PARCC Collectivists Disregard Education Needs of Actual Individual Students

PARCC” stands for “Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers.” Sounds benevolent enough, except that the standardized tests associated with that “assessment” is colliding with a growing rebellion from teachers and parents, who are increasingly opting their children out of the PARCC tests.

Supporters of PARCC are pushing back. But what motivates these opponents of the “opt-out” movement? A clear indication of that motivation is provided in the very title of a 5/24/15 editorial by the New Jersey Star-Ledger. In If you believe in racial equity, don't opt out of PARCC, the Star-Ledger writes:

Opposition to state testing comes from the far left and the far right. It comes from parents who don't want their kids to feel like failures, or who are happy with their schools and don't see a need for improvement. And, of course, it comes from the teacher's union, which opposes accountability measures.

But here's what this issue boils down to. If you're interested in racial equality, you have to go for the PARCC, imperfect as it may be. Why? Because it's the only game in town -- and if we're going to have any hope of closing the achievement gap between poor, minority kids and their wealthier peers, we need this data to do it.

If this isn’t clear enough, the Star-Ledger goes on:

That's why a dozen civil rights groups, including the N.A.A.C.P. and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, released a powerful statement this month saying they are opposed to "anti-testing efforts." The PARCC provides data that is crucial for catching and combating inequities in public schools, they argued.

When parents decide to opt out, they're not just making a choice for their own child, the civil rights activists said. "They're inadvertently making a choice that undermines efforts to improve the schools for every child."

Get that? “Improving the schools” means looking over your shoulder to see what the next guy is doing, and then equalizing outcomes. How to do that? Condemn parents for doing what’s educationally best for their own children. In the Orwellian mind of PARCC proponents, leaving parents free to do what’s educationally best for their own child “undermines efforts to improve the schools for every child." You are guilty of harming other children, in other words, if you care about your own child

The Star-Ledger goes on to cite Newark, N.J. parent Tanya King, who believes that the tests will enable her to determine how well her child is doing, not according to objective facts, but in relation to their suburban counterparts.

To PARCC advocates, it’s superficially about the money. They claim they need the data from the PARCC tests in order to identify “achievement gaps” among schools, so as to identify where to funnel additional taxpayer money. PARCC is really just another central planning scheme to accomplish the impossible—provide a quality education for all children without actually focussing on individual children, who number in the hundreds of thousands. The PARCC proponents demand full participation in the tests from all students “The opt-out movement,” they claim, “is sabotaging the data.”

But there is a deeper, sinister premise underlying the PARCC movement. I left these comments:

The pure, smirking evil of collectivism is on display in the anti-opt-out movement. Collectivists moral concern is with the group, not the individuals who make up the group. These education collectivists don’t care one bit about the needs of the children who are hurt by the tests, or for the parents who judge the tests to be detrimental to their children. They don’t care about the needs of any individual students. They’re for “equality,” not quality.

Education collectivists only care about data, in order to concoct an imaginary average student outcome for the purpose of comparing one group to another. Education collectivists are mystics who view the group as religionists view God—as a supreme power. In the vision of “the dozen civil rights groups”—the dirty dozen—the racial group is the supreme entity, held to be separate from and above the individual students who make up the groups, and upon whose alter individual students are to be sacrificed. They are happily willing to sabotage the educational needs of individual students, in the name of not “sabotaging the data,” because actual living breathing students are not their moral concern.

Add to the education collectivists’ anti-individual worldview an Obsessive Comparison Disorder—applied to groups, rather than individuals—and you get to the essence of the evil. Their worshiping at the altar of “equality” won’t help children in perpetually failing schools, or children unmotivated to learn, or children with parents who don’t care. Why? Because education collectivism orients the individual away from a focus on her own achievement, in favor of forcing others down to her level. As proof, I give you this editorial. Indeed, if equality of educational outcome is the standard, why not just put the authorities governing “failing” districts in charge of all school districts in the state? That’ll equalize things, right down to the lowest common denominator.

With school districts or racial groups, as with individuals, it’s not how you stack up against others that counts. It’s whether the individual child is maximizing his unique potentialities [and chosen values], whatever those potentialities [and values] may be. The only kind of equality proper to man is to legally protect the right of each individual to act on his own judgement, and to be left free to achieve whatever his unique talents, ambition, personal value choices, life circumstances, and natural endowments will carry him. Any other kind of equality requires cutting everybody down to the level of the laziest, the least competent, the least motivated, the most helpless; a chain gang of mediocrity. In obsessing over some mystical group equity, education collectives ignore actual—i.e., individual—equity.

