Link Banana

Today, in the regularly-provacative Ideas section of the Boston Globe, lurks a piece to warm the hearts of “tax-and-spend liberals” (and will no doubt lead to at least one smug declaration of “That’s what I’ve said for years”). A sampling:

Lindert’s work surveyed a century of data across numerous countries and found that high taxes and social spending did not slow the growth of productivity or GDP. Statistically speaking, Lindert found no relationship between the level of social spending and economic growth. High tax nations like Norway grow rapidly and produce high standards of living. Even the income per hour of work in nations like France and Germany is equal to or even exceeds America’s.

Before making the liberal’s argument against it — “restricting options in low-income neighborhoods is a disturbingly paternalistic way of solving the problem” — William Saletan puts Los Angeles’s fast-food-restaurant ban in perspective:

What we’re looking at, essentially, is the beginning of food zoning. Liquor and cigarette sales are already zoned. You can’t sell booze here; you can’t sell smokes there. Each city makes its own rules, block by block. Proponents of the L.A. ordinance see it as the logical next step. Fast food is bad for you, just as drinking or smoking is, they argue. Community Coalition, a local activist group, promotes the moratorium as a sequel to its crackdown on alcohol merchants, scummy motels, and other “nuisance businesses.” An L.A. councilman says the ordinance makes sense because it’s “not too different to how we regulate liquor stores.”

In what seems a fitting follow-on to the previous story, I finally read a few-week-old story by Jared Diamond in The New Yorker.

My conversations with Daniel made me understand what we have given up by leaving justice to the state. In order to induce us to do so, state societies and their associated religions and moral codes teach us that seeking revenge is bad. But, while acting on vengeful feelings clearly needs to be discouraged, acknowledging them should be not merely permitted but encouraged. To a close relative or friend of someone who has been killed or seriously wronged, and to the victims of harm themselves, those feelings are natural and powerful. Many state governments do attempt to grant the relatives of crime victims some personal satisfaction, by allowing them to be present at the trial of the accused, and, in some cases, to address the judge or jury, or even to watch the execution of their loved one’s murderer.

(via kottke)

You may have heard Mr. McCain’s unavoidable claim that the federal government “wasted” $3 million on a study of bear DNA. It turns out he’s misconstruing the study — and the amount of money:

Actually, it was a scientific and logistical triumph, argues Katherine Kendall, 56, mastermind of the Northern Divide Grizzly Bear Project. […]

“There’s never been any information about the status of this population. We didn’t know what was going on — until this study,” Kendall said.

This was an astonishingly ambitious research project involving 207 paid workers, hundreds of volunteers, 7.8 million acres and 2,560 bear sampling sites. The project did not cost $3 million, as McCain’s ad alleges, but more than $5 million, including nearly $4.8 million in congressional appropriations. It had a strong advocate in Congress in Montana’s three-term senator, Conrad Burns, a Republican who was defeated in his reelection bid in 2006.

(via NYTimes)

You may have missed it, but Belgium has been without a government for eight months. Most people see this as a testament to Europe’s stability or it’s stubbornness, maybe you should too.

This account of Vernon, CA — an industrial powerhouse in the Los Angeles area — was hard for me to believe. But if it’s in The Economist it must be true.

Vernon caters so diligently to the needs of businesses because it does not have to balance their demands with those of residents. Only about 90 people live in Vernon, many of them cops and fire-fighters. Most rent their homes from the city for a pittance—a one-bedroom flat costs $147 per month. They are the city’s electorate and, in theory, the pool from which mayors and local politicians are drawn.

It does not sound like a recipe for a functioning democracy, because it isn’t. The mayor has held power for 34 years. Contested elections are almost unknown. The last was in 2006, when three outsiders moved into a house just before the deadline and petitioned to stand for city offices. Their electricity was abruptly cut off and their home declared unfit for habitation. The outsiders got ten votes out of 68 cast. That was a surprise: they had expected just eight. Bill Schneider of the Chamber of Commerce says the shenanigans during the election worried him—because of the risk that another regime might take over. “What outsiders miss is that the damn place works well,” says Lonnie Kane, who runs a clothing firm with his wife, Karen.

The answer is no. Poll taxes were abolished by the 24th Amendment. Pole taxes remain legal. And Texas now has one.

THERE is a new price to be paid for looking at naked women in Texas. On January 1st the state’s strip clubs began imposing a $5 surcharge for each visitor. The “pole tax,” as it is commonly called, is expected to bring the state an additional $40m in revenue each year. Most of the proceeds will go to programmes that support victims of sexual assault.

So I want to know, is this good government or and insane idea from the Texas’s legislature?