Global planting of biotech crops grew 8 percent last year, to a record high of 395 million total acres, according to the latest report from Clive James at the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications (ISAAA). Despite the many regulatory hurdles that governments around the world have erected to the approval and adoption of biotech crop varieties, when farmers have the opportunity to plant them, they do. Last year, more than 16 and a half million farmers grew biotech crops in 29 different countries.

What’s particularly noteworthy is that, while activists try to portray biotechnology as a rich industrial world tool, the bulk of recent growth in biotech crop adoption has come among relatively resource-poor farmers in less developed and newly industrialized countries. The United States has, since the first biotech crop introductions back in the early 1990s, grown the largest number of acreage planted with biotech varieties. But, while annual acreage increases in countries like the U.S. and Canada is starting to flatten a bit, the most robust growth has come from Brazil, India, and China. LDCs and NICs now grow about half of the world’s total biotech crop acreage. In China alone, roughly 7 million poor farmers grow biotech crops on an average of just one and a quarter acres.

On a related note, in this short video, former Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter discusses the role that advanced technologies have played in making U.S. agriculture a vibrant and productive contributor to the global economy.

Have a listen here.

Immigration law is second in complexity only to the income tax. In a new CEI paper, Policy Analyst Alex Nowrasteh proposes scrapping the whole thing and replacing it with a tariff. This is a much more humane approach to immigration, and in many cases will be less expensive for immigrants than the lawyers and fees they currently have to pay while they live in legal limbo. A tariff would also reduce illegal immigration by eliminating black markets. Money that currently goes to illegal smugglers and human traffickers could instead go to the U.S. Treasury. The idea can appeal to both the left and the right.

Some liberals have the unrealistic fantasy that by increasing taxes on the top one percent of the population, the government can finance a radically expanded welfare state for the bottom 99 percent. (Never mind that even if we confiscated the entire annual income of the top one percent, it wouldn’t begin to cover the record, trillion-dollar federal budget deficit.) They assume that somewhere in Europe, there is a country that does just that, without harming its economy. Alas, there is no such country, anymore than unicorns exist.

As Veronique de Rugy of the Mercatus Center recently noted, the U.S. already has a more progressive tax code than most European countries:

The richest 10 percent of U.S. households (those making $112,124 or more) contribute a greater share of taxes (45.1 percent of all income taxes) than their counterparts in any other industrialized nation.

Meanwhile, the average tax burden for the top 10 percent of households in OECD countries is 31.6 percent of the revenue collected, well below the percentage in America.

Interestingly, in France, a notorious welfare-state government, only 28 percent of revenue comes from the top 10 percent of income earners. As for the top 1 percent of Americans, their share of federal taxes paid is roughly 30 percent.

And that’s before a whole host of tax increases and new taxes kick in starting in 2013, such as a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income goes into effect to pay for the 2010 healthcare law. As a leading tax law professor notes, capital gains taxes are going up.  As The Wall Street Journal notes, Obama would like to increase them even further; Obama’s proposals would give the U.S. one of the highest capital gains tax rates in the world — higher than all but one European country:

[Investment] income is taxed once at the corporate rate of 35% and again when it is passed through to the individual as a capital gain or dividend at 15%, for a highest marginal tax rate of about 44.75%.

This double taxation is one reason the U.S. has long had a differential tax rate for capital gains. Another reason is because while taxpayers must pay taxes on their gains, they aren’t allowed to deduct capital losses (beyond $3,000 a year) except against gains in the current year. Capital gains also aren’t indexed for inflation, so a lower rate is intended to offset the effect of inflated gains.

One implication of the Buffett rule is that all millionaire investment income would be taxed at the shareholder level at a minimum rate of 30%, up from 15% today. The tax rate on investment income from corporations would rise to 54.5% from 44.75%, a punitive tax on start-up or expanding businesses.

