In the City Journal, E.J. McMahon bemoans New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s plan to distribute “inflation refunds” of surplus sales tax revenue to middle/lower-income state residents. Inflation-indexing the state’s income tax code, McMahon notes, would be fairer and more effective – as well as ongoing – but instead Hochul is doling out one-time cash to her voting base.
At Least He Paid his Losing Bet
Paul Ehrlich, author of the spectacularly incorrect 1968 best-seller The Population Bomb, recently died at 93. Despite his longevity, Ronald Bailey points out in Reason, Ehrlich did not live to see even one of his numerous apocalyptic predictions come true. The world’s population certainly grew, but not merely larger, richer and fatter too. Most famously, Ehrlich once bet economist Julian Simon that the world was approaching economic collapse – but in 1990 had to mail Simon a cheque.