My advice to Tanya King and other like-minded parents: Stop trying to force other children into these PARCC tests, and start thinking about your own child—just as the parents who opt their children out of the PARCC tests are properly doing. Stop obsessing over how your child—or your child’s school, on “average”—stacks up against other children. Demand universal school choice—not just regarding tests, but across the board—so you can search out what’s best educationally for your own child from educators competing for the privilege of teaching your child. Look out for your own child. The education collectivists who are trying to squeeze everyone into a testing straightjacket certainly aren’t.

Related Reading:

Selflessness vs. Egoism: Or, ‘Real Education’ vs. Real Education

Individualism vs. Collectivism, Profit vs. Non-Profit, In the Education Debate

Obama's Collectivist "Togetherness" vs. Individualist Togetherness

The Historic Universal Witch Doctors Paris Climate Agreement

Nearly 200 nations adopt first global pact to fight climate change, reports the Associated Press. According to AP:

In the pact, the countries commit to limiting the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by human activity to the same levels that trees, soil and oceans can absorb naturally, beginning at some point between 2050 and 2100.

There you have it. Primitive tribes had witch doctors to “protect” them. Protecting the tribe meant periodic sacrifices of individual members to the gods of nature, lest the gods bring down nature’s wrath on the tribe.

In the modern version of witch doctors, human beings are to be sacrificed by the world’s political leaders to the trees, soil, and oceans. Human activity intended to improve environmental conditions for man is not, apparently, considered natural. The natural, unaltered state of nature—the trees, soil, oceans, or anything not man—are sacred. To avoid the wrath of the climate change gods, man’s improvement upon the natural world—technological industrialization—must be sacrificed.

But won’t “green” energy supply man’s energy needs? Even if the intractable drawbacks of solar and wind—economic non-viability, dilutedness, and intermittency—are somehow overcome, the answer is no, because the massive mining, refining, manufacturing, and infrastructure land use requirements of solar and wind contradicts the standard of value implied in the goal of limiting carbon dioxide emissions to “natural” limitations. That implied standard is to honor the Earth's natural state, and there's nothing natural about massive “green” energy. Environmentalists will simply replace co2 with some other "disruptor" of nature as the human-engineered enemy that must be curtailed.

Man survives, thrives, and prospers by applying reason and productive work to the task of expanding nature’s limits through the turning of raw materials into the resources that feed industrial progress, and thus an ever higher standard of living. For example, turning coal, oil, and natural gas deposits into the fuel that powers all other industries gives us all of the material goods that turns the dangerous natural environment into a much safer and more livable environment. That wouldn’t be possible except under the moral standard that places human life above the trees, soil, and oceans.

Under the moral standard of value that underpins the idea of limiting greenhouse gas emissions to non-human “natural” limits, progress stops, and human beings suffer massively. Isn’t human well-being worth the price of whatever extent human industrialization is contributing to climate change? Not according to the naturalists. As if pointing to the ideal of human existence the Paris agreement implicitly aims to achieve, Secretary of State John Kerry hailed the agreement as “a victory for all of the planet and for future generations.”

There was a time when the planet was victorious over human mastery, and the non-human natural state of things was preserved for future generations. It was the Dark and Middle Ages, a period of grinding poverty and stagnation and a life expectancy of 30 years for generation  after generation. It was only with the onset of the freedom and fossil fueled Industrial Revolution that future generations began to benefit. We today are the future generations of times past, and we should be thankful to our industrial forbears precisely for not “saving the planet for future generations,” and instead bequeathing to us a much improved planet and thus the standard of living we now enjoy. And earlier industrialists did it all by improving their own lives, and by extension the lives of their contemporary generation. We, the future generations of their time, benefited. Isn’t that the gift that we owe, if we do owe it, to future generations?

We shouldn’t be saving the planet for future generations. We should continue to improve it for ourselves. Anthropogenic climate change is a small price to pay for massive human progress—if climate change even is a price. We must reject the naturalist standard of value that produced the Paris Witch Doctors anti-energy climate agreement, and embrace the humanist standard of value.