The new 30% capital gains rate would be the developed world’s third highest . …

Moreover, liberal lawmakers like Jerry McNerney want to raise tax rates even further by imposing a 90 percent tax rate on the wealthy. Liberals seized upon Mitt Romney’s tax returns to try to argue that taxes in America are too low, but it turned out that Romney would have been taxed less in other countries like Canada. (Not only does Romney pay more taxes in America than he would overseas, but Romney actually paid more in taxes than did wealthy liberal lawmakers like John Kerry who give less to charity than the millions that Romney gives.)

Far from being too low, current capital gains taxes are too high, since they tax some people based on essentially fictitious paper income even when those people have become much poorer rather than richer. As we noted earlier, a liberal economist and member of the Federal Reserve Board conceded in 1980 that “most capital gains were not gains of real purchasing power at all, but simply represented the maintenance of principal in an inflationary world.” “Between 1970 and 1980, U.S. stock prices fell by half after being adjusted for inflation. But if you sold stock in 1980, after a decade of getting poorer and poorer you would have had to pay capital gains tax, since inflation made stock prices rise in nominal terms.”

By contrast, some European countries have cut their taxes on investments over the last generation. They did so not because they suddenly developed a love for investors (or the wealthy), but because they found from experience (and the experience of neighboring countries) that doing so yielded more economic growth and investment, and (in some cases) more government revenue.

Recently retired Justice John Paul Stevens, who became the leader of the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc in his later years on the Court, complained recently about the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which he claimed was “poorly-considered” because its text literally forbids all racial discrimination — including against white people — and contains no exceptions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a sitting Supreme Court Justice appointed by Bill Clinton, recently advised Egypt not to model its constitution on the U.S. Constitution, but rather on documents like the South African Constitution that provide less protection for free speech and civil liberties. “I would not look to the US Constitution if I were drafting a Constitution in the year 2012,” she said.

Justice Stevens’ remarks reflect his discontent with the fact that whites occasionally win racial discrimination cases under the Constitution and civil-rights laws. The Supreme Court initially held that racial discrimination of all kinds was prohibited by the 1964 Civil Rights Act in its unanimous 1976 decision in the McDonald case, which ruled in favor of whites who had been fired; but later on, the Court judicially created an exception to the statute in order to allow some discrimination against whites in its Weber decision, which admitted that creating such an exception contradicted the plain language of the Civil Rights Act, but claimed that doing so would lead to a more egalitarian society. Later, the Supreme Court extended this exception to uphold a college admissions policy that discriminated against both whites and Asians in the name of “diversity,” rejecting legal challenges under both the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act (in the Grutter case). However, over Justice Stevens’ objections, it struck down another college admissions policy that the Court viewed as using race too much and too mechanically (in the Gratz case), and it also invalidated racial discrimination against whites in voting, once again over Justice Stevens’ objections (in Rice v. Cayetano).

Although liberal scholars, like former Civil Rights Commissioner Mary Frances Berry, have recently argued that the civil-rights laws were not intended to protect white people, the courts have held that the Civil Rights Act was indeed intended to prohibit racial discrimination even against whites, and thus, whites who experience racial harassment or abuse are able to sue under the Civil Rights Act, as cases like Huckabay v. Moore and Bowen v. Missouri Department of Social Services illustrate. (Affirmative action is viewed as merely a limited exception to the ban on racial discrimination in areas such as hiring and promotion, and thus not a license for an employer to fire or racially harass its white employees.)

Justice Ginsburg says that American courts should look more to foreign court rulings and other countries’ laws in interpreting our own Constitution. But she herself does so only when it is ideologically convenient, ignoring foreign court rulings that limit lawsuits and punitive damages, and allow governments to restrict late-term abortions.

Moreover, for the Supreme Court to rely on “international opinion” to decide cases — as liberal Justices do when it is convenient — could set a dangerous precedent for civil liberties, since foreign legal systems and international lawyers are often hostile to free speech, religious freedom, and other basic civil liberties, and the right of homeowners to defend themselves against criminals by wielding a knife or gun in self-defense. The U.N. Human Rights Council says there is no human right to self-defense, and that, quite the contrary, international human rights norms require “very severe gun control.”

As an article in the Financial Post noted, if Mitt Romney were Canadian, he’d pay less tax than he does in America.

