"The Dutch experiment in legalised prostitution has been a disaster..."

What have we learned from this experiment — that can never work at all or that the Dutch did it wrong? 

The Dutch government hoped to play the role of the honourable pimp, taking its share in the proceeds of prostitution through taxation. But only 5 per cent of the women registered for tax, because no one wants to be known as a whore — however legal it may be. Illegality has simply taken a new form, with an increase in trafficking, unlicensed brothels and pimping; with policing completely out of the picture, it was easier to break the laws that remained. To pimp out women from non-EU countries, desperate for a new life, remains illegal. But it’s never been easier.

Legalisation has imposed brothels on areas all over Holland, whether they want them or not. Even if a city or town opposes establishing a brothel, it must allow at least one — not doing so is contrary to the basic federal right to work. To many Dutch, legality and decency have been irreconcilably divorced. It has been a social, legal and economic failure — and the madness, finally, is coming to an end.

The brothel boom is over. A third of Amsterdam’s bordellos have been closed due to the involvement of organised criminals and drug dealers and the increase in trafficking of women. Police now acknowledge that the red-light district has mutated into a global hub for human trafficking and money laundering. The streets have been infiltrated by grooming gangs seeking out young, vulnerable girls and marketing them to men as virgins who will do whatever they are told. Many of those involved in Amsterdam’s regular tourist trade — the museums and canals — fear that their visitors are vanishing along with the city’s reputation.

That reminds me: How's the marijuana legalization experiment going? Because that's the Dutch experiment that's catching on in the U.S. It's appealing to think that if we legalize something, we can regulate it and tax it, and the bad people will withdraw and cede the commerce to upstanding entrepreneurs who will abide by the regulations and pay their taxes punctiliously.

I got to that article via David Frum, who quotes Friedrich Hayek: "To say we cannot turn back the clock is to say that human beings cannot learn from experience."

"I don’t endorse the argument of the philosopher John Rawls that no one is entitled to a high income because..."

"... even characteristics that we think internal rather than external to a person, like IQ and leadership skills and athletic skills and energy and good health, are ultimately the product of luck. Therefore, Rawls argued, no one should be allowed to keep more of his earnings than necessary to 'incentivize' him to exert himself in a way that will maximize the social product."

So says Richard Posner. His objection is:

That treats people like the cells of an animal’s body, or the ants in an ant heap. Rather my point is that, to the extent reducing income inequality increases overall social welfare, there is a case for programs, financed by the well to do, that increase overall welfare by more than the cost of the programs. There is no reason to think that the cost would impose a crushing burden on the well to do, a result that would be objectionable quite apart from the costs in diminished incentives, and related costs such as tax avoidance and emigration.

Chew on that. I was distracted by "ant heap." Who says "ant heap" rather than "ant hill"?  I'm more the literary type than the economic. But speaking of departmentalization of each of us having our various skills and predilections, whether inborn or cultivated, my searching for the answer to my heap/hill question brought me quickly to this Robert Frost poem, "Departmental":

An ant on the tablecloth
Ran into a dormant moth
Of many times his size.
He showed not the least surprise.
His business wasn't with such.
He gave it scarcely a touch,
And was off on his duty run.
Yet if he encountered one
Of the hive's enquiry squad
Whose work is to find out God
And the nature of time and space,
He would put him onto the case.
Ants are a curious race;
One crossing with hurried tread
The body of one of their dead
Isn't given a moment's arrest-
Seems not even impressed.
But he no doubt reports to any
With whom he crosses antennae,
And they no doubt report
To the higher-up at court.
Then word goes forth in Formic:
"Death's come to Jerry McCormic,
Our selfless forager Jerry.
Will the special Janizary
Whose office it is to bury
The dead of the commissary
Go bring him home to his people.
Lay him in state on a sepal.
Wrap him for shroud in a petal.
Embalm him with ichor of nettle.
This is the word of your Queen."
And presently on the scene
Appears a solemn mortician;
And taking formal position,
With feelers calmly atwiddle,
Seizes the dead by the middle,
And heaving him high in air,
Carries him out of there.
No one stands round to stare.
It is nobody else's affair
It couldn't be called ungentle
But how thoroughly departmental

Put that in your Rawlsian/Posnerian analysis.

"With Gov. Scott Walker hinting that he may move to end the city's longtime residency rule for public employees..."

