Writings: Death and Taxes

New stuff for you to read:

• For a Manhattan Institute brief, I compiled murder rates for 78 of the nation’s biggest cities across three key periods: The Baseline (2018-19), the Spike (2020-21), and the Recovery (2022-23). The data show which cities experienced the worst spikes, recovered most completely to their previous level, etc. I also run some basic correlations to see if the increases and decreases correspond to other patterns. The nerdy point is that it matters greatly whether you measure these changes in raw vs. proportional terms—if one city saw its rate double from 4 to 8, and another from 8 to 16, were these two increases the same or is the second one larger? The places with the biggest raw increases tend to just be the places that had high homicide rates to begin with, but patterns are more subtle when the focus is on proportional increases. Places with bigger homicide jumps in the Spike period did see more cops leave, however, for which the causation can run both ways. See also my summary for City Journal.

• Also for CJ, I gave a take on the House tax bill. My general view is that (A) extending the Trump tax cuts for the middle class is politically inevitable; (B) safety-net reforms should not be off the table, especially when it comes to closing loopholes that states use to hoover up federal money; and (C) the bill fails to strike a balance between tax cuts and spending cuts, while adding some ridiculous gimmicks to the tax code, and will worsen an already quite bad budget picture.