We had a preview of summer this past week with some warm sunny days in the 80’s, with couple of places seeing 90ºF. Windows in both The Gulch and the trusty RAM 1500 were open, the heat was off, and we made the best of the weather.
While there are still a few places showing piles of snow, primarily areas that receive no direct sunlight, those piles are almost gone. As best I’ve been able to determine there is no ice left anywhere on the Big Lake. I’ve certainly seen quite a few boats out on the lake, most of them being fishing boats – it’s salmon fishing season – hitting the spots where landlocked salmon might be.
The Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout – aka The Boat – is still scheduled to be returned the water early during the second week of May. I suppose I could have made arrangements to have The Boat removed from storage earlier, but since it would not really be used until early May why do so?
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Just when we think we’ve gotten past racial issues we find that descendants of victims of segregation are demanding segregated housing, at least to the level where they get to choose the race of their potential roommate.
The demand to allow "students of color" to elect not to room with students of other races was one of several such demands issued by a group of protesting students who aired their concerns about racism on campus during an ongoing sit-in. Syracuse Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke at the sit-in in a live-streamed exchange.Yet another group of students who have the mistaken belief that they run the show at their university.
Calling themselves “#NotAgainSU,” this group of protestors is calling for the chancellor to resign if he does not sign a document conceding to the list of demands by Wednesday. Even before the given deadline, over 1,000 protesters have already petitioned for his resignation online.
I remember when ‘students of color’ demanded segregated housing at my alma mater a few years ago. The administration basically said ‘no’, reminding them that segregated housing was illegal, particularly on state property. They didn’t like the administration’s response and demanded the university ignore federal law and numerous US Supreme Court decisions. What would be next, demands to restore of some modern version of Jim Crow laws? Considering their ignorance of history, and particularly the history of the US Civil Rights movement, their demands were over the top and illegal as heck.
Maybe it’s time to remind them that they don’ run the show. Start with suspensions. If that doesn’t work, then expulsions. It’s time for college administrations to start doing their jobs and take back control of their campuses.
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There are calls for governments to start taxing wealth. Both national and state governments have considered doing this even thought there is plenty of evidence showing that so-called wealth taxes don’t work, don’t collect anywhere near what proponents claim they will, and have the added side effect that they have a negative effect on the economy of any place imposing them as the wealthy flee, taking their wealth with them.
Along with wealth leaving, so does investment. Why would anyone want to invest someplace where the government can decide they can tax “unrealized gains” meaning taxing the supposed increase in the value of an investment even though the investor hasn’t cashed out.
The latest ‘victim’ of the wealth tax?
Norway.
“A difficult choice has been made. I’ve moved from Asker, Norway, to Lugano in Switzerland,” Norway’s biggest taxpayer, and the largest shareholder of investment firm Aker ASA, Kjell Inge Røkke wrote to the rest of the board in an open letter last September. Mr Røkke, an industrial tycoon with an estimated net worth of Nkr 19.6bn (£1.5bn), is among 50 billionaires and millionaires to have left Norway over the past year as they were hit with higher rates of wealth tax.A number of nations have imposed wealth taxes in the past. Most have abandoned them because they had the opposite effect of that predicted by proponents. One of the last countries to abandon wealth taxes was France back in 2017 when it was found it lost more money than it ever collected in revenues.
Record numbers of the country's richest residents have fled since the Labour-centre coalition increased wealth tax rates by 0.1 percentage points, costing the government tens of millions in lost tax revenue. The 50 high earners, with a combined net worth of more than Nkr 40bn (£3bn), make up more than the total number who have left the country for Switzerland since 2009, according to Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv.
What I find disturbing is the UK is considering a wealth tax...again.
It imposed such taxes back in the early 70’s and the British economy, already in the depths of a recession, collapsed. It wasn’t until Maggie Thatcher became Prime Minister and pushed Parliament to undo the crushing economic policies and confiscatory taxes that the British economy recovered. That the British are thinking of going back down that route again means they have forgotten the lessons they were taught the last time they tried it.
That California has been contemplating a similar move tells me they also choose not to learn from history, will make the same mistakes, something that could be the death knell for California’s already struggling economy.
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And that’s the new from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summer weather has taken a step back to more normal spring weather, camps and cottages are being opened for the upcoming summer season, and where we’re waiting for our local ice cream joint to re-open.