I THINK MINING

   From FOX 5 News in Las Vegas come this report: 

A lawyer representing the mining industry says they will consider appealing after a Carson City judge refused to block a ballot measure that would dramatically increase mining taxes.   The Nevadans for Fair Mining Taxes initiative would amend the state constitution. The judge agreed it should be reworded, meaning supporters will have to re-file the petition and start over collecting signatures.   The head of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada is promising activists will work their “tails off harder than ever” to get the 97,000 signatures needed to get it on the November ballot.   The mining industry wanted the effort thrown out on constitutional grounds, but District Court Judge James Wilson Jr. aid he can’t rule on constitutional questions until after the voters have had their say.

  We have written before in this blog on what democracy means, and what it means to say the local community supports or opposes.   This report is but a  tiny sliver of the political movement and change that seem to be shaking the USA today.    Spring has just arrived and already the cold knives are out for fall elections.  Ultimately, as so often happens to such populist pieces of emotion run through the ballot wringer, some judge will have to decide if the result is legal.  And that may take a long time—by which point people will have become accustomed to the additional income the Nevada mining industry pays in taxes.  And let us face it, Americans are going to have to pay more in taxes or their equivalent to keep up with the weekend changes that they have wrought.   

Fact is the USA can not finance largesse by borrowing more from the Chinese.  The USA will have to grow more, mine more, make more, innovate more, and produce at the same rate as it consumes.  And this is true for corn and for medical services, and many other things besides. 

  More populistically-imposed taxes on mining or any other industry will not help with growing, making, or producing more.  The USA cannot tax its way to wealth or health.  Rather eat less to manage corn supplies.  And get out walking for exercise.  I bet that if we recycled all the metal in the unused exercise equipment cluttering nearly every house, we could shut a mine or two, net alone tax a mine or two.  Thus my call: either use the exercise equipment, or recycle it.   But do not expect somebody else via their taxes to pay for unused exercise equipment and free health care.   That is simply not a balanced golden mean.