If there is a bright spot, it is that the Paris agreement has no legal enforcement mechanism. There seem to be so many conflicting motivations—from President Obama and other western leaders’ desperation to leave behind a climate legacy to poor and developing nations’ demand for $trillions in "entitlements" from rich nations in atonement for their “wrecking the climate” (i.e., getting prosperous) to statists seeing the conference as a path to central planning powers to "green" energy companies seeking subsidies and competition-stifling taxes and regulations on fossil fuel companies—that it’s hard even to tell how seriously the leaders take the carbon limits. Hopefully, for the sake of the oil, coal, and natural gas industries our energy well-being depends on, the Paris agreement will fail to live up to the “green” hype.

Related Reading:

Chief Obama Bows to the Witch Doctors, Sacrifices Americans to the Climate Gods

Paris Climate Agreement Adopted: New Central Plan for the World’s Economy and Climate—Ronald Bailey for Reason.com

New Retirement Savings Scheme in New Jersey Expands Government Control of Retirees’ Savings

A New Jersey legislator wants the state to establish retirement savings accounts for any worker that doesn’t have one. As Matt Friedman of NJ Advance Media reports for NJ.com:

New Jersey would be one of the first states in the nation to offer retirement accounts to private sector workers who don't have them under a plan backed by the leader of the state Assembly.

Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto (D-Hudson) on Monday proposed the legislation (A4275), which is based on a plan in Illinois that was signed into law in January and is touted as the first of its kind in the country.

The Illinois law “requires all businesses in operation for at least two years and that have at least 25 employees to offer by June 1, 2017, its workers an individual retirement savings option.” In the NJ version, companies would have the option of setting up their own employee retirement plan if they don’t already have one, or sign on to the so-called "New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Program.”  Individual workers could opt out.

Of course, what the government “gives” you, the government will control:

The program, which would take effect within two years of its passage, would be administered by a seven-member board made up of officials from the governor's office and appointees by the senate president and assembly speaker.

The retirement benefits would be held in the a fund be used for paying the benefits, administration of the program and investments on behalf of the program. [sic]

Need I say more? Aren’t these the same people who currently administer the state public employee pension system, massive unfunded liability and all? Government bureaucrats beholden to politicians would decide how your money is invested and how your benefits are paid out.

Observe also that this is another example of the “need” for a government program being created by a prior government program. Friedman reports:

"This truly is a win-win for employees and employers," [Democrat Assembly Speaker Vincent] Prieto said in a statement. "The vast majority of today's retirees rely primarily on Social Security payments for income. Meanwhile, retirement savings are a mounting anxiety for more and more workers.

"This program will create much-needed security and peace of mind for employees who have no retirement plan right now," [Republican co-sponsor Assemblyman Tim] Eustace said.

In other words, the “security” promised by Social Security doesn’t deliver much security. But the promise of that security created a disincentive for workers to save privately. The result: many realize too late—and after a lifetime of FICA taxes—that relying only on Social Security leaves one scraping by on the edge of poverty.

To be sure, workers who become primarily dependent on Social Security are not completely blameless. The idea that Social Security shouldn’t be a person’s only retirement vehicle is not exactly a state secret. Retirement experts have been telling us for decades to save save save to supplement Social Security. But still, the disincentive to save cannot be denied. So, once again—like the fireman who starts fires so he can be the “hero” who rushes to extinguish it—the government can be seen rushing to the rescue of its own victims.

Any worker who uses this politically-controlled plan is a fool. Better idea: Opt out and set up your own IRA with one of the many private mutual fund companies. Anyone is free to set up his own IRA. It’s easy, and you can fund your plan by direct periodic transfers from your checking account to your IRA. By all means, take advantage of your company’s 401k or equivalent program, if available. You needn’t involve N.J. politicians in your private financial affairs.

Along the lines of Individual Retirement Accounts, a good idea to lobby politicians for would be Universal Savings Accounts, which enable savers to put after-tax money away for any reason, and withdraw the savings and accumulated returns tax free. As Reason’s Veronique de Rugy observes, the accounts would be “pro-growth, pro-family [?], and pro-freedom, with a much-needed side of simplification and flexibility.” Furthermore, she writes, Universal Savings Accounts, lacking any special conditions (such as retirement, college, etc.), can operate “without giving special treatment to favored interest groups through the tax code.” (A flat tax with much lower income tax rates, which I favor, would eliminate all such deductions. But as long as the status quo exists, I favor almost any tax relief offered to individuals.)