That’s because most of Mitt Romney’s income is from investments.  Much of the world taxes investment income far less than the U.S. does, while taxing consumption more, through a Value Added Tax (VAT). Those countries are more generous to savers, unlike our tax code, which favors spenders.

The belief that the richest 1 percent in Europe and Canada subsidize all of the other 99% is a common delusion on the American Left. It’s the basis for their fantasy that vast new government programs can be paid for simply by taxing the rich. But as Romney’s situation shows, it has no basis in reality.

Europe and Canada finance their more extensive welfare states heavily through VATs, taxes paid mostly by the middle and working classes, since VATs tax consumption, and lower-income people spend a higher percentage of their income than rich people do. Those countries don’t force rich people to pay 90 percent tax rates, as some Democratic lawmakers, like Congressman Jerry McNerney, have recently advocated.

They don’t attempt to tax even wealthy people’s investment income at confiscatory rates, because they have learned from painful experience that doing so discourages people from saving money or starting a business, and lowers investment and economic growth.

The U.S. tax code is already more progressive than most countries’ tax codes.  And it is getting more so.  Next year, a new 3.8 percent tax on investment income goes into effect to pay for the 2010 healthcare law, one of an array of new taxes contained in that law.

Moreover, our tax code discriminates against savers both by taxing them on all their capital gains, but not taking into account some of their losses, and by taxing them on paper “profits” that are not real income but rather the product of inflation that increases nominal asset values even when their real value is falling, leaving the investor poorer.

Even if taxes were jacked up to 60 percent on the wealthy, it wouldn’t begin to pay for recent increases in federal spending, which have led to trillion-dollar budget deficits as far as the eye can see. (By 2010, the national debt was growing each month by as much as it did in entire years like 2007.)  Only broad-based taxes on the middle class can generate enough revenue to pay the costs of big government and expanding welfare entitlements.

As accountant Jamie Golombek pointed out in the Financial Post:

If Romney were filing Canadian taxes, we estimate he would have paid even less . . . Romney would have paid $2,973,021 of Canadian federal tax in 2011 . . . which translates to an effective federal tax rate of only 14.2%, more than a percentage off the 15.4% he is forecast to pay. . . .    In Canada, dividend income is eligible for a dividend tax credit while capital gains are only half taxable. In other words, for a top income earner, Canadian dividends are taxed a top federal rate of only 17.72% (2011) while capital gains for a high income earner would be taxed at half the top marginal tax rate or 14.5% (i.e. 50% X 29%). Charitable donations above $200 are eligible for a 29% federal donation tax credit.

(Romney made “$4 million of charitable gifts” in 2011, and $3 million in gifts in 2010, Golombek noted, which would reduce his tax due under both the U.S. and Canadian tax codes.)

“After spending $55 million of a $118.5 million grant from” the U.S. “Department of Energy, Ener1, an Indianapolis-based maker of batteries,” has just “declared bankruptcy.”

The White House had enthusiastically touted the company, which gave rise to an embarrassing gaffe by Vice President Biden:

Vice President Biden visited Ener1 one year ago, January 26, 2011. . .On several occasions, Biden called the company “Enron one” during his visit, invoking a seemingly unintentional but ultimately prescient reference to the collapse of the energy giant Enron. The company was also ranked number 67 in the White House Report: 100 Recovery Projects that are Changing America.

To some, the bankrupt firm is a “candidate in the increasingly competitive race to become the Next Solyndra.” But in reality, several other recipients of green-jobs subsidies under the stimulus package have already gone broke. CBS News had earlier reported that there were 11 Solyndras — that is, financially-troubled recipients of green-jobs subsidies, five of which had already filed for bankruptcy. After the CBS News report, Evergreen Energy, another green-jobs recipient, filed for bankruptcy.

