Jonathan Williams on Utah and Economic Success:
Just a few of Utah’s many impressive policy achievements include public pension reforms for government workers that began to address unfunded liabilities, the “Truth in Taxation” law that has added needed transparency and accountability to property taxes, and the “Financial Ready Utah” package of legislation that analyzes federal funds and works to protect Utah taxpayers from many of the risks attached to the “free lunch” promised by Washington.
While these reforms have worked to keep Utah at the top in the Rich States, Poor States economic outlook rankings, other states are also making impressive strides. For instance, Florida, a state without a personal income tax, now ranks second best in economic outlook.
North Carolina has dramatically improved and now has the fifth-best outlook, after passing comprehensive tax reform throughout the last decade, a process that continues. In recent weeks, North Carolina just passed significant new tax relief that will further reduce individual income tax rates, provide enhanced school choice for families, and completely eliminate the corporate income tax over a number of years.
Policymakers in Arizona approved a historic state budget that includes a net tax cut of $1.9 billion, reduces personal income tax rates to a flat 2.5 percent for most Arizonans, and caps the rate paid by high earners at 4.5 percent. Given these free-market changes happening in other states, will Utah be able to stay ahead? . . .
Benjamin Zycher on how a federal regulator is hijacking energy policy:
It is not FERC’s job to enforce policies — in particular, politically driven favoritism consistent with the current opinions of elites — not enacted by Congress.
Notwithstanding the fervent prayers of many special-interest groups, Congress has promulgated no such laws in the context of climate policies and greenhouse-gas emissions. But climate obsessions are fashionable, and invitations to the right cocktail parties yield the kind of high that the smugglers cannot deliver. Like most public officials, FERC commissioners feel political pressures, and have incentives to yield to them as they contemplate the future trajectories of their careers. Moreover, some of the FERC commissioners believe in the climate “crisis” narrative, and are determined to do something about it, notwithstanding the absence of any attendant legal mandate.
And so we now observe a growing penchant on the part of FERC’s majority to implement favoritism toward unconventional energy, wind and solar power in particular, combined with a real bias against fossil fuels whatever the competitive advantages of the latter. However unsurprising, this shift is deeply inappropriate and will yield increasingly adverse impacts over time. . . .
The above and more at Capital Matters . . .