Economics & Finance

Subsidized Light Rail and Reactionary Politics

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Jim Miller has an excellent post on Portland, Oregon’s mass-transit boondoggles, and on the religious zeal and overarching intrusiveness of the Pacific Northwest’s political class in support of wasteful programs that most local citizens don’t want:

Some may wonder why I call Seattle reactionary. That seems obvious to me, but may not be to others, especially those on the left. On the whole, the political class in Seattle wants the races to be treated differently, is fond of 19th century technology, such as trollies and light rail, and generally wants to manage every detail of a citizen’s life. All of these, especially the last, are very old ideas. In fact, the last idea goes back to ancient Sumeria. I think it is fair to call their support for outmoded ideas, ideas that have not met the test of time, reactionary.

Worth reading in full.

Hedge Funds and Jim Gaffigan

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I was watching Jim Gaffigan (the comedian) on Conan O’Brien the other night and he was talking about the “innovation” of the upside-down ketchup bottle. He said that for years we basically were always holding it upside down and then after fifty years someone figured out, hey, let’s just have it come out the bottom in the first place. He said that future generations wouldn’t look on us favorably because it took us so long to grasp something so obvious…

A pretty funny joke but in fact this is sadly applicable to hedge funds, of all things. Let me explain the connection.

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Over the Air

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A few threads connected…

Recently I was at a dinner party with some friends. A young teenager from the East coast was at the dinner and I asked him the question “Do you know anyone who doesn’t have cable TV?” He thought for a few seconds and said “Yes, one friend has satellite.” He didn’t even think to consider that anyone would just get over-the-air TV.

A couple of months ago I helped my parents pick out a digital TV and surround sound system. My parents are “old school” and don’t even want to consider paying every month for television, so we just plugged in the over-the-air antenna to the one on his roof and we were in business with digital television. The picture quality is very high – over the air digital TV broadcasts in higher quality than over cable or satellite because it is uncompressed.

Today they announced that the Cubs playoff games were going to be broadcast on TBS only. If you don’t have cable or satellite, you won’t be able to watch the game. This situation is compounded by the fact that the games start at 9pm central time; if you are older it isn’t reasonable to expect that they’d go out to a bar or restaurant until midnight when the game is done. Of course, lots of them have cable, but probably the majority of the people that DON’T have cable would be older than average. I imagine that WGN TV, which has broadcast the Cubs for years, will be flooded with calls from irate viewers.

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Chicago Sales Tax Hike Proposed

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It is sad when two of my more depressing prophecy-type posts intersect…

Cook County is the vast county within which the city of Chicago resides, along with a large number of affluent suburbs. Cook County has a population of over 5 million and is the 2nd largest county in terms of population in the United States.

In this post from March of 2007 I discussed how a succession movement could be in the future of Cook County. Specifically, I noted how the huge expenses of maintaining hospitals was burdening the county and killing their ability to live within a balanced budget.

In this post from December 2006 I went through sales taxes, which are among the most regressive taxes in the arsenal of tax tools and the fact that Cook County and the City of Chicago have one of the highest and most unfavorable sales tax regimes in the country.

Now, in a single article in the Chicago Tribune titled “County Urged To Boost Sales Tax – City Total Would be 11% Under Plan” dated September 25, 2007 shows the likely intersection of these negative trends. Todd Stroger, the epitome of political nepotism, who campaigned on a plan to streamline the bloated Cook County work force, has done nothing of the sort and is now looking about for a revenue boost to cover the inevitable annual increases in expense growth.

The line from Mayor Daley says it all – “A sales tax is a hard pill, but how do we fund three hospitals?”

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What Is Not Seen

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A few months ago the Senate  Democrats here in the State of Wisconsin floated a plan to provide universal health care for all residents of the state.   The first question most will ask is “who is going to pay?”   The answer is that the plan ($15bb worth) will be funded through a payroll tax.

The plan is dead in the water as the Republicans who control our State Assembly are having nothing of it, but in the next election there is the distinct possibility that the Democrats will win back the Assembly, and will then control the Governor’s chair, the Senate and the Assembly.

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