Friday, October 13, 2006 - Foundation

Noted academic N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard is pressing the Pigou Club, his name for a list of people who have publically called for punitive taxation on oil, 'carbon', or things like that. His justification is entirely academic: If we knew the 'cost to society' of the use of oil, then we could raise taxes by the amount needed to neutralize exactly that cost, and therefore this tax hike would actually be positive for the economy and society, because the revenue could be used to pay that cost.

Of course, the trick is that we don't know such costs, and on top of that, we already collect a couple trillion dollars every year in federal taxes alone here in the US. Apparently they don't need more taxes in Canada either, because Terence Cocoran is creating the NoPigou Club in the National Post, and lists good reasons for it:

There is no end to the planning mayhem that could be generated once Pigovian taxes become the economic norm. Taxes on cigarettes have risen hundreds of per cent over the years, in part to offset the alleged externality of rising costs of treating cancer and other diseases caused by smoking. Still people smoke. Anything that can be politically whipped up into an unwanted development -- taxes on food to reduce obesity, taxes on alcohol to reduce alcoholism, taxes on babies to reduce population growth -- or subsidies on babies to boost population.

There's nothing new in Pigou, no matter how he's dressed up by Prof. Mankiw.

Mankiw is right on a lot of things; that's why I read his site. But I think he's showing an academic bent on this issue by pressing this correct-in-theory but unnecessary-in-practice idea, unfortunately for the country.

A North Korean soldier reacts to a photographer today on a passing boat, on the waterfront at the North Korean town of Sinuiju, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong. (AP)

Random thought: I'd support the US ending the six-party talks with the DPRK, in favor of bilateral talks, under one condition: Pyongyang must be occupied by US troops after the destruction of the Juche/Communist regime there.

And the idiot of the day award goes to... Kevin Garnett!

Minnesota forward Kevin Garnett threw out the word "communism" to describe the new crackdown on decorum. "To the fact that you can't really speak to the ref and the refs don't want to hear it, that's almost like communism," Garnett told Minneapolis reporters. "That's like Castro, you know what I'm saying?"

While I am glad to hear he disapproves of Castro and Commies, to compare brutal Communist oppression with an NBA league policy is just dumb.

Peter King advises trading for 10 players in fantasy football, and I have two of them: #4 Marques Colston, and #10 Amani Toomer. Both are in my lineup for this week, in fact, being tied for my second-highest scorer outside of kickers and defenses.