WatchThis op-ed is brilliant and exactly what I've been telling people on occasion:
http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/nevada-the-republican-promised-land-132035853.html
They were also discussing this on NPR this morning: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/19/141493959/ask-nevada-do-low-taxes-less-regs-create-jobs
Summary: Nevada has very low taxes and very low regulation. There is no corporate tax and no state income tax. There is even a constitutional limit on mining taxes, which means that tax receipts don't go up even if commodities skyrocket, as they have in recent years on occasion. Nevada is 49th in taxation, with the lowest burden of any state except Alaska (which gets massive federal subsidies of more than $20K per person per year from you and me, and oil money). In fact, much of its "regulation" is directly written by businesses and their lobbyists, and their legislature rarely meets. Nevada also has the fewest public employees per capita of any state.
Yet, Nevada still has:
1) highest unemployment rate
2) highest foreclosure rate
3) highest personal bankruptcy rate
4) biggest drop in median income
5) one of the biggest drop in property values of any state, if not the biggest (maybe Florida beats it?)
My own editorial portion:
If the GOP Paradise didn't work in Nevada, why would it work elsewhere? Why is "lower taxes" and "get rid of regulation" always the solution? It's not!
Nevada has lots of mining, but its job market is not particularly skilled or deep, which is why companies are staying away. It also has lots of gambling, but its other industries are pretty thin. Companies don't have a great job pool -- Reno and Las Vegas, the main population centers, just don't have deep job pools with skilled workers.
Low taxes and low regulation are not the only concern for businesses -- being able to get skilled workers in a diversified economy matters a lot too. Nevada is failing because it went too far to one side of the political spectrum in thinking the market would save it. There are plenty of other factors besides simply taxes and regulation that matter.
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corntrollio says
All of the above can be majorly attributed to the housing bubble and Nevada was the darling of Wall Street during the pre-bubble and the bubble phases.
Guess what was one of the most important points in history where this bubble could have been regulated? It was under Clinton era.
Read about Brooksley Born.
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/11/the-king-report-brooksley-born-vs-summers-greenspan-rubin/
So it's not all black and white as you posit -- there are grey areas where the Dems are culpable as well.
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While I am most definitely a liberal I don't think the above story is really saying that much. Look at a lot of the Southeastern states: They're booming. They also have low taxes. But they also have affordable housing. Is it the housing or the taxes? There's certainly a lot of manufacturing ( lots of car factories) that have located or relocated there and a lot of it probably had to do with costs and incentives. I'm not trying to take sides here but every state is going to be different and have different results from whatever style of governance they use.
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edvard2 says
Sure I'm not taking sides necessarily, but just pointing out that Nevada does exactly what the GOP says, and it's a huge failure.
The housing bubble "could have been regulated" stuff is mostly nonsense. If you look at the data, private bank loans went way up during the boom, and government-sponsored loans went way down. Government-sponsored lending has still performed far better. Funny that Austrian Man is asking for regulation though. :) Nevadans might disagree with that sentiment.
edvard2 says
Sure, some of them have low taxes, and many have affordable housing (although not true in some cities). Much of the manufacturing being located in the Southeast is partly because of cost but also because of state subsidies. For example, BMW gets big tax subsidies from the State of South Carolina for 30 years as part of its arrangement.
What is nice about having 50 states is that you can make each state a laboratory and actually test some of these propositions that people assert are true.
The reality is that there are many factors that go into whether businesses will locate in a state or whether a state will be prosperous. Taxation is merely one of these factors, and regulation is merely another. Generally, other factors matter too, and may matter to a larger magnitude than taxation and regulation.
Lower taxes and lower regulation do not always produce prosperity, and it's a foolish talking point to assert this repeatedly as many politicians do.
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Failed paradise? I can eat stuffed crust pizza off the bare breasts of an obese Armenian woman at 4am. Tell me that is not paradise, good sir.
