for papers on intolerance on campuses but only by conservatives. The call seems to be an effort to come up with a narrative to deflect from the complaints over the rising orthodoxy and intolerance on our campuses.

The AAUP journal is only interested in examples of “thought control by the Right, the whitewashing of historical narratives, and specific assaults on academic freedom that cut across the K–12 and higher education sectors.” It bases this one-sided solicitation on the “recent upsurge in white ethnonationalism” and “attempt[s] to reenergize white-settler narratives of the nation’s founding while vilifying histories that call attention to slavery, oppression, and dispossession.”  They also cite criticism of the 1619 project and the recent controversy over the hiring of Nikole Hannah-Jones, who have pushed for advocacy journalism that is opposed by many of us.

Rather than study viewpoint intolerance on campuses generally, the journal is calling only for research that supports a narrative that our schools are actually under the yoke of conservative ideology. It is a bizarre claim that has appeared recently in other academic publications. Recently, a Massachusetts history professor declared universities “right-wing institutions.” I have personally been in meetings where such claims were made about the relative absence of liberal scholars on faculties and dominance of conservative ideology at law schools. I once heard a law dean note with a straight face that she was pleasantly surprised to meet a liberal constitutional law scholar for a change.

We have recently discussed a couple examples (here and here) of actions taken against liberal speakers on campus, which were denounced as attacks on free speech values.  However, it borders on the delusional to suggest that our campuses are being controlled by conservative ideology or faculty members. We previously discussed a Gallup poll showing ninety percent of Pomona students said that they did not feel free to speak openly or freely. Pomona is one of the most liberal institutions in the world with a tiny fraction of conservative faculty.

For many of us in the free speech community, it does not matter which side is opposing the expression of viewpoints. I have defended extremist views on academic freedom grounds like those of University of Rhode Island professor Erik Loomis, who has defended the murder of a conservative protester and said that he saw “nothing wrong” with such acts of violence. (Loomis also writes for the site “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”) I have defended faculty who have made similarly disturbing comments “detonating white people,” denouncing police, calling for Republicans to suffer,  strangling police officers, celebrating the death of conservatives, calling for the killing of Trump supporters, supporting the murder of conservative protesters and other outrageous statements.

The AAUP journal embodies the raw bias that has taken hold on our journals and on our campuses. It is soliciting articles that confirm a view that academic freedom is being threatened by the shrinking numbers of conservative faculty and students in our schools. To secure such opportunities, you must first confirm that you will reach the correct conclusion.

The  AAUP was once a staunch defender of academic freedom. As I discuss in an upcoming law review article, the AAUP was heavily influenced by the writings of Roscoe Pound who led the fight for free speech on campuses at a time when it was the conservatives who were failing to actively protect those on the left in raising dissenting voices. He railed against the view that professors should remain silent on public controversies and objected that “we are getting very intolerant in this country of even necessary freedom of speech.” Pound’s view of free speech would be reflected in the first Declaration of Principles of Academic Freedom in 1915 by the AAUP. The Declaration stressed the protection of free speech and the guarantee of “unfettered discussion” free of the “prescribed inculcation of a particular opinion upon a controverted question.”

 

BUREAUCRATS ARE SUFFOCATING U.S. MILITARY R&D: That’s according to the second-ranked general in the U.S. military who, according to The Epoch Times, pointed out to a recent gathering of defense writers that it currently takes four times as long to develop new weapons as it did during the Cold War.

“We can go fast if we want to,” Lt. Gen. John Hyten said. “But the bureaucracy we’ve put in place is just brutal.” Hyten is the outgoing Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

As an example, Hyten said the U.S. first tested a hypersonic missile like that recently disclosed by China in 2010. But risk-averse bureaucrats killed it before it had a chance to go through the research and development process.

“We were developing hypersonics ahead of everybody in the world and the first test failed,” Hyten said. “The first test of everything fails. So the first test fails and we have two years of investigation into why it did fail. Two years. Then we launch again and it fails, and we failed. This time it was two fails and we canceled the program and we stopped.”

The Biden economic agenda can be summarized as follows: As much spending as possible, financed by as much taxation as possible, using lots of dishonest budget gimmicks to glue the pieces together.

But it turns out that higher taxes are not very popular, notwithstanding the delusions of Bernie Sanders, AOC, and the rest of the class-warfare crowd.

If the latest reports are accurate, the left has given up on imposing higher corporate tax rates, higher personal tax rates, and making the death tax more onerous.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that they’ve revived an awful idea to make capital gains taxes more onerous by taxing people on capital gains that only exist on paper.

