It is amazing to us that in all the reporting on Jeff Bezos’s announcement that he is relocating from Seattle to Miami – virtually all the news outlets buried the obvious lead. Bezos will save billions of dollars in taxes by moving from a high-tax blue state, to a low-tax red state.
This wasn’t mentioned in the Yahoo Finance story above. Nor by the AP. Nor the NY Times. Nor CNN. Nor the Seattle papers. (The only major exception was the WSJ.).
Sorry, Seattle, it wasn’t JUST the sunshine that has brought him to South Florida.
When Bezos built Amazon in Seattle, Washington had no income tax, no estate tax, and no capital gains tax. But in recent years the progressives took charge with their “soak the rich” agenda.
Now Washington has the highest estate tax in the country, has just adopted a 7% capital gains tax, AND the legislature is debating a 1% annual wealth tax. Gee: Who do you think they had in mind to pay that?
Bezos is estimated to have a net wealth of $150 billion. Raise your hand if you think that it’s just a coincidence that right when the progressives started pushing this goofy wealth tax talk, he started looking to get out of Dodge?
The Tax Foundation estimates the Amazon founder could save as much as $1 billion a year by living in Florida. Ironically, Bezos leans left in his politics, but he doesn’t want his fortune to go the government. Bezos said in his announcement that “Seattle will always have a piece of my heart.” But not a piece of his wallet.
It reminds us of the old George Gilder saying: “High tax rates don’t redistribute income, they redistribute people.”
2) Even New York Times Agrees Green Energy a Big Red Ink Bust
Maybe the editors at NYT are Hotline enthusiasts (good for them) because either we scooped them big time last week or they are channeling the Hotline. Here’s their Sunday headline:
"The shares of a broad range of clean energy companies have been crushed lately, in a rout that encompasses just about every alternative energy sector, including solar, wind and geothermal power."
The Times calls it "stock market myopia."
Sure. Don’t these foolish investors know the planet is going to become uninhabitable in the decades to come if we don’t stop using fossil fuels?
That question was meant to be a joke, but the NYT explains: "the stock market doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo" about climate change, and then adds that "the problem resides with the stock market, not the scientists."
Here is what real-life investors who put their money down on the table think of green energy’s future:
Source: NY Times. Returns since the start of the year.
We will shout it out again: there is NO green energy transition in the US or almost anywhere in the world. Fossil fuels are king. Drill baby drill.
Great tweet from economist Richard Stern of the Heritage Foundation who points out that we at the Hotline may have UNDERSTATED how much mortgage payments on the median-priced home have risen under Biden:
We said the payments have doubled, but based on official federal statistics, the annual mortgage payment has nearly tripled from $8,500 to $24,000 per year as the mortgage interest rate has soared from under 3% to 7.8%. See Stern’s chart above.
It shows that in the era of low inflation and a stable dollar — from Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump — mortgage payments were relatively stable.
But they have taken a giant upward leap under Biden – thanks to an inflation rate that hit as high as 9.1%.
Biden has put a giant tax on the American dream of owning a home.
Tuesday's off-year election will feature hundreds of races for state legislature and lower offices along with two governorships. Here is a sampling of some of the more important:
Kentucky's Democratic Governor Andy Beshear has been leading GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron, but Beshear’s opposition to school choice and COVID lockdowns during his term have become late issues.
In Mississippi, GOP Governor Tate Reeves is hoping his recent income tax cuts overcome negative stories about scandals with state grants.
In Virginia, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has an approval rating of 56 percent and hopes voters will give him a mandate for conservative governance by giving the GOP a legislative majority.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has become one of the most partisan in the country, approving a Democratic gerrymander for Congress, ruling a voter ID law unconstitutional, and changing the state’s election law during COVID in a way that encouraged fraud. An election for the court is on Tuesday's ballot. Unions have poured in millions for the Democratic candidate.
5) New York Politicians Drive Up Hotel Prices and Drive Away Tourists
Anyone thinking of visiting New York City will be shocked at the nose-bleed prices of hotels.
Of course, NYC has always been expensive, especially in the island borough of Manhattan. But prices of $500 a night for the equivalent of a broom closet didn’t used to be normal. What gives?
It won’t shock Hotline readers that the villains are mostly the government and unions.
First, came restrictions on short-term apartment rentals – such as Airbnb.
The curbs on Airbnb took effect this summer and have already reduced the number of short-term listings by more than 80 percent.
City officials have also limited hotel supply in other ways. In 2010, it banned youth hostels, closing 55 of them (while they were opening up hotels to the homeless).
Finally, the growing popularity of non-union hotels prompted the city to bow to the Hotel Trades union and require hotels to acquire a special permit that could only be issued with a full city council vote.
Given that tourism and business conferences are one of the leading sources of revenue and economic activity in the city, the major effect of driving up hotel prices is to drive the out-of-towners and convention goers away. That hurts the local bars, restaurants, Broadway shows, and street vendors.