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I agree with austrian_man in that I don't think this is as black and white as you make it out to be.
corntrollio says
austrian_man says
Bingo. I'd bet that most of NV's current problems listed above are a direct result of the the ongoing fallout from the housing crash. Keep in mind that the boom in NV had A LOT to do with (non-recourse, prop-17, 'Blue-State') California hot money POURING into Reno and LV as greedy boomers cashed out of LA and the BA, and moved up into the desert.
I don't think Nevada was doing THAT poorly before the boom, although I could be mistaken...
Bear in mind also that demographics and geography play a big part in NV's current problems. The biggest population centers border CA and consequently experienced CA's housing boom spillover, so they are depressed like much of CA is now. How are the more rural areas doing (outside the reservations, which are governed separately), or the more isolated urban areas like Elko?
From your second article:
DAMORE: You know, like a lot of the states in the Mountain West, these huge geographic areas that traditionally were dominated by rural interests, within the last 20 years that's very much changed. So if you look at the sort of political geography in Nevada, you have 87, 86 percent of the entire state's population reside in two counties. And that's why we're one of the most urban states in the country here. In that case...
SHAPIRO: So you're saying 87 percent of the people either live in the Las Vegas area or the live in the Reno area?
DAMORE: The Las Vegas or in the Reno. Yeah, Washoe County or Clark County. And so in the, you know, big land mass of Nevada is only 12, 13 percent of the entire population.
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terriDeaner says
Again, if you think I'm suggesting it's black or white, you are wrong. In fact, I'm saying the opposite -- that the politicians say it's black and white that tax cuts and less regulation will make you prosper, but it's not! Read my last paragraph of my OP and also the following paragraph of my followup before you misconstrue my words:
corntrollio says
terriDeaner says
But this isn't really a good criticism. Nevada had the same regulatory structure pre-boom and post-boom. If the regulatory structure was really as robust as claimed, shouldn't it have made the boom irrelevant? Shouldn't Nevada have prospered greatly notwithstanding?
terriDeaner says
Yes, I heard that on the radio this morning. So then it's the most libertarian *urban* GOP Paradise then. Pointing that out only makes my point stronger. The GOP have a lot of criticism for all the so-called liberals who live in big cities and saddle their citizens with massive taxes and massive regulation. I wonder what most Nevadans would say if you described them as city-folk. :)
Again, Nevada is one of the experimenters that did exactly exactly what current GOP members of Congress and presidential candidates say, and it failed miserably. Again, there are MANY factors that come into play on the economy, and taxation and regulation are merely two of them.
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corntrollio says
Not really... I'd argue that Reno and LV are now getting a LOT more like California than the rest of NV, particularly since there are so many Californians who live or own income property there.
corntrollio says
Every system has its limits, whether it is a 'libertarian-paradise' as you suggest, or a rigidly controlled, centralized nanny state. My point is that NV is not a particularly good case example for extrapolating the effects of cutting taxes and regulations on growth because:
1) NV is economically, geographically and demographically unusual relative to the rest of the country,
2) Maintenece of intrinsic NV policy (low tax, low regulation) in NV is unlikely to undo the effects of a boom that was largely caused by extrinsic factors (related to a one-time flood of $ pouring from a huge, neighboring state economy into a relatively small state economy),
and 3) it is not clear (from the articles you cited) how well NV (urban + rural) did for DECADES under these policies, or how well rural NV is doing now.
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terriDeaner says
Apples (NV) and oranges (rest of the country), although I do agree with you that many factors are at play here.
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corntrollio says
Here's the thing: what I would like to see is a sound monetary system with the markets controlling interest rates.
Interest rate determines the price of money and it is an important indicator of time-preference within the market participants regarding their deposits.
Given that we are SO WAY OFF from what I state above, regulation is a key factor to ensure things are in check.
We had the largest housing bubble in history largely due to deregulation and an out-of-control monetary system.
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corntrollio says
Kinda like how we experimented with spending a trillion stimulus dollars proposed by the democrats to keep the unemployment rate low?