True, traditional IRAs, 401Ks, so-called USA’s and the like use the tax code to “encourage savings”; i.e., manipulate people’s behavior. But at least the saver won’t have some government panel beholden to politicians looking over their shoulder—or worse, taking unearned credit for whatever benefits accrue to individuals taking advantage of the program, making people feel like they owe it all to government.

Longer term—and worst of all—these types of programs are a threat to liberty. Traditional retirement programs give relief from taxes, but otherwise leave the administration of the funds in private hands. The New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Program does nothing more than to secure government control of workers’ retirement planning. The state, with its law-making powers, is effectively overriding private firms that have no such power. It is “the camel’s nose under the tent” of a complete government takeover of retirement, a logical progression started by Social Security.

A political power grab is the only logical motive behind this bill. What other motive could their be? As the South Jersey Chamber of Commerce observes, there is no “need” for a government-run Individual Retirement Account:

There is no shortage of retirement vehicles available to workers today through private companies. These companies provide the expertise needed to advise employers and employees on the options that are available to them and their tax implications.

The New Jersey Secure Choice Savings Program is a bad deal for workers and a bad deal for our liberty. Shame on the legislators who proposed it. It should be defeated.

Related Reading:

Your 401(k) - Obama’s Next Tarket

The Social Security Injustice

The "Personal Account" Path to Ending Social Security

Suggested Philanthropic Goal for Mark Zuckerberg: First, Promote Individual Liberty

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced that they will dedicate 99% of their roughly $45 billion fortune toward philanthropy during their lifetimes. Interestingly, their philanthropic fund, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), will not be your typical charitable foundation. CZI will be organized as a for-profit LLC (limited liability corporation). While this structure will cost the Zuckerbergs some tax advantages, it will free them from a labyrinth of government regulations that come with tax-free status, allowing for many more options for CZI’s philanthropy. For example, besides turning a profit, the Zuckerbergs will be freer to pursue political activism on behalf of their values. As Suzanne Woolley observes for BloombergBusiness:

It seems clear the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative will put money to work in politics. Facebook, in its official description of its founder's new LLC, noted that "making private investments and participating in policy debates" will be part of the mission. In a public letter Zuckerberg wrote to his newborn daughter, Max, he likewise emphasized an appetite for pushing a policy agenda: "We must participate in policy and advocacy to shape debates." If the charitable venture had been set up as a traditional tax-exempt foundation—what is called a 501(c)(3)— it wouldn't have freedom to lobby lawmakers or engage in other political activities. The Internal Revenue Service prohibits tax-exempt groups from "directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."

Unfortunately, Zuckerberg’s list of the values his initiative will seek to advance apparently doesn’t include man’s most important value, a value without which he’d have nothing to give away. As Alex Epstein observes at Forbes, “Mark Zuckerberg used 2,234 words to describe the things he values most in the world. None of those words was ‘freedom.’”

This is very disturbing, coming from one of the greatest capitalist champions of all time. In his letter to his daughter, Zuckerberg lays out his philosophy. But it’s hard to make heads or tails out of it. On the one hand, Zuckerberg tends toward collectivism at times. For example, he says “The only way to achieve our full potential is to channel the talents, ideas and contributions of every person in the world”. Sounds like central planning. Could Zuckerberg have built Facebook if his talents and ideas were “channeled” by some outside authority, rather than the free choices of himself and his customers? On the other hand, Zuckerberg advocates “personalized learning,” observing negatively that “Our generation grew up in classrooms where we all learned the same things at the same pace regardless of our interests or needs.” Sounds individualistic.

But collectivism and individualism are polar opposites, and so are the political ramifications of each. Collectivism leads to enslavement. Individualism leads to freedom and individual rights. So, which is it, Zuckerberg?

Zuckerberg speaks optimistically about opportunity for all, while failing to credit the only social condition that can truly provide it; freedom; that is, the individual rights to the freedom to act on one’s reasoning judgement; to work, trade with others, take risks, innovate, and keep what you have earned, without forcible, aggressive interference by others people, including people in their capacity as government officials. Freedom means no double standard regarding private citizens vs. government officials.