In a column for the New York Times, Neil Irwin explains how the new scheme would work..

…congressional Democrats..are looking toward a change in the tax code that would reinvent how the government taxes investments… The Wyden plan would require the very wealthy — those with over $1 billion in assets or three straight years of income over $100 million — to pay taxes based on unrealized gains. …It could create some very large tax bills… If a family’s $10 billion net worth rose to $11 billion in a single year, a capital-gains rate of 20 percent would imply a $200 million tax bill.

In other words, families would be taxed on theoretical gains rather than real gains.

Some have said this scheme is similar to a wealth tax, though it’s more accurate to say it’s a tax on changes in wealth.

Similarly bad consequences, with similarly big problems with complexity, but using a different design.

Mr. Irwin’s column also acknowledges some other problems with this proposed levy.

The proposal raises conceptual questions about what counts as income. When Americans buy assets — shares of stock, a piece of real estate, a business — that become more valuable over time, they owe tax only on the appreciation when they sell the asset. …The rationale is that just because something has increased in value doesn’t mean the owner has the cash on hand to pay taxes. Moreover, for those with complex holdings, like interests in multiple privately held companies, it could be onerous to calculate the change in valuations every year, with ambiguous results. …having a cutoff at which the new capital gains system applies could create perverse incentives… “If you have a threshold, you’re giving people a really strong incentive to rearrange their affairs to keep their income and wealth below the threshold,” said Leonard Burman, institute fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

In other words, this plan would be great news for accountants, lawyers, and other people involved with tax planning.

I support the right of people to minimize their taxes, of course, but I wish we had a simple and fair tax system so that there was no need for an entire industry of tax planners.

But I’m digressing. Let’s continue with our analysis of this latest threat to good tax policy.

Henry Olson opines in the Washington Post that it’s a big mistake to impose taxes on unrealized gains.

The Biden administration’s idea to tax billionaires’ unrealized capital gains…would be an unworkable and arguably unconstitutional mess that could harm everyone. …Tesla founder Elon Musk’s net worth rose by $126 billion last year as his company’s stock price soared, but he surely paid almost no tax on that because he never sold the stock. Biden’s plan would tax all of that rise, netting the federal government about $30 billion. Do the same for all the nation’s billionaires, and the feds could pull in loads of cash… If that sounds too good to be true, it’s because it is. …Privately held companies…are notoriously difficult to value. Rare but valuable items are even more difficult to fix an annual price. …Billionaires are precisely the people with the motive and the means to hire the best tax lawyers to fight the Internal Revenue Service at every step of the way, surely subjecting each tax return to excruciatingly long and expensive audits. …Expensive assets can go down in value, too, and billionaires would rightly insist that the IRS account for those reversals of fortune. …Would the IRS have to issue multi-billion dollar refund checks to return the billionaires’ quarterly estimated tax payments from earlier in the year?

These are all excellent points.

Henry also points out that the scheme may be unconstitutional.

The Constitution may not even permit taxation of unrealized gains. The 16th Amendment authorizes taxation of “income,”… Unrealized gains don’t fit under that rubric because the wealth is on paper, not in the hands of the owner to use as she wants.

And he closes with the all-important point that the current plan may target the richest of the rich, but sooner or later the rest of us would be in the crosshairs.

…it will only be a matter of time before lawmakers apply the tax to ordinary Americans. Anyone who owns a house or has a retirement account has unrealized capital gains. Billionaires get all the attention, but the real money is in the hands of the broader public, as the collective value of real estate and mutual funds dwarfs what the nation’s uber-wealthy hold. The government would love to get 25 percent of your 401(k)’s annual rise.

Amen. This is a point I’ve made in the past.

Simply stated, there are not enough rich people to finance European-sized government. Eventually we’ll all be treated like this unfortunate Spaniard.

I’ll close with a few wonky observations about tax policy.

• The government should not impose discriminatory extra layers taxation on income that is saved and invested rather than consumed.
• This means there should be no capital gains tax, much less a tax on unrealized capital gains (or inflationary gains).
• This means there should be no wealth tax, whether levied on annual wealth or imposed on changes in wealth.

P.S. Biden, et al, claim we need higher taxes on the rich because the current system is unfair, yet there’s never any recognition that the United States collects a greater share of revenue from the rich than any other developed nations (not because our tax rates on the rich are higher than average, but rather because our tax rates on lower-income and middle-class taxpayers are much lower than average).