"... Mayor Tom Barrett went on the offensive Friday, saying he's certain property values would drop if the requirement goes away."

"People in [the southwest and northwest sides] of the city are concerned about their property values," Barrett said. "They should remember when their property values go down that it was Governor Walker who did that to them if he proposes this. I'm still hoping he doesn't propose this."

Isn't that the wrong reason for requiring residency? You want to use people — deny them free choice — in order to bolster the real estate market? I can see not wanting the city to hollow out as people escape to the suburbs. You don't want Milwaukee to turn into Detroit, but what about the real people who work for the city? If they want to live too far out in the suburbs, their only option is to give up their jobs?

Note the big effect on who teaches the schoolchildren of Milwaukee. And then one of the reasons you might not want to live in Milwaukee is that you don't think the schools are good enough. A vicious circle there, no?

From the comments at the link:

I am considering moving out of Milwaukee. I own a $200,000 house and my taxes are almost as much as my mortgage. How can you even consider making someone pay almost $7K year for a $200k house and I can't even send my kids to the public schools. Don't even get me started on crime.... clean up the city and you won't have to hold employees hostage!

On the other side, also from the comments:

If you draw a city paycheck, the city has every right to require you to contribute to the local tax base by living there. If that's simply too much to bear, there are other places to work. No one is forcing anyone to work for the city of Milwaukee.

Tax.

You might want to buy Turbo Tax and minimize the pain. I know some people think the pain should be felt and the outrage kept ever raw. I used to do my taxes without even using a calculator. No more.

ADDED: I downloaded Turbo Tax and got part way into the process, which includes chatty notes "celebrating" the discovery of exemptions and photos of specific human beings —"Juan M." — smiling as if they are smiling at me and helping me.

It's not just Phil Mickelson — plenty of high-income athletes want out of California taxes.

Mickelson was just the one who was PR-deaf enough to let us know how he feels.

Why do you think Tiger Woods lives in Florida?

In November, voters in California approved a ballot measure raising the top rate on income over $1 million to 13.3% (the increase applies retroactively to last year). ... Mr. Woods grossed $56.4 million in 2012. As a Floridian, he will keep about $7.5 million that he otherwise would have owed to the state of California. His net tax savings over his 16-year career come to about $100 million. Mr. Mickelson last year earned $60.7 million. Paying the 13.3% California rate, he will owe the state $8 million.

That takes Mickelson down to $52.7 million, putting him behind Woods, when he was ahead of him on the money list. Aggravating! (I know, I'm failing to take account of the way state taxes are a deduction on your federal income taxes and everything else that affects after-tax income.)

The benefit of living in a state without an income tax can be diminished by the "jock tax" that states impose on money earned by athletes when they're playing or training in the state. (Luckily for baseball players, spring training is in no-tax Florida or low-tax Arizona.) But in sports like tennis and golf where athletes can train anywhere in the world, a preponderance happen to migrate to states without an income tax.

These celebs — with their endorsements — need good PR, as the Mickelson slip proved. State tax proponents could get proactive and actively shame the sports stars who live in Florida without an adequate cover story. 

For instance, Serena and Venus Williams grew up in Compton, Calif., but moved with their father to Florida in the early 1990s.

Anti-abortion man, who yelled from a tree at the Inauguration, is charged with a crime.

Rives Miller Grogan was charged "with violating a previous order to stay away from the U.S. Capitol, and with violating laws that require authorities to 'preserve the peace and secure the Capitol from defacement,' and with 'preventing any portion of the Capitol Grounds and terraces to used [sic] as playgrounds ... to protect the public property, turf and grass from destruction.'

He had just been arrested and charged with disorderly conduct last week, after police said he shouted from the gallery of the U.S. Senate. He’s been convicted five times in the District since 2009, mostly on charges of disorderly conduct and disobeying police....

Police said Grogan once dropped to the ground in the Capitol Rotunda while clutching a doll and screamed in front of 60 visitors. Another time, police said, he paced the Capitol steps holding a bible and shouting, “Stop killing the babies.”....

Officer Shennell S. Antrobus, a U.S. Capitol Police spokesman, said officials decided to leave Grogan in the tree until after the swearing in to avoid disruptions. Police said he came down on his own after five hours.