The biggest threat to freedom—the only threat, really—is a government that not only fails to protect rights but actively violates rights. So I offer—without meaning to disparage Zuckerberg’s stated values—this hope: that the Zuckerbergs, despite failing to acknowledging freedom, will elevate the promotion of freedom and properly limited government to the top of their hierarchy of values. The best thing Zuckerberg can do to genuinely make the world a better place is to use his CZI lobbying dollars to advocate for free market reforms—individual rights, the rule of objective law, freedom of expression, association, and conscience, property rights, lower taxes, less economic regulations, free trade within and between all people of all countries, an end to cronyism, and a government that protects rights equally and at all times. These are the basic social conditions required for individual flourishing. These are the basic social conditions—even though not fully implemented—that allowed Zuckerberg to build his fortune; a fortune earned by creating immense value for hundreds of millions of willing consumers—myself, my wife, family and friends included. Without real liberty—individual liberty—none of the Zuckerberg’s values are attainable. Neither is human progress and flourishing of any kind.

One of the saddest and most distressing hallmarks of our age is how few capitalist billionaires, having built their fortunes on a foundation of freedom, actively promote freedom. It’s distressing to hear billionaires justify committing their fortunes to philanthropy on the grounds of “improving this world” while ignoring freedom, when no amount of giving can equal the improvements to people’s lives that the freedom to create the fortunes accomplished. These billionaires’ grovelling is not doing any favors for those billions of us whose lives are immensely better because of the selfish motivations that led to the profit-seeking companies these leading entrepreneurs built—especially if their giving promotes more political control of our lives (as is the goal of the U.N. 2015 Climate Change Conference in Paris). (I could think of only two prominent billionaires explicitly committed to promoting more freedom, Charles and David Koch, through their Freedom Partners Foundation and other activities. Thank you, Koch Brothers.)

If the Zuckerbergs really do want a better world, they should set a new standard for mega-fortune generosity: promote freedom ahead of giving so that more people can produce their way to prosperity and self-reliance—and pave the way for more Zuckerbergs—thus rendering billionaire philanthropy progressively less necessary. To do any less will be a sell-out that no amount of philanthropy and no “giving pledge” could ever atone for.

Related Reading:

The Guilt Pledge—Yaron Brook and Don Watkins

Capitalism and the Moral High Ground—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

The Link Between "Control, Power, or Socialism" and "What's Morally Right"

Pfizer's Tax Inversion is Moral

Corporate inversion, also known as “tax inversion,” is the practice of “Re-incorporating a company overseas in order to reduce the tax burden on income earned abroad.” (for more on this, see my article “Citizens for Tax Justice” vs. Rational Patriotism in The Objective Standard.)

Tax inversion has become somewhat of a trend among large U.S.-based companies in recent years. Pfizer, the big American pharmaceutical company, is the latest and one of the most high profile companies to do so. Through a merger with Allergan, the Irish drug maker, Pfizer will re-incorporate in Dublin, thus lowering its U.S. tax rate.

To be sure, there are other non-tax reasons for Pfizer’s decision to merge. But attention, especially from the Left, has been focussed on the tax inversion. For example, The New Jersey Star-Ledger condemned Pfizer’s move in an editorial titled Pfizer’s tax-dodge is nothing but blarney. It is totally one-sided. Here are some excerpts:

There’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow for a shameless corporate tax evader.

If you’re looking for a concrete example of how big money influences American politics, you’ll find it right here. This abusive tax dodge could have been prevented, but bills currently in the Republican-controlled House and Senate that would put an end to it haven’t been passed because of powerful special interests.

In the meantime, Pfizer executives are actually trying to sell this as a good deal for the United States. They’re excusing their blatant tax avoidance with the tired old promise that the money saved and increased profits of its shareholders will —you guessed it — create new jobs.

Please. The reason we have corporate taxes in the first place is because companies such as Pfizer directly benefit from public spending in America. Pfizer profits from government research on drugs and patent protections. The main ingredient in its arthritis drug, Xeljanz, was discovered by a government scientist in a taxpayer-funded laboratory and given to Pfizer for further development and licensing. Now Pfizer is selling the drug for nearly $25,000 per patient per year.

Even absent deals like that, its workforce is educated in our public schools. Its employees take public roads and transportation to their jobs. These are all things that Pfizer is now not paying its fair share for. Where is the taxpayer’s return on these investments?

The only inversion evident here is a moral one; the Star-Ledger blaming the victim rather than the guilty party. And you can throw in a healthy dose of evasion, to boot.

