| Unleash Prosperity Hotline Issue #396 10/25/2021 |
| 1) Now Democrats Want A New Wealth Tax Democrats appear poised to replace the income tax hikes in the Biden Budget Buster with what most people would consider a wealth tax. The Treasury Secretary says it’s not a wealth tax:  The details of how this would work in practice are murky. One idea is to impose a tax on millionaires and billionaires based on the increased value of stocks that they own – whether they sell the stock or not. (Would investors be permitted to get a tax rebate from Uncle Sam when share prices fall?) This tax will simply discourage investment. A recent study by two liberal professors at Yale and Michigan found that 75 percent of Americans believe stocks should only be taxed when they are sold:  https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3848064 Americans apparently have a deeply-ingrained belief that in a free country people should be able to lawfully accumulate as much wealth as they are able to. A new Selzer poll finds that 90% of Americans agree with that idea:  |
| 2) September Unemployment: Red States Win Again It’s been well more than a year and a half since COVID hit these shores. Right from the start, the red states and blue states adopted almost completely opposite policy prescriptions. Red states stayed open – allowing their businesses to operate and workers to stay on the job. Blue states shut down operations – especially for “non-essential” small firms. It wasn’t surprising that throughout 2020 blue states had MUCH higher unemployment and slower industrial output – as we have reported. But the latest state unemployment numbers for September 2021 confirm that the negative impact of these blue-state shutdowns has persisted for almost 20 months. Here’s a break-out of the September unemployment numbers by state by our ace economist E.J. Antoni, who is also with Texas Public Policy Foundation. The states that are dark red have full Republican control of the legislature and governorship, and dark blue connotes a state with full Democratic control.  As we have documented many times on these pages: lockdowns had almost no impact on deaths and illnesses. But these latest jobs numbers show that the negative impact on unemployment has been long-lasting. Never, NEVER again. Top 10: 1. Nebraska 2. Utah 3. Vermont 4. South Dakota 5. New Hampshire 6. Idaho 7. Oklahoma 8. Alabama 9. Georgia 10. Montana Bottom 10: 1. Alaska 2. District of Columbia 3. Hawaii 4. Illinois 5. Connecticut 6. New Mexico 7. New York 8. New Jersey 9. Nevada 10. California |
Subscribe to receive our full hotline