Some of this reminds me of our tenacious Wisconsin protesters, whose deep convictions and emotive righteousness have led them to specialize in loud annoyingness and innumerable petty violations. Grogan is different from them too. He's driven by religious fervor, and he's not on the left.

What are the limits of protest?

ADDED: This story reminds me of an old Sunday School song:



I remember singing that as a child and feeling embarrassed by how cute the adults found it whenever a child did the spoken-word part, "Zacchaeus, you come down." Are children's songs written to amuse children or to lure children into performances that will amuse adults? If the latter, is it wrong?

Here's the Bible story, in chapter 19 of Luke:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

Jesus looked with favor on the tax collector, it was his method to conspicuously reach out to those who seemed conspicuously to be sinners when there was a more subtle point that all are sinners and he is reaching out to all of us.

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”

Lefties and righties can argue about what (if anything) Jesus meant to say about taxation. One might say, as I suggested above, that Zacchaeus was chosen because the people had a stereotype equating tax collection with sin, so he easily became The Sinner, for Jesus to bounce his lesson off of. But you might say that Zacchaeus's conversion shows the importance of taxation when it is used to take accumulated wealth from the rich and to distribute it to the poor. That's not the way the taxation of the time was used, and Zacchaeus had become wealthy through his tax collection work. So he's more like a typical rich man, and he is declared saved because he instantly gave half his possessions to the poor, without regard to whether that wealth was ill-gotten. Zacchaeus makes a second promise, to give quadruple restitution of any ill-gotten gains.

What is the proper tax rate for the rich? The Bible implies that it's 50% and that the spending should go toward alleviating poverty. And that's not a 50% income tax, by the way, Mr. Buffet. That's a wealth tax. You should cough up about $15 billion to get right with God.

Politicians and their wives... chez Drudge.

Right now, at Drudge, at the top of the middle and left columns:



The message of the juxtaposition seems to be: Powerful political wives dominate their husbands. Or: Bow down to women, O ye men!

Here's the story about Carla and Nicolas moving to — of all places to avoid taxes — the UK. You know taxes are harsh when England seems like the way out. (Didn't the English rock stars use to move to France to avoid taxes? (Back in the days when The Beatles contributed to the protest-song genre with "Taxman.")

[Nicolas Sarkozy] and his former supermodel third wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy would be likely to settle in an affluent district like South Kensington – so becoming the most high profile Gallic celebrity couple in the city.

But the former president is under investigation for corruption in France, and if he does cross the Channel there will be outrage.

Oh, to be relatively young and super high profile! Carla is waving bye-bye. We'll see what her getaway looks like. (How "Gallic" is Carla Bruni? She was born Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, in Turin, Italy. How coupled is she? She famously cheated on Eric Clapton with Mick Jagger.)

Meanwhile, in America, I've got no criticism of Barack Obama bowing to his wife as he invites her to dance. Or do you think anytime he bows, he calls up the old bowing-to-dictators meme?

When golfers go Depardieu.

Actor Gerard Depardieu has been putting on a big show of running from France to escape high taxation.

Now, here in America, "Golfer Phil Mickelson May Call It Quits Due To Climbing Tax Rates."

If you think perhaps Mickelson is being a bit of a baby for threating [sic] to end a career that’s earned him a spot on this list of 10 wealthiest athletes on the planet because of some tax increases, understand that he’s getting hit on the state level, too. In November, California passed Proposition 30, which increases the top income tax rate on resident millionaires to 13.3%, a drain on Mickelson’s take-home pay that may force him to sell his 9,500 square foot mansion and flee his home state in search of more friendly pastures.

Do Americans care whether Phil Mickelson lives in the United States or not? It's hardly the equivalent of Gerard Depardieu and France. Or is it? Maybe I'm not getting America's attachment to its athletes.

Which, if any, Americans are in a position to protest — effectively protest — taxes by threatening to leave the country? Threatening to leave a state seems more plausible. I would think there are a lot of athletes in team sports who could let it be known they are taking taxes into account, but presumably that's all haggled over in private negotiations. A team in a high-tax state is going to have to put up more money than a team in a low-tax state. It really is the golfer — the athlete in business for himself — who has some choices about where to live. But other than the one-off character Tiger Woods, America doesn't care about golfers.

A cartoon from 1233.