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This.
corntrollio says
contradicts with this.
corntrollio says
you are attributing the fault largely to lower taxes and low regulation (which is primarily a GOP political viewpoint) and I am saying it isn't.
It is due to both parties screwing up.
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Nice.
austrian_man says
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austrian_man says
The housing bubble and crash was almost entirely the result of an unregulated free market. What exactly would you blame Democrats for? Furthermore isn't everything you advocate useless if it cannot be demonstrated in a real world situation?
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iwog says
Hmm... do you really mean 'unregulated free market', or rather 'deregulated and gamed market'?
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iwog says
Iwog,
The housing bubble is the farthest you can get away from 'unregulated free market'. If you thought the bubble was due to a free market, you have misunderstood the fundamental meaning of a free market. we have argued back and forth on this and I cannot convince you, since you are unwilling to understand what terriDeaner says below:
terriDeaner says
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EightBall says
Be that as it may, it probably kept unemployment from getting much worse.
But you missed my point with the experiment thing because you were trying to make a cheap talking point about federal spending while ignoring the substance of the conversation. I said that each of the 50 states can serve as a laboratory for experiments for their own ideas, without referring to federal policy.
austrian_man says
No, I'm not *attributing* it to that. I'm saying that the correlation isn't promising. This is the closest to ideal GOP environment for their talking point, and it's an abject failure.
TerriDeaner's criticism that Nevada may not represent the rest of the country was a far better critique, and is a valid point. My counterargument would be that Nevada is a great example because it meets many GOP ideals, and suggests that monotonically lowering taxes and lowering regulation has its limits too. What this suggests to me is that there's an appropriate *range* of taxation and regulation that in combination with other policies and assumptions creates a good economy. Some of those might be cost of living, skill level of the job pool, diversity of industry, etc.
terriDeaner says
If a Californian moves to Texas, does Texas become more like California? I doubt it. What you meant to say was that Reno and Las Vegas are becoming more urban like parts of California, and like parts of other states. Is Phoenix becoming more like LA because I've heard anecdotally that some people from LA move there for cheaper housing? What about Portland and Seattle, because I've heard people from LA move there too. Are Reno, Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle, and Phoenix becoming monotonically more alike? I doubt it.
If boomers, as you say, are moving to Nevada in large numbers, shouldn't the massive influx in completely new cash (from a Nevada-centric standpoint) help their economy, rather than hurt it, bubble or not? Massive cash influxes coming from outside Nevada should only buoy their economy, so your assertion that Californians are moving to Nevada (whether true or not) actually undercuts your argument.
austrian_man says
I don't disagree -- I just wanted to point out the irony. Perhaps the way to fix this is to have more regulation, not less -- but you said it, not me. :)
terriDeaner says
But that's the problem, isn't it? At one end of the spectrum (perhaps socialism, real socialism, not the type that idiot politicians refer to in their talking points), you have a government monopoly with heavy government regulation. At the other end (true hardcore libertarianism, aka anarcho-capitalism), you have corporate monopolies that result in what is essentially heavy corporate regulation. The spectrum really wraps around into a circle.
That's why we have to get our terminology right. Some people use "free market" to refer to a market driven by supply and demand but that isn't driven by monopolies and oligopolies unfairly. Other people use "free market" to refer to what is essentially anarcho-capitalism which results in mafias and cartels running things (basically feudalism). The first definition necessarily requires some degree of regulation in the market to ensure that the market is free. The latter definition asserts that regulation is unnecessary because economics will result in self-regulation.
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corntrollio says
I don't get what's the irony.
Unstable monetary system, rigged markets => more regulation required to keep things in check.
Sound, stable monetary system, fair markets => adequate regulation required, too much regulation is redundant and actually inefficient.
corntrollio says
:) very well said.
