Pun Salad

OK, so it's a little gimmicky. Right at the beginning, Joe Pickett's truck has been discovered at "Antler Creek Junction", with multiple bullet holes, one of them in Joe's head.

Does Joe survive? Reader, you know the answer as well as I do: if Arthur Conan Doyle couldn't kill off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls, C.J. Box is not going to kill off Joe Pickett at Antler Creek Junction.

But, aside from a few flashbacks to his investigations, Joe spends most of this book comatose in a Billings hospital, watched over by wife Marybeth. Leaving daughters Sheridan, Lucy, and April to do their own investigating. Joe was obviously set up for the ambush by one of the ranches accessed via Antler Creek Junction. Only problem being: there are three of them. And they are all acting kinda sus, as the kids say.

Worse: the perpetrators are still in the area, and they won't get paid unless and until they finish the job of killing Joe. And the diligent investigations of the daughters puts them in danger as well.

The usual very good outing from Mr. Box.

I'm not endorsing this necessarily, but why should people not paying taxes ("no taxation") get to vote ("representation") at all?

Also of note:

• Isn't it pretty to think so? Peter Boettke argues: No matter how good AI gets, it won’t beat markets.

  Whenever we see big leaps in computation, would-be central planners come out of the woodwork, claiming this finally makes it possible to organize the economy better than markets do — optimizing tax rates, producing enough to meet our needs, and allocating resources in a way that maximizes well-being for all.

  Such arguments gained theoretical prominence in the early 20th century, saw a resurgence with the mid-century advent of modern computing and operations research, and have emerged again with the impressive advance of artificial intelligence (AI).

  But this line of thinking rests on a false premise: that an economy is nothing more than a computational problem to be solved with accurate equations and enough data and processing power.

  Peter points to his short paper written with Gabriel Giguère: Markets and Machines, published up Canada way.

  Unfortunately, politicians on both sides of the border are perfectly willing to not wait for AI to number-crunch this out, but simply to use their NS ("Natural Stupidity") to imagine they can set tax rates, impose tariffs, subsidize, prohibit, regulate, and mandate, all to an optimal result.

  That's … unlikely. Hayek called it a "fatal conceit".

• Demagogues disagree. But I think Matthew Hennessey has it right: Taxation Should Be Flat and Low. (WSJ gifted link)

  The Journal reports that Democratic Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Chris Van Hollen (Md.) are cooking up separate proposals to eliminate income taxes on low earners. Mr. Van Hollen’s plan would exempt individuals making less than $46,000 and married couples making less than $92,000. Mr. Booker’s plan would increase the standard deduction and various tax credits to the point of eliminating taxes on income below $37,500 for individuals and $75,000 for couples.

  You might be tempted to say, OK, fine, what’s the harm? Let people keep their money. In fact, Mr. Booker’s plan is called the Keep Your Pay Act. We’re all for that!

  But special carve-outs, deductions, credits and exemptions create economic distortions that the tax-code tinkerers ignore or wish away. People respond to incentives at every income level. If you don’t think people will engineer ways to duck under the thresholds, you’ve never worked in a cash business.

  Almost half of households already pay no federal income tax under current rules. This creates, in effect, a two-tier society—those who pay, and those who don’t (although they are taxed in other ways). The ideal of social harmony isn’t served by asking one half of society effectively to bankroll the other.

  I'm tempted to say that the existing tax system is so utterly broken that this wouldn't make a huge difference. Things couldn't be worse, could they?

  Oh, sure they could.

• Not to mention that it arises from base motives. David Harsanyi's syndicated column points out a couple small problems with class-war economics: Class-War Economics Is Counterproductive and Un-American.

  Perhaps the biggest myth in American political life is that the wealthy don't pay their "fair share." And yet, class warfare isn't merely at the center of the Democrats' economic messaging and policy — it's become the entire game.

  Democrats have two new tax plans out, playing on the notion that the middle and working classes are unduly burdened by taxes. One is by Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), which would exempt anyone making $46,000 or married couples making less than $92,000.

  Then there is Sen. Cory Booker's (D-N.J.) Keep Your Pay Act, which would effectively eliminate federal income tax on individuals making below $37,500, and $75,000 for couples.

  The United States is already home to one of, if not the most, progressive tax systems of any developed nation in the world. The wealthiest pay the preponderance of our federal income taxes. The Treasury Department estimates that the top 10% of households pay down around 80% of all federal income taxes. The top 1% pay 40%. The bottom 50% of workers pay around 3% of the federal tab.

  But no politician, certainly none who wants to be in office very long, is ever going to advocate raising middle-class or working-class income taxes ever again, despite the ever-increasing cost of government and debt.

  David goes on to say to progressive schemers: "It's not your money, commie." Which earns him my undying devotion.

• Another state competition! The Reason Foundation has issued its 29th Annual Highway Report. Drivers take note:

  Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Ohio have the best-performing, most cost-effective roads and bridges, according to Reason Foundation’s 29th Annual Highway Report.

  Alaska, California, Washington, New York, and Louisiana have the worst-performing and least cost-effective highway systems, the study finds. Alaska ranked last overall for the second consecutive report, posting the worst rural fatality rate in the nation. California ranked 49th, with the worst urban arterial pavement condition. Washington finished 48th overall while ranking as the highest-spending state in multiple categories.

  New Hampshire is in the #13 spot, semi-respectable. Better than any other New England state anyhow, save Connecticut which came in at #7.

Recently on the book blog:

Tyler Cowen plugged this book on his blog: "a great book". And it turns out that Tyler also provides a front-cover blurb: "The best recent book on China, on China and America, and, arguably, the best book of the year flat out."

Good enough for me. And (it turns out) I liked it a lot too. It's full of trenchant observations and fun anecdotes. And the author, Dan Wang, has an obvious love of both China and the USA. And a deep level of disgust for each country's current leadership.

The 40,000-foot theme of the book, stated boldly on page 2: China is an engineering state, while America is a lawyerly society. Upsides: China builds stuff, quickly and well; while the US has numerous protections against despoiling the environment and running roughshod over individuals and communities.

But the downsides: China does run roughshod over its people and its environment. And American government increasingly can't seem to even get started on its noble (and ludicrously expensive) projects and goals. A theme also echoed in the Ezra Klein/Derek Thompson book Abundance.

Wang's portrait of China is illuminating, especially for someone (like me) who kind of assumed it was a homogeneous and faceless mass of humanity, under the thumb of its Commie masters. That's not totally wrong, but Wang's travels show a lot of interesting diversity. (Yunnan province is "relaxed", full of "free spirits". For a while, anyway.)

Of course, the central government is married to a central-planning ideology, and that devotion appears to have increased under Xi Jinping. This results in shiny new infrastructure, but also a lot of resource misallocation, corruption, and (generally) shoving people around.

An early chapter tells the story of Li Zaiyong, a high-flying executive in China's Guizhou province. He had big plans, spent big money, and nothing worked out, ending in fiscal disaster. So he crashed and burned, was found guilty of graft and accepting bribes, and sentenced to death "with a two-year reprieve."

Death! Impressive! Tim Walz might have been more diligent in his state's profligacy if we went in for that sort of thing here.

Wang is a bigger fan of "industrial policy" than I am. He's concerned about America's "hollowed out" manufacturing sector; I don't think there's a government-determinable "right" level for manufacturing, either in aggregate or in its mix of products.

Wang devotes one chapter each to China's big mistakes: its one-child policy and (more recent) its draconian Covid-19 policy. In each case, the top leadership decreed drastic controlling measures, and the result was death and misery. (Wang doesn't weigh in on the Wuhan lab-leak theory.)