Let’s get started:
1) More times than I care to mention we have made the case that most American politicians are completely ignorant when it comes to even basic economic principles. They raise the minimum wage to help the working poor and jobs for the working poor disappear. Freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasi-Cortez, a business/economic major in college, has no idea what the definition of the unemployment rate is. An economic professor is hired by Washington politicians to design Obama Care and it is a total failure.
We have previously discussed the economic failure in Philadelphia relative to its idiotic soda tax. For those that missed that discussion of another failed economics test for politicians, consider the updated status of this failure as laid out in a recent article on the Freedom Headlines website. “Soda Tax Backfires, Now Philadelphia Is Hurting For It:”
- In theory the soda tax that the city politicians enacted was supposed to force city residents to make healthier beverage choices and get healthier.
- But since these politicians have no concept of basic economics, the economics of this decision has been a disaster for the city.
- The tax was so high that consumers did not stop drinking soda, they just left the city limits to buy soda where it was not taxed, namely out in the suburbs.
- Simple economics: when the price of a product gets too high, consumers will shop around for cheaper alternatives, duh.
- A recent study found that there was not higher demand for healthier beverage alternatives in the city, i.e. consumers did not switch to bottled water or other healthier liquid options, they simply went elsewhere to buy less expensive soda.
- By not understanding the simple concept of price elasticity, the city politicians raised the city tax on soda 17% which resulted in a sales drop of 51%, wiping out the tax increase and more.
- The article does some simple economic math by assuming that one million ounces of soda was sold annually before the tax increase went into effect.
- It the amount of soda consumed had stayed the same, the city would have seen annual soda tax revenue go from $54.300 to $62,400.
- But with volume decreased under the concept of price elasticity the city only received about $31,200 in annual revenue despite raising the tax rate by 17%.
- Almost immediately after the soda tax increase took effect, Pepsi said it would have to lay off 80 to 100 workers at their Philadelphia distribution locations because of decreased demand. [Source: www.philly.com]
- Acme supermarkets had to reduce hours in its 16 city stores because of the increased tax: “The beverage tax fell on about 4,000 items. In Acme city stores, soda sales dropped as much as 80 percent. Sales of other items covered by the tax, such as juices, creamers and energy drinks, were down 30 percent, and the number of customers declined by 5 percent. Philly stores cut an average of 150 to 200 employee hours per week, resulting in lighter paychecks for employees.”
- As for the original purpose of the law, reduce the consumption of sugary drinks to improve citizens’ health, it was a bust, people just went elsewhere to get their soda fix at more reasonable prices.
- Did not improve the health of citizens.
- Reduced the employment level of workers in the city.
- Reduced the number of hours other workers had available to them.
- Gutted an existing city tax revenue stream.
2) Sometimes politicians say the darndest things. In fact, we have dedicated whole posts to some of the idiocy that they have said over the years.You can access those gems of nonsense by putting”darndest things” in the search box above. Unfortunately, much of the stupid things they say call into question if they really know what they are talking about.
Joe Biden recently fell into this category. At a campaign stop in New Hampshire, he voiced his opposition to gun magazines that hold “100 clips.” But it is physically impossible for a magazine to hold “100 clips,” that is just idiocy. A clip holds bullets together and a single clip holding multiple bullets is then loaded into a single magazine.
So, Biden is talking about abridging Second Amendment rights and cannot even get the basics of the industry straight. How are we supposed to take him and other Second Amendment opponents seriously when they do not know the difference between a magazine, a clip and a bullet?
Now, apparently, Biden realized his mistake and corrected himself. But please understand what you are talking about before you start messing with the Bill of Rights.
3) We have previously talked about how cities like San Francisco have decided to not make it a crime to defecate, urinate, or shoot up illegal drugs in public. As a result, cities have had to create hazmat sanitation units to clean the streets of defecation and urination on a daily basis, the chances of disease and infections have risen dramatically previously dormant diseases such as typhus have made a comeback and there has been a significant negative impact on the environment as raw sewage is flushed down storm drains and into rivers and the ocean.
Nasty stuff, crises that city politicians have no clue on how to manage or fix. Fortunately, at least for the rest of the country, this disaster has been confined to liberal run west coast cities such as Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Unfortunately, these problems have migrated out of the west coast and are affecting other cities such as Denver. Consider the poor plight of a small business owner in Denver and how liberal/Democratic politicians have made his life and business a similar living hell:
- According to an article by Ryan Saavedra, writing for the Daily Wire website, a Denver business owner has been fined by the city for not picking human feces that constantly appears in front of his business on a public sidewalk.
- The business owner claims that homeless people defecate in front of his business every day but the city refuses to clean up after them and are now fining him for not cleaning up also.
- Thus, he is taking the city to court to force them to do their job and keep the streets clean, something a taxpaying business owner should expect.
- The business owner, Jawaid Bazyer, who operates an internet service provider company in Denver, describes the situation: “The wall [of his building] is a bathroom stall. They [homeless folks] lean up against it and let it rip. In downtown Denver, that’s nonstop now, just piles of poop.”
- He goes on: “There’s food, trash, drug deals. In the alley, we get the defecation, drug needles.”
- He says that he has employees chased and attacked by criminals operating in the area.
- He sometimes calls local police to get vagrants off of his property several times a day to no avail.
- Given that the city sanitation and police have been ineffective in helping him, he started to refuse to clean up the feces and used drug needles from the front of his business, which resulted in the city fining him for not doing so.
- He rightfully claims that the situation is a bio hazard and he should not require his employees to expose themselves to such a danger: “Because it’s a bio-hazard. It could be infectious. I didn’t hire these people to clean poop off the ground. I can’t, as an employer, just say, ‘Go and clean up the feces. I’m not the one doing this, and they won’t do anything about the people committing the crimes, but I’m the one who’s easy to find and easy to punish.”
Another day of political class insanity: a failed tax in Philly, a failed understanding of gun basics, and a failed city government in Denver that endangers the health and financial welfare of everyone in the city.
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