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Tax avoidance is the catch-all phrase economists use to denote activities you would not otherwise engage in, other than in an attempt to avoid paying some sort of tax, or to lower your overall tax liability. Maybe you don’t work as much as you could to avoid being bumped up into that next income tax bracket, or put in that questionably necessary home office.

Well to the surprise of no one, tax-happy France has even placed excises on it’s signature product. The city of Paris has a tax on wine served in restaurants… but it’s levied by the piece of stemware or glassware used.

National Geographic’s Intelligent Travel blog has the story about a trip to the restaurant in question. I’ll let you read the whole thing for a better idea of how they avoid this tax, but here’s a hint:

The Heritage Foundation has an ugly chart on how quickly federal spending increased versus revenues for the last several presidential administrations. Notice anything?

This is what Caleb does. He blithely mentions some question that should be answered, knowing it will tempt me into researching it and posting the conclusions. He’ll ask something like “I wonder if there are more stolen bases now, or in past years of baseball?”

This time he asks:

Is the lack of foreclosures in Kentucky a good indicator of Kentucky’s economic outlook? Is the stability in Kentucky’s housing market an indicator of strength or stagnation?

According to the National Association of Realtors, Kentucky’s rate of sales in existing homes dropped 14.2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2006 and 2007. This is a relatively small drop, far below the national average of 20.9 percent and below the drop for any region of the country as well.

In addition the prices for existing homes dropped only 2.3 and 3.3 percent in Lexington and Louisville respectively, compared with a 5.8 percent drop nationally. Memphis, a city often compared to Louisville in demographics, saw a drop of 12.4 percent.

This would seem to indicate that Kentucky is largely being spared the worst part of the housing downturn. This is a common pattern for Kentucky’s economy though. We are less susceptible to price bubble collapses, because we are less likely to get the benefits of the bubble in the first place. Kentucky was largely spared the worst of the dot-com bubble collapse because we simply don’t have many high tech industries.

In this case we have again been spared part of the downturn, because we shared to a smaller extent in the upswing.

From Business First:

Kentucky had 476 foreclosure filings in February — a 24.2 percent decrease from a year earlier and a 16.8 percent fall from January, according to the latest report from RealtyTrac Inc.

Kentucky’s foreclosure rate for last month was one filing for every 3,919 households, ranking it 45th in the nation for foreclosures.

Nevada led the nation in the rate of foreclosures in February, with one filing for every 165 households. It was followed by California, Florida, Arizona and Colorado.

The national foreclosure rate last month was one filing for every 557 households, a 60 percent increase from February 2007, but a 4 percent decline from January.

RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio noted a small decrease was seen last February, too.

“The 4 percent monthly decrease this February was similar to the 6 percent monthly decrease we saw in February 2007,” he said in a news release. “However, the year-over-year increase of 60 percent this February was significantly higher than the 19 percent year-over-year increase in February 2007, indicating we have still not reached the peak of foreclosure activity in this cycle.”

Here’s a question. Is the lack of foreclosures in Kentucky a good indicator of Kentucky’s economic outlook? Is the stability in Kentucky’s housing market an indicator of strength or stagnation?

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I got the following Email today:

Joe Smith started the day early having set his alarm clock (MADE IN JAPAN)
for 6am. While his coffeepot (MADE IN CHINA ) was perking, he shaved with his electric razor ( MADE IN HONG KONG). He put on a dress shirt ( MADE IN SRI LANKA ), designer jeans ( MADE IN SINGAPORE ) and tennis shoes ( MADE IN KOREA). After cooking his breakfast in his new electric skillet( MADE IN
INDIA) he sat down with his calculator ( MADE IN MEXICO ) to see how much he could spend today. After setting his watch (MADE IN TAIWAN) to the radio ( MADE IN INDIA ) he got in his car (MADE IN GERMANY ) filled it with GAS (from Saudi Arabia) and continued his search for a good paying AMERICAN J OB . At the end of yet another discouraging and fruitless day checking his Computer (Made In Malaysia ) (with tech support in INDIA) , Joe decided to relax for a while. He put on his sandals ( MADE IN BRAZIL ) poured himself a glass of wine (MADE IN FRANCE) and turned on his TV (MADE IN INDONESIA), and then wondered why he can’t find a good paying job in.. AMERICA…..

