Not believing in
See this story.
By the way, have you noticed how the problem has morphed over the years?
I remember reading all about "The Greenhouse Effect" in elementary school and junior high. A specific, verifiable problem with a specific, verifiable mechanism driving it, which turned out to specifically not be happening.
Next, we heard about global warming. A specific, verifiable problem with a vague mechanism driving it, that turns out to have happened for about 30 years, but now . . . not so much.
Enter "climate change." This may be a winner. This is the real "change we can believe in" Both the problem and the mechanism are vague enough that no one can disprove them. Earth gets warmer = climate change! Earth gets colder = climate change! Every honest person, when asked "is the climate changing?" must answer "yes." Then the yelling about the horrors of capitalism, the evils of SUVs and the poor polar bears starts, and no one listens to the rest of the answer (from the article):
what do I believe about climate change? Firstly climate change is real, and has occurred on Earth for at least 4 billion years as long as an atmosphere and oceans have existed. Climate change occurs in cycles at various time scales, with the shorter time scales known as weather (by convention the distinction is 35 years). Trying to stop or control climate change is akin to stopping ocean tides. Secondly, I believe human activities affect climate, otherwise why would I bother with a mortgage. The climate inside my house is different to the climate that would exist if my house were gone.
Second Item:
Maryland has done us a service by demonstrating the effects of a huge tax increase on "the wealthy." The Wall street Journal has the story here.
Basically they raised the tax rate on those making over $1 million dollars a year. Here's what happened:
The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it." One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates.
Huh, who'd have thought? As the article explains "this is one reason that depending on the rich to finance government is so ill-advised: Progressive tax rates create mountains of cash during good times that vanish during recessions."
