March 04, 2020

The Quest For Perfect Fairness And Justice In Property Taxation, New York City Edition

March 04, 2020/ Francis Menton

Before leaving my current round of posts on New York City real estate issues, it occurs to me to make some fun of one of the funniest policy issues in that arena, namely the question of “fairness” of the property tax system.
New York has a crazy patchwork of laws and rules for who pays how much property tax. Those laws and rules have arisen from a long history of the usual attempts to create perfect fairness and justice in the system.
For today’s purposes, here’s what’s important: When trying to create a perfectly “fair” property tax system, there are two main goals which are, unfortunately, completely inconsistent. Goal one is that in a “fair” system, properties of equal value “should” be taxed at equal amounts. Really, who could disagree with that? But goal number two is that in a “fair” system, people of modest incomes “should” not be driven from their homes by rapidly accelerating property tax bills.
If you think about these two”fairness” goals for a moment, you will quickly realize that they cannot both be achieved at the same time. The more you strive to achieve one of them, the farther you get from the other. . . . .

March 02, 2020

How Do You Measure The "Success" Of Affordable Housing?

March 02, 2020/ Francis Menton

Here in Manhattan, it is an article of unshakable religious faith that conjuring “affordable housing” into existence, through some magic recipe of taxpayer subsidies and coercion, is a fundamental responsibility of government.
And then you have the tiny handful of dissenters, like myself.
It was way back in January 2013 that I called government-coerced “affordable housing” the “most expensive possible way to help the smallest number of people.” A few months after that (in September 2013) I officially nominated “affordable housing” in Manhattan as “the worst possible public policy.”
In the intervening seven or so years, it has only become more and more obvious that I was right. . . . Is anyone starting to get the picture?
The answer is no.

February 29, 2020

February 29, 2020/ Francis Menton

Nothing, and I mean nothing, leads so quickly to the loss of all critical faculties as global warming hysteria.
One key claim in the maelstrom of global warming hype is the assertion that sea level will shortly rise and swamp coastal cities. I would put this claim in the category of total BS. For more detail than you would ever want to know on that subject, go to this link.
But for today’s purposes, assume that there is something to the claim of a big impending sea level rise.
I live here in Manhattan, specifically Lower Manhattan (the southern part of the island). If sea level is about to rise and swamp coastal cities, Manhattan looks like ground zero, and Lower Manhattan in particular. We are an island surrounded by estuaries, otherwise known as the sea. . . .

February 25, 2020

February 25, 2020/ Francis Menton

It was January 10, 2017 — just 10 days before President Trump’s inauguration — when Buzzfeed published the text of what came to be called the “Trump-Russia Dossier.” That event set off a tsunami of what easily became thousands of articles in the mainstream press claiming or suggesting that there had been some sort of “collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia to “hack the election.”
I first commented on the subject a few weeks later in a post on March 2, 2017 titled “What Is With This Weird Obsession With Russia?” In the midst of what were at that moment multiple articles every day in every mainstream press outlet obsessing over the supposed Trump-Russia cabal, that post made the obvious point that the whole idea that Russia had colluded with Trump or his people to help him win the election made no sense whatsoever.
Perhaps the most definitive reason why the thesis made no sense was that Russia’s energy-dependent economy had been crippled by the fall in oil and gas prices that had occurred in about 2014-15, brought about by American fracking, and if Putin was even remotely rational he would prefer the candidate who proposed to restrict American energy development over the candidate who proposed to unleash it.
Two plus years of Russia! Russia! Russia! later, the Mueller Report (released April 18, 2019) finally put the whole thing to rest. Or so we thought. . . .

February 23, 2020

February 23, 2020/ Francis Menton

Bernie Sanders has now scored a decisive victory in the Nevada caucuses, and is leading in the RealClearPolitics average of polls in almost every upcoming state. The RCP betting odds section gives Sanders a 55.6% chance of winning the nomination. It’s looking increasingly like the nomination is his to lose.
Well, if you’re the party of free stuff, why shouldn’t the guy who offers the most free stuff win? Bernie is clearly willing to outbid all of his rivals in the free stuff auction. What makes you think anybody can beat him by just bidding less?
At some point, if another candidate is going to prevail with a lesser bid, that candidate needs to articulate a limiting principle in some shape or form.
By a limiting principle, I mean a reasoned argument that provides some sort of rationale as to why government programs and expenditures to solve all human wants and needs can’t just be infinite; and that provides some basis for drawing a line beyond which government growth should not occur. . . .

February 21, 2020

February 21, 2020/ Francis Menton

Over the period from November 2018 to March 2019, I wrote a series of posts on the subject of the true costs of trying to get electricity from intermittent wind and solar sources.
The gist of all this was that you can’t realistically evaluate the cost of getting electricity using the intermittent renewable sources just by looking at the cost of making a kilowatt-hour of electricity when the source happens to be working at its best.
Sure, a solar panel may generate some very cheap kilowatt-hours around noon on a sunny June 21. But now that you’ve invested a few billion in solar panels, what is the plan to provide the electricity people need on an overcast December 21, when the panels may work at only 3% of capacity during the day and nothing at night?
If your plan is a backup system of fossil fuel facilities, now you are paying for both the solar panels and the fossil fuel plants, so you’ve close-to-doubled the cost of electricity no matter how cheap the power from the solar panels may be on the June day; plus your fossil fuel plants will still be running most of the time, and your emissions reductions will be minimal.
If you want serious emissions reductions, you will need to push past 50% and on to 100% of your power from renewables, so you will need to phase out the fossil fuel plants. And replace them with — what?? And at what cost?