I'm fascinated by the school lesson material at the U.K. National Archive site. That cartoon is from one titled "A Medieval Mystery" that asks students to "decode the dark secrets of this cartoon" and offers tips on things to look for (e.g., devils) and prompts with questions like "How has the cartoonist shown that the man and the woman are Jewish?"

"I think the businesses that bring these men in should also be accountable for not providing opportunities that keep them busy outside of work."

"They should check their employees before hiring (if they don't already) and get rid of those who commit ANY kind of aggression toward women or men. Their social responsibility goes beyond the gate or the door. Maybe the answer is for the towns like Williston to heavily tax the companies so that they can afford to police the men the companies employ. If business doesn't see itself more broadly as a player in the overall health of our society, government needs to step in."

That's a reader comment at the NYT article about all the single men working out in the oil fields of North Dakota, which we've been talking about over in this earlier thread. Please go to that thread to talk about the article more generally. I'm opening up this new thread for discussion of the proposition that business should be responsible for the after-work activities of their employers, that the tendency of men to go out after work looking for female companionship calls for the heavy taxation of business, that individuals looking for sexual relationships in their own free time ought to be conceptualized as an issue of collective "health," that overall societal health requires big "players," and that if businesses don't want to see themselves as the players, they leave a gap that government must fill.

"We're not going to go hog wild."

Says Governor Scott Walker, announcing a plan for a "significant" cut in state income taxes.

ADDED: In the comments, Mary Beth said: "I'm surprised, and a little let down, that this post didn't also have a history of the phrase 'hog wild.'" Thanks for missing the kind of Althouse extras that I really do love to provide. And here they are. The OED has this:

hog-wild adj. U.S. completely wild or unrestrained; crazy (chiefly in to go hog-wild).

1893   Galveston (Texas) Daily News 11 Mar. 4/3   The state of Kansas has gone ‘hog wild’.
1940   C. McCullers Heart is Lonely Hunter i. ii. 26   This here white man had just gone hog wild. He were butting his head against the side of this brick wall.
2005   Time Out N.Y. 3 Feb. 82/1   New York City Ballet went hog-wild with promotions on January 22.

And here's a graph of the history of the use of "hog wild." For some reason, it spiked in 1942 and 1963. WW2 and the Kennedy assassination. Big events in those years. Any number of reasons to turn to "hog wild."

Paul Krugman is "feeling so despondent."

Why? "Because of the way Obama negotiated" the fiscal cliff deal.

He gave every indication of being more or less desperate to cut a deal before the year ended....

He did? Funny, Rush Limbaugh kept saying Obama wanted to go over the cliff. It was his preference. The idea was to get rid of the hated Bush tax cuts and the cliff was there as a device to make it possible to blame the GOP. Back to Krugman:

The only thing that might save this situation is the fact that Obama has to be aware just how much is now riding on his willingness to finally stand up for his side; if he doesn’t, nobody will ever trust him again, and he will go down in history as the wimp who threw it all away.

The wimp?! Hey, remember when they were calling Romney a wimp?



That was back in July. Was Romney "just too insecure to be President"? Meade and I were just talking this morning about exactly that. There were 2 crucial points when Romney failed to stand his ground. He crumpled under intimidation. One was when the 47% video leaked out. Romney went beta, instead of doubling down, getting hardcore. The other was during the second debate, when he was going big on Benghazi, and Obama and Candy Crowley performed their check-the-transcript routine, and Romney deflated into oh, am I wrong?

So, anyway... is Obama just too insecure to be President?

"Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000..."

"... while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear win for President Obama, who campaigned on higher taxes for the wealthy."

Is that a "clear win"? Good lord, whatever happens, the NYT will spin it as a win for Obama. I thought his number was $250,000 for couples, and now, it's way up at $450,000. That should be called a clear compromise. How hard it must be for the Republicans to compromise, when even clear compromises are declared clear wins for the other side.

"France's Constitutional Council on Saturday rejected a 75% upper income tax rate to be introduced in 2013..."

"... in a setback to Socialist President Francois Hollande's push to make the rich contribute more to cutting the public deficit."

The Council, made up of nine judges and three former presidents, is concerned the tax would hit a married couple where one partner earned above a million euros but it would not affect a couple where each earned just under a million euros.

Why does that make it unfair? It seems as though the court is sticking up for the single-earner household — for traditional marriage. Why does fairness require that? I think this is what we here in the United States would call a policy decision, to be left to the legislature. (Yeah, a 75% tax rate is really high, but that's not the legal flaw this court found.)