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corntrollio says
Yes, by 0.0000000004%.
corntrollio says
Not exactly, you misunderstood me. With the demographic shift, there was also a substantial cultural shift as well. Have you been to Reno or LV before the boom by any chance?
corntrollio says
I would say yes, particularly in terms of sprawling population growth, relative to before the housing bubble. This is certainly based on my own experience, but I imagine that with a little digging I could find some metrics to support this thesis.
corntrollio says
Try the past tense on this one, dude. Boomers DID move to NV during the boom, DID speculatively buy investment properties, and it DID result in a massive, destabilizing influx of cash. I don't think many Californians are moving to Nevada now, and I didn't assert that they were, either.
corntrollio says
Fair enough. Marcus posted this last week:
Also, I am using 'free market' here to mean free of regulation. Defining a 'free market' strictly as one driven by supply and demand always seems a bit slippery to me... I'd be inclined to describe the latter as a market in dynamic supply-demand equilibrium. Catchy, no?
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terriDeaner says
Sure, of course, I have. You know, my experience with Nevada is not just casinos, but, as an example, some casinos still do that thing where they tag employees' hometowns. Certainly there are some folks from California, but most of the dealers that I talked to that were from California moved a long time ago (15-20 years ago) and are not boomers who moved recently, and some of those former Californians had lived in Nevada so long that they started putting their Nevada residence as their hometown. Not to suggest that casino workers are representative of Nevada, but it is one of the primary jobs there.
terriDeaner says
Well, hang on there. If there was a past cash influx to Nevada, and it was destabilizing, that just means that native and resident Nevadans didn't use that influx of cash wisely with their low taxes and low regulation -- i.e. to buy a cheaper house for retirement, to invest, to start a business, etc. Why does cash have to be destabilizing? Also, most boomers aren't quite at full retirement age yet (do the math, 1946-1964) -- are you saying that lots of people were moving for job opportunities in Reno/Las Vegas?
The housing bubble on its own ran a frenzy in Nevada. It didn't need Californians to do anything. The Californian thing is just what people in Vegas and Phoenix said to justify the housing bubble. Turns out they were wrong, and the housing bubble had other causes.
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Huntington Moneyworth III, Esq says
Obese women are not a paradise at any time.
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corntrollio says
It doesn't have to be, but funny money in the hands of stupid people is VERY destabilizing - and we have ample evidence of that from the past 10 years. And it was in Reno and LV...
And I bet that MANY Nevadans that initially profited from the boom did just as you suggested - bought lower-maintence retirement houses (which would have been MORE expensive, since prices were rising, and since before the boom housing was pretty cheap to start with, relative to CA), invested their money in their businesses, in investment properties, and whatever else they percieved to be responsible investments. And I'm sure plenty of them blew their dough on fancy cars, McMansions, and shiny crap from China as well.
The problem, however, is that all this economic activity happened in an unnaturally short period of destructively high demand - such that years (decades? who knows...) of growth and productivity were pulled forward. So now the most heavily populated areas of NV languish in depression.
The same thing happened in much more heavily taxed and regulated California too. So I don't think this is primarily a tax/regulation issue - it's just that the NV economy is fucked because it is much smaller and and less resiliant to the boom-bust than other places in the country that had less of a boom-bust and/or more resilient local economies.
corntrollio says
But would it have been as bad in Reno and LV (people and inflationary money sink during the boom) if NV wasn't geographically proximal to the large population centers of CA (people and inflationary money source during the boom)?
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terriDeaner says
Without evidence to the contrary, I'd say yes. What are the real numbers of Californians who moved to Reno/Las Vegas during the boom, and how many of them owned houses previously in California and used the boomtime windfall to overpay in Nevada? That's the question one would have to answer.
I've heard anecdote, but I've also heard that foreigners will save our housing market, numerous times. Hasn't happened yet. 5 years and counting. My anecdotes matter just as much as everyone else's -- I knew people who were busy buying up rental properties during the boom in cities like Reno, Las Vegas, and Phoenix as residents of those cities (some were glorified slumlords). The money didn't have to come from California or New York or China to cause a boom. Bank lending was enough.
terriDeaner says
But again, this is my argument. Taxes and regulation are merely two factors for businesses. However, if the most favorable environment possible wasn't enough, that should tell you something -- that they are not as big a factor as many people think.
