Bob Lord

Bob has mostly wound down his 39-year career as a tax and business lawyer (with a 1-year interruption to run for Congress in 2008 (CD3), when he tried to unseat John Shadegg. Bob now serves as the senior advisor on tax policy for the Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy Americans who believe the light taxation of America's rich is destabilizing our democracy, and as an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Bob has been writing for Blog For Arizona since late 2011, concentrating mostly on federal issues, with an occasional foray into Arizona state politics.

Progressives Getting Played: A Case Study In Really Bad Federal Tax Policy

by

Posted by Bob Lord

This post may run through tax geekdom a bit, but it hopefully shows the relationship between federal and state tax policy, and how badly the battle has been waged by progressives over the years.

Over the past twelve years, significant changes have been made to the Federal estate tax code. Most of us know about the increase in the amount that can be passed free of federal estate tax, from One Million Dollars per person in 2001 to more than Five Million Dollars per person today. But there were other changes, among the most significant of which were (1) the elimination of the federal estate tax credit for state inheritance tax in favor of a deduction for state inheritance tax and (2) the reduction of the maximum federal estate tax rate from 50% to 40%.

It is those two changes, taken together, that present a case study in really bad federal tax policy and a shining example of progressives getting creamed at the negotiating table. And, based on the dearth of writing on this subject, it's not clear progressives even understood they were getting creamed.

The $21.72 Minimum Wage

by

Posted by Bob Lord Great chart at Huff Po, courtesy of CEPR. You can read the entire piece here, but as shown below, if the minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity, as it did until about 1970, we'd be at $21.72 now. It's not so much that the wages of Walmart workers have … Read more

Conservative Myopia

by

Posted by Bob Lord

I recently put up a short post regarding the Boy Scouts anti-gay policy. The post generated quite a few comments, although I admittedly fueled that by continuing to reply to comments, especially those from the right. 

This is obviously anecdotal, and anecdotal evidence always has the risk of being misleading, but the eye opener for me was how differently the vision of commenters on the left was from those on the right. I've noticed this in casual conversations with progressve and conservative friends, But the difference seemed starker when reading the written comments. Those on the left could see clearly that homophobia in America is receding at a rapid pace. Consequently, they saw the Boy Scouts' policy as increasingly out of touch. The commenter on the right, by contrast, was riveted on the present. He seemed to look at the world only through the lens of where we are now. He believed, in his mind of minds, or so it seemed, that because the Boy Scouts' anti-gay policy was upheld in a court decision a decade or so ago, the policy was validated forever, and was very unlikely to change. The idea that as society's attitudes evolved a future court might reconsider and overturn that decision seemed not even to be a possibility.

Robert Robb, Shallow Thinker Extraordinaire

by

Posted by Bob Lord

The AZBlueMeanie alerted me to Robert Robb's recent blog post at AZCentral, Economic growth realities and myths. Robb's post is based entirely on a recent study for the American Legislative Exchange Council, “Rich States, Poor States,” by Arthur Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams. Robb pretty much employs no critical thinking in his post. He takes what ALEC and Laffer have to say as gospel, then judges the Arizona legislature based on it. 

The datum from the Laffer piece that Robb seizes on most is the outsized job growth in the 9 states with no personal income tax. 48% of the job growth in the last decade occurred in those states. The obvious implication, according to Robb: All states should strive for a zero income tax. Indeed, Robb says that Arizona should have that as a long-term goal.

But Robb doesn't bother to explore the long-term ramifications of his recipe for growth if all states took his (and ALEC's) advice. It really doesn't take much by way of critical thinking skills to noodle this out.

Teaching Bigotry to Youth

by

Posted by Bob Lord This photo from todays' NY Times says it all. Think of what the parents (or Scout leaders) of these impressionable kids are teaching them. Gays are immoral. Gays aren't the same as "us." Gays are something less than we are. We shouldn't associate with gays. Chances are that one or two … Read more