P.P.S. The bottom line is that taxing unrealized capital gains is such a crazy idea that even nations such as France and Greece have never tried to impose such a levy.

The good news is that President Biden wants the United States to be at the top. The bad news is that he wants America to be at the top in bad ways.

• The highest corporate income tax rate.
• The highest capital gains tax rate.
• The highest level of double taxation.

We can now add another category, based on the latest iteration of his budget plan.

According to the Tax Foundation, the United States would have the develop world’s most punitive personal income tax.

Worse than France and worse than Greece. How embarrassing.

In their report, Alex Durante and William McBride explain how the new plan will raise tax rates in a convoluted fashion.

High-income taxpayers would face a surcharge on modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), defined as adjusted gross income less investment interest expense. The surcharge would equal 5 percent on MAGI in excess of $10 million plus 3 percent on MAGI above $25 million, for a total surcharge of 8 percent. The plan would also redefine the tax base to which the 3.8 percent net investment income tax (NIIT) applies to include the “active” part of pass-through income—all taxable income above $400,000 (single filer) or $500,000 (joint filer) would be subject to tax of 3.8 percent due to the combination of NIIT and Medicare taxes. Under current law, the top marginal tax rate on ordinary income is scheduled to increase from 37 percent to 39.6 percent starting in 2026. Overall, the top marginal tax rate on personal income at the federal level would rise to 51.4 percent. In addition to the top federal rate, individuals face taxes on personal income in most U.S. states. Considering the average top marginal state-local tax rate of 6.0 percent, the combined top tax rate on personal income would be 57.4 percent—higher than currently levied in any developed country.

Needless to say, this will make the tax code more complex.

Lawyers and accountants will win and the economy will lose.

I’m not sure why Biden and his big-spender allies have picked a complicated way to increase tax rates, but that doesn’t change that fact that people will have less incentive to engage in productive behavior.

What matters is the marginal tax rate on people who are thinking about earning more income.

And they’ll definitely choose to earn less if tax rates increase, particularly since well-to-do taxpayers have considerable control over the timing, level, and composition of their income.

P.S. Based on what happened in the 1980s, we can safely assume that Biden’s class-warfare plan won’t raise much money.

When President Biden first proposed a global minimum tax on companies, I immediately warned that creating a corporate tax cartel would be very bad news for workers, consumers, and shareholders.

I also warned a BBC audience that proponents would use the agreement as a stepping stone for other statist initiatives to increase the power of politicians.

Simply stated, I’ve been ringing the alarm bells that a tax cartel will lead to ever-higher corporate tax rates. And it will serve as a model for other forms of harmonization.

Well, now that Ireland has capitulated and governments formally adopted the scheme, this is my “I told you so” column.

In a column for the Washington Post, Larry Summers, a former top adviser for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, celebrates the creation of a global tax cartel.

His column has a laughably inaccurate title, but he starts with some accurate observations about the importance of the agreement.

This agreement is arguably the most significant international economic pact of the 21st century so far. It is built around a profoundly important principle: Countries should cooperate to raise corporate taxation, not compete to reduce it. …It also demonstrates the power of ideas to shape economic policy, as tax scholars have for years been pondering the conundrums of taxing global companies.

I also think the agreement is important, albeit in a very bad way.

And it does show the power of ideas, albeit very bad ideas (though politicians instinctively want more money and power and merely rely on left-leaning academics and policy wonks for after-the-fact rationalizations of statism).

As you might expect, Summers veers from reality to fantasy when discussing the implications of the new tax cartel.

Countries have come together to make sure that the global economy can create widely shared prosperity, rather than lower tax burdens for those at the top. By providing a more durable and robust revenue base, the new minimum tax will help pay for the sorts of public investments that are fundamental to economic success in all countries.

For all intents and purposes, he’s embracing the absurd notion that more growth will materialize if politicians impose higher tax rates and use the money to expand the burden of government.

Proponents of this view conveniently never offer any evidence.

Why? Because there isn’t any.

The scholarly research shows the opposite is true. Free markets and small government are the recipe for growth and prosperity.

I’ll now shift back to a part of the column that is unfortunately accurate.

It is also a template for much more that needs to be done to tackle the adverse side effects of our modern, global capitalism.

What’s accurate about that sentence isn’t the jibe about “adverse side effects” of capitalism (unless, of course, he thinks mass prosperity is a bad thing).

But he’s right about the statists using the global tax cartel as “a template” for further schemes to empower politicians and their cronies.