President Obama touted similar green-jobs boondoggles in his 2012 State of the Union address. In his 2010 State of the Union, the president touted Solyndra, which went bankrupt a year later after receiving $535 million from taxpayers. As Rep. Cliff Stearns noted:

Only two days after President Obama highlighted federal investments in high-tech batteries in his State of the Union address, Ener1 joined Solyndra, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, SpecrtaWatt, and AES in bankruptcy – all recipients of taxpayer dollars.  We have a national debt exceeding $15 trillion, and the Administration is borrowing money from China to waste on subsidies for companies that are not viable.

As The Washington Post noted, energy programs have been “infused with politics at every level” during the Obama administration. It hastily approved subsidies for Solyndra, whose executives are now pleading the 5th Amendment, despite obvious danger signs and warnings about the company’s likely collapse. (Later, federal officials successfully pressured Solyndra to delay its announcement about upcoming layoffs until just after the 2010 election, to avoid embarrassing the Obama administration.)

The Obama administration has used green-jobs money from the stimulus package to outsource American jobs to countries like China: “Despite all the talk of green jobs, the overwhelming majority of stimulus money spent on wind power has gone to foreign companies, according to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop at the American University’s School of Communication in Washington, D.C.” As the Investigative Reporting Workshop noted, “79 percent” of all green-jobs funding “went to companies based overseas . . . In fact, the largest grant made under the program so far, a $178 million payment on Dec. 29, went to Babcock & Brown, a bankrupt Australian company.” This just one of many ways in which the Obama administration has used taxpayer money to outsource American jobs to foreign countries.

American Europhiles love to make comparisons between the entire United States and the rich Nordic countries in order to advocate America’s “Europeanization.” But comparing these two is deceiving. I explain why below in a letter I wrote to The New York Times.

To the Editor:

In “Why is Europe a Dirty Word?” (Jan. 14), Mr. Kristof claims that US emulation of Europe is not such a bad idea, holding up Norway’s higher GDP per capita as an example why.

But Norway’s wealth stems from its enormous natural resources in the North Sea—not its “superior” economic system. I suppose Mr. Kristof would also idolize Qatar—the richest country in the world per capita. Never mind its complete dependence on oil and gas reserves.

It is also not fair to compare a small homogenous country like Norway—a pocket of wealth in Europe—to the entire economically and demographically diverse United States. When compared to similar areas in America, like Connecticut, Norway’s GDP per capita pales in comparison.

The US and Norway are not like-for-like comparisons.

MATTHEW MELCHIORRE
Washington, Jan. 17, 2011

The writer is an Adjunct Analyst at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Mr. Kristof and his Europhile cohorts ought to realize the reasons — unrelated to economic structure — why certain economies are statistically wealthier than others before making broad generalizations.

They must also make fair comparisons.

The United States is a conglomeration of many diverse economies represented in the 50 states, much like Europe is a conglomeration of many diverse economies represented in its different countries. It makes much more sense to compare the countries of Europe with the states of the U.S., in which case Norway – Europe’s most affluent country aside from Luxembourg (which is almost three times less wealthy than similarly-sized Washington, D.C.) — is still less wealthy than Connecticut – America’s wealthiest state of similar population.

President Obama has spent billions of dollars in taxpayer money on subsidizing foreign firms through his failed “green energy” programs, so it was ironic and hypocritical when he attacked outsourcing in his State of the Union address. As former congressional economist Chris Edwards notes, Obama made many blatantly false claims about outsourcing and corporate taxation in his speech. Here are just a few:

Claim: “Right now, companies get tax breaks for moving jobs and profits overseas.”

False: There are no such breaks. Instead, we punish U.S. and foreign businesses for investing and creating jobs here.

Claim: “If you’re a business that wants to outsource jobs, you shouldn’t get a tax deduction for doing it.”

False: There is no such tax deduction. . .

Claim: “From now on, every multinational company should have to pay a basic minimum tax.”

False: We’ve already got a corporate “alternative minimum tax,” and it’s an idiotic waste of accounting resources that ought to be repealed.

Claim: “It is time to stop rewarding businesses that ship jobs overseas.”

False: We penalize them for locating jobs here. Besides, the overseas operations of U.S. companies generally complement domestic jobs by boosting U.S. exports.

