Daily Read - 2/18/10

This one from Mitt Romney: "in case you didn’t hear the late-breaking news, the gold medal in the downhill was taken away from American Lindsey Vonn. It was determined that President Obama is going downhill faster than she is." (h/t National Review)

Anthem Blue Cross recently announced health insurance rate increases of up to 39% for some customers in California.  This Wall Street Journal column explains the increases "are the direct result of the Golden State's insurance regulations—the kind that Democrats want to impose on all 50 states."  The "cost" of health care reform that the President, Congress, and the CBO measure is only the costs that would be the responsibility of the government. The entire cost to all Americans hasn't been estimated by anyone as far as I know, but it will be much, much larger than the government piece alone.

Cato's daily podcast discusses taxation of multinational corporations.  Obama has discussed stricter taxation of US-based companies that produce revenue in foreign countries.  The podcast argues this is a bad idea for 2 reasons: 1) US corporate tax rates are already the 2nd-highest in the developed world, and raising them would just cause more businesses to move out of the US, and 2) if a US-based business has to close an office in some other country, a business from another country will move in to take advantage of the local tax advantage.  The US can only control our policy, not the policies and actions of other countries.

Bruce Campbell, editor of "The Collected Works of F. A. Hayek," says the economic stimulus stimulated sales of Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom," a dense book from 1944 describing the dangers of social planning and big government.  How ironic.

Venture capitalist Bill Frezza's thoughts on "Why Washington Can't Reform Healthcare" -- "The healthcare industry runs on fake prices."  "Imagine the world's smartest food expert with access to the best culinary research trying to decide what the right price is for a ham sandwich. Once the price is set, that's it - selling a ham sandwich for more or less is against the law. Oh, and homeless people get free ham sandwiches. Refuse to serve them and you lose your deli license."  What happens if the price of pork spikes?

Some good stuff from Yahoo Finance today:

This article has the "Wackiest Tax Deductions for 2010," including someone who produced a diary written all in one color ink, and copyrighted after the relevant year, as documentation to an IRS auditor.

This one says that almost anyone would want to double their income, but there are reasons why many can't or won't that are usually about what you have to give up to earn the extra income.  Money can't buy happiness, after all.