Summers mentions issues such as public health (I guess he wants to reward the World Health Organization’s corruption and incompetence).

Since I’m a public-finance economist, I’m more worried about cartels that will be created for personal income tax, capital gains tax, dividend tax, wealth tax, etc.

P.S. The corporate tax cartel will lead to higher tax rates, but OECD and IMF data (and U.S. data) show that this doesn’t necessarily mean higher revenue.

Research of the Week

High triglycerides predict psychotic episodes in patients with depression.

More sleep, less obesity in infants.

A group of mummies found in China were Ancient North Eurasians, the same root population from which Native Americans and many Europeans sprang.

The economic impact of the Opium War.

6 year olds are better at using multiple sources of information than both younger kids and adults.

New Primal Kitchen Podcasts

Episode 4: Mark Sisson Q&A: I chat with Morgan about my origin story as an entrepreneur.

Health Coach Radio: Connie Vanderzanden wonders if you know your money mindset.

Media, Schmedia

The bison reintroduction into Romania is going well.

That’s a shame.

Interesting Blog Posts

Can “succin-ade” help you lose body fat?

Healthy soil never really becomes “saturated” with carbon. For all intents and purposes, it’s an infinite sink—which is why regenerative animal-involved agriculture is so important.

Social Notes

The effect of running surface on joints, tissues, and performance.

My reading.

Everything Else

The NIH is funding psychedelic research (for smoking).

Facebook shifts toward the “metaverse.”

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Love it: Meat sales up.

Well deserved: Beyond Meat slumps.

Important concept: Original antigenic sin.

Interesting idea: I’m bearish on vertical farms, but this sunlit one looks more promising.

Not surprised: Taxes and regulations mean the illegal weed market is still stronger than the legal one in California.

Question I’m Asking

What are your favorite fall recipes?

Recipe Corner

• Sesame ginger dressing. Using tahini in Asian recipes is a nice little secret hack.
• Broth-poached fish is simple and reliable and endlessly adaptable.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Oct 23 – Oct 29)

• How to Deal With the Pressure of Never Having Enough Time (and Why It’s Total BS) — It usually is.
• The Benefits of Barefoot Lifting: How and Why— Why it’s a good idea.

Comment of the Week

“Well sir, I’ve had quite enough of your flagrant fruit-baking bias.”

-Good day to you, sir.

The post New and Noteworthy: What I Read This Week—Edition 152 appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

CLOWARD AND PIVEN SMILE: New Report Shows Growth of the Welfare State Has Fueled Long-Term Declines in the Labor Force.

Flashback: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Study: 87% of excess lung cancer risk eliminated if smokers quit before age 45.

The "Lord of the Flies" is one of the best books for showing how humanity gives in to its basest desires without civilization and moral order.

DEMOCRATS HAVE LONG THRIVED ON MISERY, POVERTY, AND MENTAL ILLNESS: “NYC’s Homeless Problem Is A Giant Scam!”

Here’s a Louis Rossmann video that discusses a homeless shelter in New York City that:

1. Bills the government $3,500 to $4,000 [per homeless person] a month to

2. House the homeless in a literal shithole (with visible feces in one picture of the place), and

3. By an amazing coincidence, is run by a non-profit founded by Andrew Cuomo and now run by his sister Maria Cuomo Cole.

Much more than just the video at the link.

COLLUSION: Biden Under Fire for Decision to Grant Syrian Dictator’s Cousin a US Visa: Biden admin silent as lawmakers worry it seeks to normalize relations with Assad.

WE WERE MADE IN AN ALIEN RESEARCH LAB: But it was the lab of an alien in an extraordinarily advanced technological civilization quite beyond our present understanding of things, according to Harvard theoretical physicist Avi Loeb.

Being a mere journalist, I, ever-so- humbly, take Loeb’s conjectural analysis at face value and offer three suggested flaws therein, then point to an analysis he offered on another occasion as the proper, broader context for understanding his perspective.

Loeb is a genius-level guy and his reasoning and insights should intrigue anybody who cares about the cosmic origins issues. And he has a sense of humor, as seen in his observation that “when I tell students at Harvard University that half of them are below the median of their class, they get upset.”

FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: Black and Latino students did worse in schools with ‘diversity officers’: study.

EXCLUSIVE: How Long Will Vaccine Authoritarians Sit in the Cold and the Dark?

