From the right: EZ Way To Cut Home Prices
“A who’s who list of right-of-center” groups last week asked Speaker Mike Johnson to set a House vote on the More Homes on the Market Act “which would boost the exemption from capital gains tax for people selling their primary residence” — “an idea for making housing affordable that 64 congressional Democrats have also endorsed,” explain The Washington Times’ editors.
The problem: Homeowners whose “kids have moved away” can’t “downsize into more modest accommodations” without risking “the taxman’s wrath,” so “they stay where they are, leaving new families with fewer choices when shopping for a suitably sized place to live.”
IRS rules impose tax penalties on homes whose price has risen more than $250,000, “or $500,000 when filing jointly”; the bill would double those limits — recognizing that decades of inflation alone can account for those “gains.”
Conservative: What Drug Legalizers Ignore
The “legalize and tax addictive drugs” strategy assumes that “addicted users’ demand” is “highly inelastic” — that is, that “reducing supply through enforcement” only “makes drug traffickers richer,” notes City Journal’s Charles Fain Lehman.
But that ignores the impact of prohibition in “suppressing consumption and associated harms.”
That is: “The actual act of prohibiting drugs” yields “relatively large reductions in consumption,” while the legalize-and-tax model “depends on the assumption that policymakers will set socially optimal taxes.”
Experience shows that excise taxes wind up capped by “corporate lobbying” and the persistence of “rosbust grey markets” that provide “an estimated half” of the supply.
In the end, “strategic enforcement” coupled with “preserving prohibition” does the least harm.
Politics desk: Noem Has Only Herself To Blame
“Finally,” cheers National Review’s Jim Geraghty, President Trump exorcised “one of the biggest liabilities” on his team: Kristi Noem at the Department of Homeland Security.
She’d “racked up an impressively unimpressive record” in the national spotlight, and her response to the Minnesota shootings proved she was among his “worst” picks.
But “what got Noem dismissed” was Trump’s anger over her $220 million DHS ad campaign, which featured her “prominently,” and her claim that he’d approved it.
“If that ad campaign had been a television series, it would have ranked among the most expensive series of all time.” She also reportedly mismanaged border-wall construction.
Fact is, “nobody has done more to harm the career and reputation of Kristi Noem than Kristi Noem.”
China beat: Beijing Admits Its Economic Woes
“Economic reality comes for us all in the end,” even China’s Communist Party, quips The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, noting that PRC officials just cut their economic-growth target for the coming year to 4.5%-5%, “the lowest level since 1991.”
It’s “an admission that not even President Xi Jinping thinks he can pretend growth will be faster.”
Xi could’ve created “new avenues for productive private investment that would boost productivity” and domestic demand, but instead is trying to “consolidate” party control over the economy.
“China’s economy can still grow despite these policy failures,” but its “top-down model of political control is leading to slower growth and fewer gains for the working class.”
It clearly “isn’t the juggernaut of Communist myth that America should emulate.”
War watch: How Xi Might Hit Back
US moves on Venezuela and Iran are hurting China, including cutting off “nations that supply nearly 17% of its imported oil at deeply subsidized prices,” so watch out for Xi Jinping “to try to upset the American apple cart in the coming days if it looks like the Iranian regime is on the cusp of collapsing,” warns Henry Olsen at The Washington Examiner.
“China won’t militarily intervene,” but Xi may push UN resolutions to “give many nations an easy way to protest the war.”
Riskier moves: “accelerate its sales of US Treasury [bonds],” which would likely push up US interest rates, or “take the ultimate risk of all: move on Taiwan while America is committed elsewhere.”
— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
