A Margin Tax Is Always A Bad Idea »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – Leaders in the Democratic majority during the 2011 state legislative session proposed a dramatic change to Nevada’s tax system: Phase out the Modified Business Tax — a tax on private-sector payroll — and replace it with a new, larger levy modeled after Texas’ business margin tax. The effort gained so little traction in Carson City that the Democratic leadership, embarrassed, never even brought its proposal up for a committee vote. Now, almost [...]
SoS Ross Miller: “Our Services Aren’t Worth Your Money” »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – Okay…so maybe it’s not an exact quote, but that’s certainly what I got out of Secretary of State Ross Miller’s comments to the Las Vegas Sun today. Miller is complaining that home-based businesses aren’t paying their “fair share” and should be forced to pay $200 annually for the privilege of doing business in Nevada. The policy problems associated with this shakedown are obvious: 1. How does it impact the margins of the [...]
It’s Time To Wrest The West From Federal Control »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – As the GOP presidential contest moves on to the Western states, beginning with Nevada’s Feb. 4 caucuses, presidential candidates need to weigh in on what is perhaps the most pressing federal issue confronting the West: Who should control Western lands? In 1979, Nevada lawmakers fired a salvo re-opening the long-running struggle by Western states to reclaim from federal authorities control of the land within state boundaries — the movement popularly known as [...]
Nevada PERS Accounting Practices Conceal Taxpayers’ Real Liabilities »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – Nothing pleases a politician more than the ability to promise lavish benefits to important constituencies without having to pay for them. Nevada lawmakers long ago found a vote-buying cash cow of this nature in the state’s Public Employees’ Retirement System (PERS). PERS manages a defined-benefits pension system that operates much differently from the retirement funds owned by most private-sector workers. Participating employers in PERS — including the state and most local governments [...]
No Matter What The Left Says, Nevada Is Not A Low-tax State »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – It’s an argument the Left trots out year after year: “If low tax rates are so important, then why is the unemployment rate so high in Nevada?” Of course, it’s more of a political talking point than an invitation for substantive debate — leftists rarely want to have a discussion about the destructive impact on the Nevada housing market of Federal Reserve policy, the Community Reinvestment Act, federal land control, or countless [...]
Renewable Energy Is Destroying Nevada Jobs, Economy »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – Politicians have long sold the myth that the national and state economies would one day be rescued by “renewable” energy. For years, however, a fundamental problem kept these politicians from achieving their goal of making renewable energy culturally dominant: Freedom. Electricity generated by so-called “renewable” sources like solar panels is far more expensive and less reliable than electricity generated through traditional means such as nuclear, coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants. Confronted [...]
AFL-CIO Struggles With Reading Comprehension »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – I just received a blast email from the AFL-CIO with the headline, “Privatization Doubles Cost of Govt. Work.” The email links to an AFL-CIO website that makes the following claim: In the past year, congressional Republicans and right-wing extremists have ramped up their long-standing campaign against federal workers, claiming their pay is too high and their benefits too generous compared to private-sector workers. A new study shows how wrong they are. According to [...]
Government Wages: Too Extravagant? »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – It’s one of the most challenging questions facing labor economists today: At what level should most public employees be paid? In public-sector employment, the typical price signals that help determine wage rates in competitive labor markets are absent. After all, most government agencies do not compete in an open labor market wherein they must also provide quality goods to discerning customers at competitive prices. Instead, they operate legal territorial monopolies for the [...]
White House Content With 9% Unemployment »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – New projections from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget last week predict that the national unemployment rate will remain around 9 percent throughout the next 16 months and will not again approach 6 percent until 2016. Those numbers now approximate what the Congressional Budget Office has said. Yet, even those numbers are rosy compared to what Wall Street analysts have forecast. This stormy vision of the future is being laid [...]
Why Unemployment Persists: Part IV »
(Geoffrey Lawrence/NPRI) – Since the dawn of democratic government, politicians’ favorite path to retaining and/or expanding their power has been to shower voters with promises of things to be delivered for “free.” President Lyndon Johnson won office with promises of a “Great Society,” wherein the elderly would have access to “free” or subsidized health care. President Obama promised to extend that benefit to everyone. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt went so far as to promise every [...]
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