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MarsAttacks! says
Wow, Texas has that kind of laws? that's pretty good. explains why there was lesser of an impact in Texas compared to hard hit areas because of the bubble.
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elliemae's website
Let us not forget that Vegas & Reno are single-industry towns. Tourism & gambling (go hand-in-hand).
The place attempts to re-invent itself on a weekly basis. I've watched it go thru so many attempts to do so. It tried to be family friendly "themed" resorts (Treasure Island, Excalibur, New York New York roller coaster), then to mimic different landmarks (Paris, New York New York), then do the corporate landmark thing (Hooters Hotel, Hard Rock Hotel...). Anywhere else, they renovate. Vegas blows shit up right & left.
When tourism was great, Vegas was great. Now that it's in the toilet, so goes Vegas. sucks.
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Las Vegas IMO is missing out on most of it's "sin" image. Gambling eclipses all else. 6 other deadly sins not getting due attention. Although monetizing "acedia" seems like it'd be a tough one.
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austrian_man says
A deregulated and gamed market IS an unregulated market. It's easy to game the system if there are no rules.
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iwog says
A free market cannot include any of the following:
Central Bank(latest established 1913)
Government regulation in favor of mega-corporations
Manipulation of markets by central powers(economical and political)
Quit gutting the English language with you post-modernist "This word stands for whatever I think it stands for" attitude.
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Chula Vista, CA
To the point of this post, how can a state be GOP when it's run by the Democratic Senate Majority Leader
The Democratic vs Republican paradigm - Like have a masturbation contest with the mirror.
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iwog says
Iwog,
you should understand that I am not advocating for anarcho-capitalism. I see your point that human greed (if unchecked) will result in the same thing, regardless of whether the monetary system is sound or unsound.
Which is why I emphasize moral character at the highest level of governance. Big or small government will fail if there is no consistency and character.
Here's your favorite Jon Stewart on Ron Paul:
“He’s the one guy in the field, agree with him or don’t agree with him, who doesn’t just regurgitate talking points or change what he believes to fit the audience in front of him.”
You tell me, if we have this moral character at the governance today. It's all well that the bankers have been saved for all their bad mistakes and no wonder, they'll continue backing the POTUS who saved them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-has-more-cash-from-financial-sector-than-gop-hopefuls-combined-data-show/2011/10/18/gIQAX4rAyL_story.html?hpid=z2
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NuttBoxer says
Actually none of that has anything to do with a free market. A free market by definition is simply the freedom of a individual or a business to make financial decisions without restriction by the government.
The federal reserve system is what we all use for money. To claim that we don't live in a free market because our central bank does stuff is ridiculous. At worst, the federal reserve has a slight impact on interest rates and can sometimes change margin requirements on Wall Street. (but doesn't) In the past three years, it has also attempted to inject liquidity into our economy and has mostly failed in that task.
Anyway back to the housing crisis. The housing crisis was primarily caused by:
1. Removal of restrictions on points and fees for loans in 1995.
2. Removal of barriers between Wall Street and banks in 2000.
3. Removal of government oversight of the financial system by George Bush in 2001.
Freddie and Fannie had absolutely nothing to do with the mess and neither did the CRA. They didn't start drinking the kool aid until very late in the game.
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Ron Paul is Don Quixote de La Mancha.
Many people like reading that book, they have a fondness for the madman tilting at windmills. That doesn't however mean they are going to saddle up and follow him.
Just to name 2 flaws:
1) Ending the Federal Reserve. The finance industry is utterly structurally opposed to this, so you can forget their support.
2) Ending military adventurism, retreating to a small standing army sufficient only for national border defense.
These are ideas many like in the abstract over the water cooler, but are not going to have millions marching with pitchforks and torches. Actually I argue they are very conflicted over #2, some just plain want an endless war, but more importantly many like having the biggest stick to wave around and are not going to vote to put that down.