I left these comments:

First, Pfizer is not “a shameless corporate tax evader.” It’s action is perfectly legal, which makes their action tax avoidance, not evasion. Tax avoidance is commendable. Who reading this editorial would deny using every available legal means to minimize their income tax bill?

At issue is not U.S. corporate taxes, which Pfizer will continue to pay on its U.S.-generated profits. At issue is taxes earned in foreign-generated profits. It’s interesting that the editors don’t even mention a Bloomberg article published in the Star-Ledger on 11/23/15 that observed, “The U.S. has the highest tax rate for businesses in the world, at 35 percent, and is one of the only countries to tax corporate profits wherever they are earned.”

Is this fair? Pfizer is not trying to avoid taxes. It is trying to avoid unfair taxation. That is perfectly moral and courageous. After the inversion, it will continue to pay U.S taxes at U.S. rates on its U.S. operations—which leads to the next issue; tax-funded government benefits. As U.S. taxpayers, Pfizer and its employees have every right to “directly benefit from public spending in America,” including the “government research on drugs” like “the main ingredient in its arthritis drug, Xeljanz.” It has a right to patent protections. It has a right to access the public schools, public roads and public transportation. “The taxpayers” is not some disembodied collective, separate from the people who actually pay the taxes. Taxpayers are the people who pay taxes, and Pfizer and its employees are taxpayers who are entitled to the benefits its government provides, just like everybody else, precisely because “the taxpayers” pay for them. What is not fair is for our government to grab taxes from profits earned in other countries.

Furthermore, Pfizer has a moral right to spend its dollars on American politics in order to influence tax legislation for the purpose of protecting its interests. In fact, to the extent the company succeeds in influencing congress to end America’s taxation of foreign profits and get America’s tax rate down to competitive levels, the company will have ended the rational incentive for corporate tax inversions. That’s more than you can say for tax-crazed “liberals,” who only want to make inversions illegal rather than reform the tax code and make it less confiscatory and perverse, in effect building a “Berlin Wall” to keep great American corporations trapped in the politicians’ tax hell. Constitutionally, Pfizer’s political contributions are protected by the First Amendment, which sanctions “the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Statists would love for the politicians to have carte blanche power to legislate over the citizenry without having to be “influenced by those pesky private constituents. But we are, after all, a representative republic, not a royal dictatorship ruling over its subjects.

An objective look at Pfizer’s inversion paints a completely different picture than this editorial presents. Corporate taxes, if not eliminated, should be made much less unfair; e.g., a flat, much lower rate unencumbered by the myriad exclusion, write offs, credits, and other crony structures. The epithet “shameless” should be pinned on our political leadership for the shabby treatment it accords America's corporations, many of whom must invert to escape from the unfair foreign tax grab. Pfizer’s inversion is not an “abusive tax dodge.” The shoe is on the other foot. America’s corporate tax structure is an abusive tax grab.

The only thing shameful about Pfizer’s tax inversion is its lame excuse for doing it—the tired old collectivist justification that the inversion is “a good deal for the United States.” It is, because the inversion will allow Pfizer to reinvest back into the U.S. without paying draconian taxes. Investment does lead to more jobs, not to mention new and better products. But this justification makes Pfizer look evasive and phony and gives undeserved legitimacy to the company’s statist enemies. The company should proudly announce that it is moving to protect its own interests by legally avoiding America’s draconian tax grab of its well-earned profits; that it refuses to be exploited any longer, and it’s not going to take it any longer. Pfizer should say it, because it has the moral high ground on this issue.

Pfizer’s “tax dodge” is bad for America only from the statist perspective of private citizens as subjects to the collective. From a pro-liberty perspective, Pfizer’s corporate inversion is quintessentially American. Kudos to Pfizer.

---------------------------------

There is an immense irony here. Reuters reports that “Under U.S. law, corporations do not have to pay income tax on most of their overseas profits until they are brought into the United States. These earnings can be held offshore for years if they are classified as indefinitely invested abroad.”

Bloomberg estimates that American companies have $2.1 trillion in foreign-generated profits “parked” overseas. All of this money has been taxed already in the country in which it was earned. The irony is that if these companies really wanted to invest all of this money abroad, they wouldn’t have to pay the taxes—which means there would be no incentive to invert. The incentive to invert arises when U.S. companies want to invest their overseas profits back in the U.S. But the tax burden inhibits this re-investment. For example, consider Apple. As CRN reports, in 2013 Apple, which then had $145 billion in cash (it’s more now), borrowed $17 billion for corporate purposes. Why? Because borrowing was cheaper than repatriating cash from abroad. If Apple had tapped its overseas horde, it would have paid $6 billion in U.S. taxes; taxes on profits earned abroad and already taxed once by foreign countries.