A network of contractors employ linemen, who generally flock to the scene in advance when the weather patterns predict severe storms in a particular area. There are also archaic rules about which contractors can serve different regions based on union regulations. For example, non-union contractors from the South are generally not allowed to work in New York and California. Usually, IBEW linemen from midwestern contractors would have been flooding to the Northeast before yesterday’s storm that left around 600,000 residents in several states without power. This time they didn’t.

In fact, according to one senior member of an IBEW local in the Midwest, the contractors did not even attempt to raise crews to go. This lineworker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that even if the call went out, almost no one would have volunteered. Anyone who did would be looked upon as a scab and may have difficulty getting jobs out of the union hall in the future. Unions have ways to encourage solidarity. While the union contract prevents these workers from striking, working on a storm crew is voluntary. No employer can compel an IBEW member to go.

According to informal polling out of the halls, the men in these muscular jobs in flyover country who worked consistently during lockdowns have very low vaccination rates.

Things are going to get interesting in the vaccine-mandate states when the winter weather comes.

And do read the whole thing.

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The post Unearthed Wuhan Lab Docs Show “Bat Lady” Isolating Coronavirus Strains For “Direct Human Infection” appeared first on The Bongino Report.

"Young women feel pressured to sleep with trans women 'to prove I am not a terf [trans exclusionary radical feminist]'."

The post Report: U.K. Lesbians ‘Pressured Into Sex by Some Trans Women’ first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

HMM: Statins do not lower risk for death from COVID-19, but may increase it, study finds.

PROPAGANDA: Jeffrey Singer: Dopesick Resurrects an Opioid Narrative That Is ‘Neat, Plausible, and Wrong.’ “The Drug Enforcement Administration just ratcheted down production quotas for all prescription opioids for the sixth consecutive year while doctors are terrorized into undertreating pain, or abruptly tapering and cutting off chronic pain patients from a medication that has allowed them to enjoy meaningful and productive lives. Sadly, pain patients are the real victims of the false narrative, with documented increases in mental anguish and suicide from untreated or under‐​treated pain. Suicides among veterans are skyrocketing as opioid treatments have been curtailed in the Veterans Health Administration system.”

FACEPALM: Los Angeles Will Fine Cargo Ships That Can’t Unload.

THIS IS ABUSE OF POWER: Attorney General Merrick Garland appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee today and odds are one of the issues he will be queried about is why his department is not respecting an age-old congressional rule.

That rule is the minority party in Congress gets the same access to executive branch information as the majority party in congressional investigations. But, according to The Federalist, Garland’s Department of Justice and the FBI are ignoring that rule concerning information requests from the House Select Committee on the January 6 riot, as are other executive branch departments and agencies.

“On September 3, [Rep. Jim] Banks asked FBI Director Christopher Wray to give Republican lawmakers the same briefing offered to the Democrats on the progress of the agency’s own investigation. Partial findings of the FBI’s independent investigation were leaked to Reuters in August, which found ‘scant evidence’ the Capitol riot was ‘an organized plot to overturn the president election result.’ Wray has not responded to the request.

“’Pursuant to the rules of the House of Representatives, the minority party in Congress retains the rights to the same information that is provided to the majority party,’ Banks wrote in another letter to Wray on Sept. 16, which was also sent to several other federal agencies such as the Interior Department. ‘I ask that you provide me any information that is submitted to the Select Committee.’ His requests have been met with radio silence across the Biden administration.”

Based on his recent performance before the House Judiciary Committee, don’t be surprised if Garland is vague, evasive, less than candid, disingenuous, some combination of all four if the senators query him on this issue.

.@SecYellen on the proposed tax which would pay for the Build Back Better act: "It's not a wealth tax, but a tax on unrealized capital gains of exceptionally wealthy individuals." pic.twitter.com/7JXAysPkxI — The Hill (@thehill) October 24, 2021   Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen suggests imposing a new tax on unrealized capital gains, which means stock […]

SOLVING THE RARE-EARTH SHORTAGE: “In one of nature’s unexpected bounties, a harmless food-grade solvent has been used to extract highly sought rare-earth metals from coal ash, reducing the amount of ash without damaging the environment and at the same time increasing an important national resource.”

Good news for us, bad news for China.

Okay, we've all been there: phone ringing, number on the screen almost too familiar to not be a scam.

"the police have chosen to not fulfill their oath of office and to provide the public safety they are owed to the citizens they serve"

The post ‘Defund the Police’ Advocate Ilhan Omar Faults Police for Minneapolis Crime Spike first appeared on Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion.

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