Claim: “Companies that choose to stay in America get hit with one of the highest tax rates in the world.”

True: Our rate is 40 percent, which compares to the global average rate of just 23 percent.

The irony of the president’s claims is that he himself is the Outsourcer-in-Chief and King of Outsourcing, given how many jobs have been — and will be — driven out of America thanks to government subsidies in the $800 billion stimulus package that were given to foreign firms (like a bankrupt Australian company), and Obama administration financial regulations that effectively discriminate against American companies in favor of overseas firms, and impose billions in new costs on American manufacturers. American manufacturers face a growing mountain of red tape that has caused layoffs among medical device manufacturers, and 4,300 employees of an insurance company were recently laid off due to the 2010 Dodd-Frank law backed by the Obama administration. The Dodd-Frank law is also expected to drive well-paying proprietary-trading jobs overseas to Europe. The Obama administration has also imposed harmful and costly labor and employment regulations on American manufacturers.

Weirdly enough, President Obama supports taxpayer-subsidized outsourcing by companies headed by his political supporters (like GE), even while criticizing non-subsidized (free-market-based) outsourcing, which — unlike taxpayer-subsidized outsourcing — can actually save American jobs by reducing the cost of finished goods sold by American companies. (A struggling firm’s decisions to outsource some functions can actually save American jobs in the long run. An American manufacturer of a finished product, facing stiff cost competition from overseas manufacturers, can reduce its overall costs, and thus avoid going out of business, by outsourcing low-skill jobs producing crude components of the finished product to low-wage overseas workers, thus enabling the more valuable finished product designed or assembled by skilled American workers to be cost-competitive with finished goods produced entirely overseas.)

The Associated Press evaluates some of Obama’s claims in “Fact Check: Obama Pushes Plans That Flopped Before.”

In a truly excellent column for the Financial Times today, John Kay lays out in a few hundred words a clear defense of the market economy against central planning. What I like most about it is that he tackles the question of “greed” (these days, it seems, the only deadly sin) head on:

The difference between North Korea and the US is not that one society offers more scope for greed than the other. In both countries, as in many others, there are greedy people and many who are not, and those who are greedy are disproportionately represented in the controlling elite. The difference lies in the channels of greed – the degree to which the quest for profit is directed towards the creation of new wealth rather than the appropriation of wealth already created by other people.

A successful market economy emphasises the former and restricts the latter through rules and institutions, in a structure that has evolved slowly and requires constant defence against those who would use economic and political power to subvert it. Success or failure in that endeavour is the central explanation for why some societies are rich and others poor. Crony capitalism is very different from the market economy.

The point about institutions is important. Law and regulation alone cannot sustain a market economy, and indeed too often send an economy down the road to central planning. The institutions of liberty such as the rule of law, due process, high trust (lack of corruption, confidence in institutions, and so on), and lack of regulatory barriers to innovation are all necessary for a market economy to flourish.

Crony capitalism offends these institutions. Kay’s piece should be required reading for Occupy Wall Street demonstrators — and for presidential candidates.

For over a year, there has been concern that the White House would sign an executive order requiring U.S. space activities to adhere to the so-called EU Code of Conduct for space. As I explained at PJMedia a few months ago:

Historically the U.S., and particularly the Department of Defense, has opposed any treaty banning space weapons, for two reasons. First, there is no current perceived threat of in-space weapons or space-to-ground weapons and hence, no need for such a treaty. Second, co-orbital, direct-launch, or directed-energy anti-satellite technology is so inherently dual-use that it would be unenforceable. For instance, as we saw with the collision in 2009, any satellite can be a weapon, if put on a collision course with another. And as always, such a treaty would have asymmetrical effects, restraining the US while allowing cheating by others. There is also concern that it could establish a precedent for expansion of the principles into other media (e.g., air power).