I had some time, so I replied with the following:

Joe woke up early to his digital alarm clock/radio, which he only paid $10 for and has lasted 6 years. Before these were made overseas, they cost $50 and few people could afford to buy them. He made coffee which was from Columbia, which produces the highest quality coffe in the world. They spend nine months growing it, then pick it by hand, bag it, pack it onto ocean liners then trasnport, refine, grind, package and sell it at Joe’s local store. All of this only cost him $3 for a month’s supply of the best coffe in the world.

Joe got out his calculator to figure out how much he could spend today. He needed the calculator because Joe was never very good at math. His public school was not very good, and largely ignored his poor math abilities. He never figured it was that important anyway, since he had the calculator he got for free with a tank of gas anyway. 20 years ago the same digital calculator would have cost $20.

Then Joe got in his American made car, which hadn’t been running right for over a year. It was only three years old and he wanted to get it so he could “Buy American,” but it was murder on gas mileage and he kept having to pay the mechanic because the warranty was so much shorter than the higher quality, less expensive foreign made cars. But at least he bought American. Finally giving up on getting his car started in the cold weather he borrowed his neighbor’s Toyota.

Joe drove down to the union hall to see if there was any jobs available that day. He had been laid off from his job bolting the legs onto chairs. For fifteen years he had operated a screw gun putting legs onto chairs and earned a union mandated wage of $25 an hour plus full health benefits. Then the company realized they had to charge $200 per chair to pay for Joe’s salaray and benefits, and no one was buying their chairs anymore. Refusing to move the factory overseas they were forced to close their doors. Now all the employees are out of work, and customers have one less choice available for chairs.

Luckily Joe is getting very generous unemployment benefits paid for by the taxes his neighbors pay, and has been since he was laid off six months ago. He can still afford wine from France and his satellite television. His health care is paid for by the state too, and his has another six months to go until he has to find a new job. Since he never was very good at math and never learned to do anything other than screw the legs onto chairs, Joe is waiting for another state agency to tell him where to go work, and what to do.

[via Will Wilkinson]

Before all the laudatory articles about Fidel Castro and Cuba die down… remember that Cuba is no place for an egalitarian socialist.  The Spectator’s Neil Clark writes:

Stay on the officially approved tourist trail round the newly renovated streets of ‘Old Havana’ and you’d get the impression that Cuba was a tropical version of Switzerland. There are smart restaurants, designer shops and modern hotels. Wander a few streets away, however, and you’ll witness scenes of incredible dereliction. Dilapidated buildings with wires hanging out, streets that haven’t been resurfaced for more than 50 years, balconies that look like they’re going to fall down at any minute. In my travels in the Middle East and Asia, I’ve certainly witnessed squalor, but nothing prepared me for the back streets of Havana.

The average wage in Cuba is a pitiful $17 a month. The monthly ration which includes 283g of fish, 226g of chicken, ten eggs and 1.8kg of potatoes is barely enough for a fortnight, meaning most Cubans need to work the black market to stay alive. Things that we in Britain take totally for granted — such as toilet paper, toothpaste and pens — are luxury goods in Cuba. I’ll never forget the look of joy from an old lady when I handed her a couple of old marker pens and a coloured pencil.

David Adams of the Bluegrass Institute seems to have something against tax cuts.

The bill in question is described by Adams on KentuckyVotes.org in that it will:

create a state refundable Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income individual taxpayers who take the federal EITC and a state non-refundable work opportunity tax credit for employers who take the federal WOTC.

In fact, the federal EITC is the most successful tax credit ever instituted. It is just that, a tax credit for individuals who hold down steady jobs and earn their own income as opposed to taking government benefits. It is the closest policy we have to Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax” idea, and owes its origination to Friedman’s ideas as was reported in the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal.

The EITC has done more than any other single policy to raise people out of poverty. It is the most efficient tax policy we have. Is it a transfer payment? Yes. But it does so exactly like a system of mass transit that enables poor people to get to work. To get the benefit, you have to work.

Luckily in the same post, Mr. Adams once again repeated his support for creating a bureaucracy to administer drug testing to recipients of government benefits, which gets aired more often than reruns of M*A*S*H. If the idea is to get people off welfare, an EITC is far more effective than drug testing.