What going off the "fiscal cliff" will cost you...

... in increased taxes.

Gun control and the "common sense" meme.

I got 19,300 results from a Google news search for "common sense" and "Sandy Hook."

To be fair, not all of the "common sense" is a characterization of gun regulation proposals. Here's "Parenting common sense and solace," for example. And here's one referring to "the common-sense procedures" that schools can put in place — and that in fact were in place at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But most of them seem to be about "common sense" gun control.

Why is "common sense" the meme of choice?

1. The massacre itself feels senseless, and we want things to make sense. Our fervent desire for sense about what happened in the past makes us amenable to related ideas for making sense. Politicians and policymakers step forward to fulfill/manipulate this need for meaning.

2. To say that this "sense" is "common" is to say: a. It's easy, relax, and see what is right in front of your eyes, and b. This conversation is over, and only weird/bad people are cluttering it with other ideas. "Common sense," by offering closure and comfort, seems well-meaning and helpful, but it is also manipulative and power-enhancing.

3. "Common sense" says: I'm moderate. I'm not about banning and confiscating guns, but doing a few modest things that will constrain the bad people of this world without burdening the good people (like you). In that, it's similar to "balanced approach," which is getting a workout in connection with the "fiscal cliff" negotiations. Those who want more taxes — only for the bad guys, not for you! — want to look sensible and moderate. It's those other people who are unbalanced.

4. "Common sense" is a quintessentially American frame of mind. It was the title of the pamphlet Thomas Paine wrote in 1775, stirring up revolutionary fervor. It was completely incendiary and treasonous. And it led to quite a bit of gun violence.

There were those in high places who, while in agreement with Paine's sentiments, voiced criticism of his method. John Adams, ... in his Thoughts on Government wrote that Paine's ideal sketched in Common Sense was "so democratical, without any restraint or even an attempt at any equilibrium or counter poise, that it must produce confusion and every evil work."

Ah! So balanced approach has deep roots too. We are a pragmatic people, and we like practical proposals. We're amenable to arguments framed as balanced and common sense. But if we are indeed practical, we know these are propaganda words, and we look on them with suspicion.

Drudge features huge, horrible Pelosi laughing skull-face.

This is expressive:



You have to click over to Drudge to get the real effect. The picture is huge. The link goes here.)

The issue of standing in the Supreme Court's same-sex marriage cases.

Linda Greenhouse explains the 2 standing problems in a way that is accessible to the general reader.

The Windsor case is especially striking, because the plaintiff's stake in the case is knock-you-over-the-head clear and tangible:

Ms. Windsor owes more than $300,000 in federal estate tax on the property left to her by the woman to whom she was legally married in the eyes of New York State. Had she been married to a man, she would have inherited the property tax-free. With DOMA barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage, and the Obama administration taking the position that it will enforce the law until the Supreme Court or Congress tell it otherwise, there certainly seems to be a controversy between the parties sufficient to meet the test of Article III jurisdiction.

But the Obama administration declines to defend the constitutionality of DOMA, and Windsor won in the lower courts, making things nonadversarial, and the federal courts can only resolve actual controversies between the parties. But it's not as if DOMA has gone away. It still affects people, and Congress isn't about to repeal it.

Democrats in Congress wanted no part of defending DOMA, even though the statute had passed both houses in 1996 by big bipartisan majorities and was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. So a five-member House leadership body called the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group decided, over the objections of its two Democratic members, to take over the executive branch’s abandoned defense of DOMA....

The question in the case is whether this Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group can take over defending the law and thereby preserve the adversarial quality of the case. Obviously, it will be litigated with intensity and excellence. The Group has Paul Clement as its lawyer. But that's not the point in standing doctrine.

"I find this quite shabby... All that just to avoid paying tax."

Gerard Depardieu moves to Belgium.

Belgian residents do not pay wealth tax, which in France applies to individuals with assets above 1.3m euros (£1m; $1.7m), starting at a rate of 0.25%. Nor do they pay capital gains tax on share sales.

Next year, the top rate of income tax in France is due to become 75% on earnings above 1m euros. It is currently 50% in Belgium.

"How Much of Each State's Budget Comes From the Feds?"

"From 24% (Alaska) to 49% (Mississippi)."