If Apple were to invert, the inversion would actually have made it easier to reinvest its foreign-generated cash in America. Grubby American politicians, especially on the Left, don’t care about jobs or fairness. They want the loot to fund their pet projects, hand out to freeloaders, or just fund their statist, central planning schemes.

Related Reading:

John Farmer’s Moral Inversion on “Tax Inversion”

Corporate Tax Inversion is an Act of Economic Justice.

Chuck Jaffe’s Moral Inversion on "Tax Inversion"

Professor Steven Pressman’s Moral Inversion on “Tax Inversion”

Tax Inversion: “Fiduciary Duty to Shareholders” vs. “Duty to Society”

The Paris Attacks Highlight Our Original Mistake: 'We're Not at War with Islam'

On November 17, 2015, the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized:“It's clear now that President Obama's strategy on ISIS was not sufficient to meet the threat, and that a tougher response is needed.” (After Paris, don't repeat mistakes of September 11)

I left these comments:

This is true but a major understatement. In his Turkey speech, Obama said he agreed with President Bush that “this is not a war on Islam.” As long as he believes that, a repeat of mistakes will continue.

We are at war with Islam; not with every Muslim, but with fully consistent Muslims. The Islamic militants are motivated by a moral vision of totalitarian rule according to God’s will. They are supported by a large minority, numbering in the tens of millions, of Muslims worldwide. With the Qur’an as their blueprint, the Islamists seek theocratic world rule. These are not radicals that hijacked a peaceful religion. They are conservative true believers living up to the full consequences of their religion. They are imperialist aggressors motivated by their belief in God's will and supremacy, who believe their duty is to wipe out or subjugate the “infidels” who don’t unthinkingly obey God’s will, as the militants see it. The Islamic militant organizations are not fringe groups. They are not practicing a perverted interpretation of Islam. They are practicing fundamentalist Islam fully and consistently. ISIS and its ilk—this is exactly what unfettered religion looks like.

Religion is inherently authoritarian by nature. Religion is not rational, and thus open to reasoned criticism and persuasion. Religion is faith-based, which means closed to rational persuasion. When reason is abandoned, force is the only option left. Christianity, having reformed itself through Enlightenment, has mostly adopted reason, pushing faith into the background. Christianity—which once launched Crusades, Inquisitions, and generally persecuted or killed heretics, their version of infidels—is not today consistently faith-driven. Most Christians, though still professing an element of faith, are primarily reason-driven and thus peaceful. That and that alone is the reason Christians aren’t the ones blowing up buildings and slaughtering helpless innocents. Modern militant Islam is in essence a replay of pre-Enlightenment Christianity. Un-enlightened Christianity too was driven by a fundamentalist, imperialist, faith-based “ideal” that only they knew God’s will, and had a moral right and duty to enforce it, whatever the costs or means.

Bill Maher gets it:

People say ISIS hijacked Islam. Actually the opposite is true. Religions do have hijackers but the hijackers are the moderates. . . They’re the ones who took a Sharpie to the Bible and redacted all the crazy parts. . .And now someone in Islam needs to do that with the Qur’an.

The so-called moderates are the real radicals; the ones who rip out the militant, intolerant aspects of their religions and cast them into the dustbin of history. We are at war with fundamentalist, unfettered religion, in the form of [Jihadist] Islam. We must, hopefully with the help of radical “moderate” Muslims, win this war. To do so requires fully and explicitly communicating our message that we are at war with primitive, fundamentalist Muslims, not Enlightened Muslims. We will then pave the way for a fully Enlightened Islam to emerge, ready to join civilization alongside their enlightened Christian counterparts. As long as we have leaders like Bush and Obama who won’t acknowledge the truth of what we are up against, we will continue to pursue policies that are woefully insufficient to meet the threat.

Related Reading:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Clarion Call for Islamic Reformation

Ten Steps to End Jihad Against the West—Craig Biddle for The Objective Standard

BEHIND THE PARIS ATROCITY, AN ENEMY WE FAIL TO UNDERSTAND—Elan Journo for The Ayn Rand Institute

Related Viewing:

Religion vs. Morality by Andrew Bernstein