Unleash Prosperity Hotline #979

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Unleash Prosperity Hotline
Issue #979
03/19/2024
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1) CTUP COVID “Lessons Learned” Study Is Everywhere

Our four-year retrospective chronicling the catastrophic mistakes made by the government during CTUP is gaining widespread attention.

Read the study here: https://committeetounleashprosperity.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/240313_CTUP_COVIDCommitteeReport_Doc.pdf

The year-long study brought together a team of health, education, and economic experts – headed by Scott Atlas of Hoover/Stanford, Steve Hanke of Johns Hopkins University, CTUP senior fellow Casey Mulligan of University of Chicago, and Phil Kerpen, president of CTUP lists the litany of policy failures – starting with the unforgivable and ineffective lockdowns of March 2024.

We estimate the costs of lockdowns were at least 10 times higher than the public health benefits. Fewer than 10.000 lives were saved but hundreds of thousands of lives were lost, while the economic and educational losses are in the multiple trillions of dollars. And this doesn’t even include the cost of the surrendering of our basic civil liberties as Americans.

Never again is the message.

Here is a list of the massive media coverage so far:

The Wall Street Journal:

Fox & Friends:

FoxNews.com:

Stuart Varney:

NTD/Epoch Times:

MSN:

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2) Why the EV Market Has Flopped

The big story on EVs is that almost no one in red states – half the country – is buying them. Thank Joe Biden for that. His taxpayer subsidies and heavy-handed mandates intended to force the auto companies to make and sell EVs, and consumers to buy them have incited a buyer revolt in the most conservative areas of the country.

In North Dakota, at the end of 2022, there were a grand total of 600 EVs registered. IN THE ENTIRE STATE! There were some 850 registered in Wyoming. In 10 red states, less than one of 1,000 cars on the road are EVs. In these states, driving an EV is like drinking a Bud Light.

If you count all the EVs in North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, Montana, and Idaho, they account for less than one percent of the total U.S. sales. Energy expert Robert Bryce notes that on a per capita basis, a California car buyer is 30 times more likely to buy an EV than a resident of North Dakota.

For further evidence of this red-state-blue-state divide, this chart shows the 10 states with the most EVs as a share of the population. Seven are deep blue states:

By contrast, the 10 states with the smallest market penetration for EVs were ALL red states:

Ironically, Joe Biden is the worst thing that ever happened to this industry. EVs have become “Biden cars.”

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3) Who’s Next to Chair the Fed?

CTUP co-founders Arthur Laffer, Steve Forbes, and Steve Moore with other trusted economic advisers have recommended to President Trump's short list of who should replace current Fed chair Jerome Powell. The next Fed chief needs to be an inflation fighter who understands that pro-growth policies like tax rate reductions reduce inflation while runaway government spending (Bidenomics) incites inflation. The Fed should pursue a strong and stable dollar policy. Here is how the WSJ reported our list:

WASHINGTON—Influential economic advisers to Donald Trump presented the former president with a shortlist of potential candidates to lead the Federal Reserve during a meeting at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last week, according to people familiar with the matter.

In the Thursday meeting, Steve Moore and Arthur Laffer, who have long advised Trump on economic issues, recommended three candidates: Kevin Warsh, an economic-policy adviser to President George W. Bush who later served on the Fed’s board of governors; Kevin Hassett, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Trump administration, and Laffer himself. Laffer, an economic adviser to former President Ronald Reagan, is one of the founding theorists of supply-side economics and a champion of the 2017 tax cuts Trump signed into law.

What do you think? Are there others who should be considered?

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4) Progressives Declare War on Uber and Lyft

The ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft overcame a slew of local regulations blocking their business to become two of the most successful companies of the Internet Age while providing convenient mobility options for many millions of Americans every day.

Now progressives are trying to cripple the industry by imposing excessive minimum wage laws on them.

Take Minneapolis, the “woke” city that spurred the “Defund the Police” movement in 2020. Uber and Lyft just announced they are both leaving the area on May 1 after the Minneapolis city council imposed steep mandatory pay hikes for their drivers.

Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, saw his veto overridden by left-wing allies of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. He now admits "We've got a lot of work to do" to prepare for a city without Uber or Lyft. Democratic Governor Tim Walz agrees – he vetoed similar legislation at the state level last year but can’t control his party’s radicals on the city council.

GOP State Rep. Pat Garofalo says he hopes riders make their anger known to state legislators because the departure of Uber and Lyft “jeopardizes the quality of life of our state, and limits the opportunity for people to get around.”

Meanwhile, New York is considering a killer $20-an-hour minimum for Uber and Lyft drivers and delivery drivers like Door Dash and GrubHub. Remember, these drivers can earn another $5 to $20 an hour more from tips from satisfied customers. For people who call themselves “progressives,” they sure hate progress.

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5) Small Business Partnerships Under Assault from the IRS

Here’s another reason we don’t want 80,000 new IRS agents.

The IRS has announced it will use artificial intelligence to audit business partnerships – including law firms, accounting firms, investment outfits, and other politically attractive white-collar targets for tax shakedowns.

But a new study by the Small Business Council finds that partnerships arent sinister tax havens, but legal entities that are essential to providing housing, transportation, food, health, child and elder care, clothing, financial services, and education. They also account for over 10 million jobs and $1.3 trillion of GDP:

Why is the federal government harassing small businesses to collect more money, rather than looking under its own hood and chasing down the fraudsters and syndicates who have stolen some $250 billion from taxpayers through rip-off schemes? They are the real criminals that are depleting the government’s coffers.

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6) Clever Billboard From a New York Storage Company

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