Chutzpah

Growth in regulatory requirements is now exponential.

Biden’s 15% Minimum Tax on Big Companies Gets 603-Page Rulebook

I was once part of a litigation. We were one group, suing other groups, to protect our rights in a larger, more complex situation.

We had a fantastic, old-timey NYC lawyer representing us, three hundred pounds of aggression and personality. He was a chain-smoker on his third or fourth wife. He had the gravel voice and the absolute fearlessness one would want in an attorney. We were like children to him, I suspect. He was older and experienced. He was amused and he didn’t hide it. Everything amused him, not least of all us. I took on the role of diplomat in our group, translating the ravings of some of our more rabid (and less articulate) members. That must have amused him the most.

The other lawyers hated him. Once, on the way to a meeting, I was in the elevator with one of his opponents, a partner at a white-shoe law firm who carried on and on about our old bear to a colleague. It was as if I was invisible. I’ve always had a knack for picking things up this way. I would have been a good spy.

I saw our man argue in court. There were several hundred people packed in the room. The judge was a tiny man who may have actually been named Kermit Something. Mr. Chainsmoker, wearing a beautiful, tailored suit, used a phrase that stuck with me.

He said, “Your Honor. Chutzpah is when a boy murders his parents and then begs the court for mercy because he is now an orphan.” I actually laughed out loud when he said it. That’s our guy!

Well, here’s the IRS with its own version of chutzpah.

For years, they layer on complicated rules and requirements and exemptions and conditions. Big companies that can afford an army of tax lawyers exploit them to their maximum advantage and don’t pay as much in taxes as one might expect. The correlation between their tax financial statements and the reports they make to investors is casually random by this point.

So, the IRS puts together over 600 pages of new rules, requirements, conditions, and exemptions to try to square that sphere.

If it’s possible, we’re accelerating the rate at which pile on the stratified layers of crap. It’s exponential in that the rate at which we add requirements is proportional to the level of existing crap.

‘The proposed rules explain the definitions and calculations for a parallel corporate tax system based on companies’ financial reports, one that runs alongside the regular corporate tax system and makes affected companies pay whichever is greater.

…

‘“This is about tax fairness,” said Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo. “The ability to use accountants and lawyers to reduce tax bills down to zero gives billion-dollar corporations a competitive advantage over smaller businesses.”’

Former ECB President Mario Draghi Proposes a “Vice President for Simplification”

We talked about the Ministry of Cutting Red Tape earlier this week. Here’s Mish eviscerating the EU. They want to remove bureaucracy but there are structural impediments to doing so. Essentially, there is a ratchet effect. You can increase bureaucracy easily, but it’s almost impossible to reduce it.

Maybe if they had some way of imposing new bureaucracy to control the existing bureaucracy.

You could call it “meta-bureaucracy.”

Yeah, that’s the ticket. See my earlier comments about exponential stratification.

‘Heck, the EU bureaucracy is such that it will probably spend the next five years creating a “Vice President for Simplification”. And all it will do (at best), is come up with more rules, that some country will object to.’

“Fauxtastrophes” and the Power of Bureaucracy

There is a formula for catalyzing the expansion of the bureaucracy. It is nothing new.

Think about all the people who argued about the population bomb and mass starvation. We need more bureaucracy. Then that became depopulation and the environment. We need more bureaucracy.

It’s like the old Saturday Night Live skit. I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is more bureaucracy.

Here’s the clip from the article.

‘Scientism’s new back-passage behind the throne required their re-imposing Necessity on working people. So, real science aside, its prophets began creating “fauxtastrophes,” cosmic pseudo-calamities that would satisfy our irrepressible hunger for transcendence—the natural expectation of divine retribution—and affirm our dependence on their priestly caste. The first two efforts in the Sixties were the Population Bomb and New Ice Age. Both were “undeniable settled-science,” but only the Population Bomb had “legs,” capable of generating political license and authoritarian programs.

…

‘Bureaucracy, on the other hand, is an edifice of universal regulation, rigid categories, blinkered precautions and tick-box protocols. Bureaucracy is closed. Protocols forbid discernment. Bureaucratic physicians, once inquisitive diagnosticians, become treatment protocol managers. Bureaucratic social workers abuse families with child protection protocols. Bureaucratic anxiety and ambition ritualize protocols, and protocols have no tick-box for error.’

Career colleges targeted by ‘biased’ Biden bureaucracy with loss of student aid

Bureaucrats pick winners and losers. Either they do it with the rules they put into place or they do it with selective enforcement of the regulatory regime using the bureaucrat’s discretion.

Keynes compared a market like the stock market to a beauty contest in which millions of participants voted continuously on what was attractive, with views shifting over time.

Bureaucratic discretion is more like a beauty contest where there are only a handful of judges imposing their views on the world.

It’s no wonder that all the winners look the same.

By the way, this is brought to you by the same people who made the FAFSA process a giant mess.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

‘The Biden administration has taken action to cut off federal aid to 35 postsecondary schools in the last three years, but don’t expect to see Harvard or Columbia on that list.

‘Newly disclosed data shows that the nation’s for-profit schools have landed in the crosshairs of the Department of Education’s Office of Enforcement within Federal Student Aid, the agency that was reestablished shortly after President Biden took office.

‘Of the 35 institutions facing the loss of student aid, 23 are for-profit colleges with specialties such as cosmetology, information technology and medical administration, according to the list of actions on the StudentAid.gov/enforcement hub launched last month.’