Our admiration for Ron Paul is exactly the same as Don Quixote. Even when you don't agree with his ideas, which Jon Stewart and many others do not, you can abstractly admire his style but do not mistake that for meaning we want to see ideologues in 100% power. You cannot lead anyone, anywhere they don't want to go. Clearly we WANT people in power who are like us, full of contradictions and craziness, if we didn't we wouldn't keep electing them over and over.
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austrian_man says
You are advocating a system that has destroyed the economy and/or resulted in armed revolt every time it has been tried.
This is exactly why you can't point to any historical examples. You cannot say "look at this country during this decade! Look how their unregulated market prospered!" Just like Ayn Rand, your perfect system only exists in fiction.
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Vicente says
He wants to audit the Fed, which might eventually lead to ending the Fed. You did see that the Fed injected liquidity to foreign central banks during 08 right? There is no congressional oversight on any of these things. it is out of control. Frankly - I don't see how everyone thinks this is A-OK.
Vicente says
May be we should think about whether we can afford to fight wars or to improve the quality of life domestically. May be we should rethink priorities, rather than bossing around.
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iwog says
lol, for the record - I think her moral philosophy is quite under-developed. She is full of contradictions. So that's not the system I want.
iwog says
I don't see how. If we continue to run deficit spending, how long can that continue? may be it'll feel good in the short term, but pain will be there long term. What is better?
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austrian_man says
If we continue to run deficit spending, eventually we'll have to monetize the debt. That's a good thing and results in more wealth to workers and less wealth to hoarders. Unfortunately it also screws people on a fixed income, but then that's better than the alternative which is:
The end of the Monopoly game. The top 1% have everything and the bottom 99% beg for scraps. That's the situation in Mexico and it's exactly where your deregulation will put us.
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iwog says
I think that puts the currency at risk, so a bad thing. A better alternative is to target NGDP. Sweden did that in 1991. See more details here: http://macromarketmusings.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-successful-and-unsuccessful.html
iwog says
We are already there....due to both Rep and Dem. Deregulation happened under both parties.
iwog says
Still, you're not seeing my point. I'm not asking for deregulation under an unstable system as it stands today. In fact you need more regulation that what's currently in place. Glass-Steagall was good, should be restored.
Nevertheless, you can't say that things would go so out of control as it stands today, if there was a restraint imposed by gold.
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austrian_man says
This is exactly was the wealth hoarders would want at this point. Those who currently have would continue to hoard, and going back to the gold standard would make lending standards even tougher.
Who benefits from debt and a hard currency? Those that are owed the debt.
If the relative value of the debt is decreased compared to wages (ie through inflation) that benfits those that OWE the debt.
Going away from an asset based currency helped cause this problem, but going back to one would exascerbate the problem.
The are two solutions to wealth inequality:
1. Confiscate the wealth (through a highly progressive tax system)
2. Increase the relative value of labor compared to capital (income inflation)
Pick your poison. Bottom line is the 99.9%ers might be waking up. The world has seen it before and it never ends well for the .1%.
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david1 says
Sweden did both actually in 1991. They raised taxes and they also targeted NGDP (which sort of raises wages, people can spend more only if they get more cash).
I do think for the long run, a high tax system actually hurts the economy rather than hindering it.
See this study: http://www.libera.fi/content/uploads/2011/10/Libera_The-Swedish-model.pdf
The Swedish model is often dramatized in the public policy debate, described as
either a social democratic utopia or a failed socialist experiment. These views are
far from the truth. Sweden is a successful country in terms of low poverty rate and
long life expectancy. However, these factors have much to do with Swedish culture
that existed already when taxes were still relatively low.
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According to the US Census, Mississippi has the highest poverty rate in the United States [Yahoo News, 10/20/2011]
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Iwog, dont disagree with those 3 contributors to housing bubble, just sayimg your evaluation that a free market(per our definition) was a bit off. your perception of central banking influence is not realistic.