Chuck Marr and Bryann DaSilva for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Federal income tax parameters are generally designed to ensure that federal income and payroll taxes don’t tax people into — or deeper into — poverty. The glaring exception to this principle is childless adults, more than 8 million of whom are taxed into or deeper into poverty by federal taxes. The main reason is that they are largely excluded from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which is too small, or, for many, non-existent, to offset their income taxes and the employee share of payroll taxes. …
The standard deduction and personal exemption are set at levels to ensure that families with children, as well as low-income seniors who receive most of their income from Social Security, don’t start owing income tax until their earnings exceed the poverty line. Also, working-poor families with children can qualify for an EITC and Child Tax Credit that together offset their substantial payroll tax liability and supplement their earnings.
Single childless adults, in contrast, begin owing income taxes below the poverty line and receive little or no EITC. They also face significant payroll taxes. Hence, the federal tax code taxes more than 8 million people in this group into or deeper into poverty.
Think of the butterflies
Angela Logomasini for the Competitive Enterprise Institute: Like many nature lovers and gardeners, last year I grew a milkweed garden for monarch butterflies, starting from seed. After a long summer of manually picking pesky milkweed bugs and aphids off the plants, I noticed one monarch caterpillar. Success! I hope that caterpillar made it to the butterfly stage, and then took off to Mexico where many monarchs overwinter.
My efforts represent a tiny part of a larger effort to save these butterflies through private conservation, whose numbers have dwindled in recent decades. Such efforts may have begun to pay off as the number of monarch butterflies overwintering in Mexico this year is up. Of course, one year does not make a trend and other factor play a role such as weather. But private conservation is certainly a key element in helping this marvelous species of butterflies survive. …
Unfortunately, private efforts to create habitat for the butterflies could come to a halt if the federal government decides it needs to step and list the monarch as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act. Some environmental groups have petitioned the Department of Interior to list the species as endangered. Once a species is listed, regulations may apply to its habitat, and the costs to farmers and other property owners can be substantial. Such costs and regulations discourage people from creating and maintaining habitat for endangered species. And in extreme cases, people will destroy habitat to avoid potential regulations.
The latest transportation fad makes no sense
Randal O’Toole for Downsizing the Federal Government: The District of Columbia opened its long-delayed streetcar for business at the end of February. Actually, it’s a stretch to say it is open “for business,” as the city hasn’t figured out how to collect fares for it, so it isn’t charging any.
Exuberant but arithmetically challenged city officials bragged that the streetcar would traverse its 2.2-mile route at an average speed of 12 to 15 miles per hour, taking a half hour to get from one end to the other (which is 4.4 miles per hour). If there were no traffic and it didn’t have to stop for passengers or run in to any automobiles along the way, they admitted, it would still take 22 minutes, which is six miles per hour. …
Washington isn’t the only city caught up in the streetcar fad. Following the example of Portland, Ore., Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., Cincinnati, Kansas City and several other cities have opened or are building streetcar lines. Most of these lines are about two miles long, are no faster than walking and cost $50 million or more per mile, while buying the same number of buses would cost a couple million, at most. …
These cities argue that streetcars stimulate economic development. Yet a recent study sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration found that not only was there no evidence of such stimuli, but none of the cities that had built streetcars was systematically measuring the impact. Instead, most were busy subsidizing or coercing, through prescriptive zoning, new development along the streetcar routes.
In fact, there is no reason to think that a slow, congestion-causing, bicycle-accident-inducing rail line would promote new development.
Compiled by Joseph Lawler from reports published by the various think tanks.