In addition to this, it could make life more difficult for commercial space enterprises. For instance, the enhanced notification requirements will impose additional costs on launch and orbital operations. Beyond that, the Russians reportedly made noise at the UN in Geneva (home of the Office of Outer Space Affairs) a couple weeks ago that they want the Code to embrace their proposed “transparency and confidence building measures.” These would require all satellites, rockets, and mating procedures to be inspected prior to launch, by “international observers.” This would in effect require American commercial operators to allow foreign nationals in their operations and manufacturing flows, thus putting their intellectual property at risk not just to their home-grown competitors, but to potentially hostile states.

The concern wasn’t just over the policy itself, but the process:

…of particular concern is that it might be done without the advice and consent of the Senate. The White House knows that this will not be forthcoming, because thirty-seven senators, led by John Kyl (R-AZ) wrote a letter to Secretary of State Clinton in February, expressing their own concerns, one of which was the degree to which it would preclude space-based missile defense. Baker Spring at the Heritage Foundation notes that for the White House to sign on to this code without Senate consent would be a violation of the law, and raised other concerns:

Section 2573 of Title 22 of the U.S. Code prohibits the Administration from taking any action, including entering into non-treaty agreements, that limit the armed forces of the U.S. in a militarily significant manner. Accordingly, any agreement that limits U.S. military operations — such as will reportedly be the case with the Code of Conduct — is an arms control agreement and is subject to the relevant provision in the law requiring that the agreement be drafted as a treaty and made subject to the Senate’s advice and consent process prior to ratification and entry into force.

Second, there is a substantive question about how the negotiations on the code of conduct are structured. By focusing on limiting military operations, the Code of Conduct blurs the distinction between arms control agreements on the one hand and law of war agreements on the other. Arms control agreements are about limiting the quality or quantity of arms in peace time. Law of war treaties are about defining permitted and prohibited actions in the conduct of war.

This is not a trifling distinction for military commanders. They can be put in jeopardy of prosecution for violating the laws of war. Accordingly, a future military commander who has to make a split-second decision in the conduct of a space operation that could generate space debris may face a war crime charge if the Code of Conduct, following its entry into force, is deemed to be a law of war agreement.

Well, in a surprise announcement at a luncheon last Thursday:

…Ellen Tauscher, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, told reporters that the US was not going to go along with the proposed European Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. Citing the current draft of the Code as too restrictive, she said that it was clear from the beginning that the Obama Administration was not going along with the Code.

As Michael Listner notes at the link, it was not clear at all, for months, with continual administration hints that they just needed some minor tweaks to be willing to go along. I noted yesterday at my blog that there was likely another shoe to drop soon, if not a millipede’s worth. Well, today, Marcia Smith over at Space Policy Online reports that Secretary Clinton has dropped it:

“The long-term sustainability of our space environment is at serious risk from space debris and irresponsible actors. Ensuring the stability, safety, and security of our space systems is of vital interest to the United States and the global community. These systems allow the free flow of information across platforms that open up our global markets, enhance weather forecasting and environmental monitoring, and enable global navigation and transportation.

“Unless the international community addresses these challenges, the environment around our planet will become increasingly hazardous to human spaceflight and satellite systems, which would create damaging consequences for all of us.

“In response to these challenges, the United States has decided to join with the European Union and other nations to develop an International Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities. A Code of Conduct will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety, stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible use of space.

“As we begin this work, the United States has made clear to our partners that we will not enter into a code of conduct that in any way constrains our national security-related activities in space or our ability to protect the United States and our allies. We are, however, committed to working together to reverse the troubling trends that are damaging our space environment and to preserve the limitless benefits and promise of space for future generations.

What does this mean? It’s not clear, but one of the issues with the EU Code of Conduct, and why the administration didn’t sign on, was that it was becoming clear that neither India or China was going to get on board, if for no other reason than it originated from the EU. Presumably, the administration hopes that in restarting discussions on an international basis, they can get substantially the same result, but untainted by the initial EU connection. Whether it will continue to require the “Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures” that are so problematic, as well as other issues, remains to be seen. Unfortunately, with this White House, one can only hope for the best, and expect the worst, which given recent behavior, also means continuing to ignore the Senate in what is really a treaty.

[Update on Wednesday morning]

There’s more on this over at Space Politics.