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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #957
02/15/2024
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1) The Top 1% Now Pay Almost Half of All Income Taxes – Largest Share Ever in U.S. History

The new IRS data on who shoulders the tax burden in America are astonishing and thoroughly refute the lie that the rich “don’t pay their fair share.” Are you paying attention, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Joe Biden?
  
In 2021 the richest 1% (with earnings of about $680,000 a year and above) paid 46% of the income tax. The top 5% in income paid 67% of the tax. The top 3 out of 100 tax filers pay a larger share than the other 97 out of 100.

These two charts from The National Taxpayers Union pretty much tell the whole story. One percent of Americans who make 26% of the income and pay 46% of the tax. The bottom 50% of Americans – all those below the median income of about $48,000 in reported income – pay less than 2.5% of the income tax.
 
 
In answer to the question do the rich pay “their fair share?”, the answer is a resounding NO. By any honest accounting, they pay far more than their fair share.  
 
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2) The Wrath of Khan
 

Read that chilling headline again, and let it settle in for a minute. 

We’ve often argued that Ms. Khan – a Columbia law professor who attended Yale (of course), is all of 34 years old, and has never had a real job in the private sector for as far as we can tell – is quickly becoming the most dangerous woman in America. Any company that is enriching your 401k plan by making a healthy profit is a suspect monopolist.

Khan is a hyper-regulator who has already sued Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Nvidia. Now she is plotting to hunt down companies as potential monopolists “before it becomes fully fledged.”

This is like a traffic cop pulling you over and giving you a ticket because he thinks you MIGHT speed when you go around the corner.

There’s more.  According to Axios: “Khan is hunting for evidence that Microsoft, Google, and Amazon require board seats or exclusivity deals in return for their investments in AI startups.” 

Since when is asking for a board seat in exchange for a major investment in a startup company a crime?  If it is, this won’t hurt the Amazons of the world but it will inhibit startups. 

Khan says her philosophy is that it’s important for “policymakers to help structure markets.” No, it surely isn’t. We have two industries that policymakers have been trying to “structure” for years: EVs and green energy.  With all the helping hands of the government, they are both teetering on bankruptcy.

Meanwhile, the companies that are blowing away the high-tech competition – America’s “magnificent seven” – have come to dominate global tech markets and are now trying to intervene in artificial intelligence.

FTC: These Companies Must Be Stopped

But in the Lina Khan rule book, their extraordinary financial success – with hundreds of billions of dollars for American mom-and-pop investors and retirees – is prima facie evidence that these companies are price gouging. That’s a bewildering claim because these companies have been lowering prices for everything from toys to potato chips, to information gathering, to cell phones. These “monopolists” account for almost all of the stock market gains in recent years.  

Lina Khan seems hellbent on blowing up the American economy by bringing lawsuits against the most successful and profitable companies. That is a good strategy to forfeit U.S. economic leadership. She might as well be on China’s payroll.
 
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3) Chicago’s Mayor Plans to End Successful Crime Prevention Program – But AFTER the Democratic  National Convention This Summer
When Brandon Johnson ran for Chicago Mayor last year, he told progressive groups that want to defund the police that he would cancel programs that help the police track down criminals. One of those is the city’s ShotSpotter program. It uses a network of acoustic sensors to detect gunshots and routes police to the scene.

This week, Mayor Johnson fulfilled his promise to end the program even over the objection of the very police chief he appointed.  But the expiring program will be renewed for seven more months. Why? Because the Democratic National Convention is in Chicago this summer. We can’t have people shooting each other on the streets when the Democrat royalty is in town and the world is watching  

So let’s get this straight: in Chicago, it’s ok for criminals to shoot at law-abiding citizens AFTER the Democratic Convention rolls out of town. But God forbid that anyone should shoot a member of the exalted Democratic National Committee.  

And they call Republicans the racist!
 
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4) Steve Forbes to Javier Milei: Dollarize Now
Argentina’s free-market president Javier Milei has had a busy two months in office trying to dismantle the statist system he inherited. He had a setback last week when his omnibus reform bill that would privatize much of the economy got bogged down in Argentina’s Congress.

Steve Forbes, one of the co-founders of CTUP, has issued an open video letter to Milei. He argues that while Milei must continue to fight for his reforms, it’s time for him to step up the pace and deal a fatal blow against inflation by replacing the Argentine peso with the U.S. dollar.

“Milei must quickly reverse his decision to delay dollarization,” he says. “The arguments against replacing the peso with the dollar right away are utterly false.” He urges Milei to meet with CTUP friend Steve Hanke and officials from Ecuador who together helped that country successfully adopt the dollar over 20 years ago and are eager to advise Argentina.
 
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5) Oops! Plastic Bag Ban Made Pollution Worse in California
We covered a study last month in New Jersey that found plastic consumption jumped dramatically when disposable plastic bags were banned because people bought thicker "reusable" plastic bags that they threw away anyway.

Governor Phil Murphy waved the report off because it came from a group that opposed his bag ban.

But now California reports the exact same phenomenon – and the study is from a liberal group that SUPPORTED the bag ban:
 

Their recommendation: Ban harder and tax harder.

"Many grocery stores offer durable, genuinely reusable bags at checkout. As with other bag types, charging a fee per bag discourages customers from treating them as single-use. Cities and states should set minimum charges for these bags to prevent them from being treated as single-use bags."

Their answer to every government failure is more government.
 
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6) Better Keep Joe Stashed Away in the Basement Again 
 

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