1) Here’s an Obvious Way To Solve the Housing Shortage… and Raise $100 Billion in Tax Revenues

Capital gains taxes greatly discourage older Americans from selling their homes - even when they’re empty nesters and ready to downsize and retire to a golf community or a beach town.

That’s because the 23.8% tax on the gains from a home sale (or any other financial asset) is not adjusted for inflation. It’s not uncommon for a house owned for 40 years to have quadrupled in value but most of that “gain” is due to the tripling in prices over that period. How is taxing inflationary gains fair?

It isn’t, and Jeff Yass and UP Co-Founder Steve Moore have penned a piece in the WSJ showing that this capital gains tax - which can reach or even exceed 100% of the real increase in the value of the property - strongly discourages home sales due to the “lock in effect" of capital gains taxes. Seniors can and do avoid the tax by holding on until they die, when the basis is adjusted.

Milton Friedman used to call inflation: “taxation without legislation,” and nowhere is that more evident than in housing.

2) Mississippi Reading

Regular HOTLINE readers know that we reported on and celebrated this story regularly over the past year or so. The real education miracle here is that the news is so good out of a deep south red state that even the NY Times couldn't ignore it. Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.  

Here's their Sunday headline:

As recently as 2013, Mississippi ranked 49th in the country for education. Its standing seemed predictable, even inevitable, for a state with low education spending and one of the nation's highest child poverty rates.

Today, though, Mississippi is a top 10 state for fourth graders learning how to read, and one of the best places in the country for a poor child to get an education.

How did it happen? Here's the Times's explanation:

In 2013, Mississippi changed the way reading is taught, embracing the "science of reading." Teachers use sound-it-out instruction, known as phonics, and other direct methods, like the explicit teaching of vocabulary.

Around the same time, it also raised academic standards and started giving every school a letter grade.

What a revolutionary concept: grade schools and teachers on their performance!

For the teacher-union Draculas this has long been the equivalent of a necklace of garlic.

Now, add choice for every child, as Mississippi and other southern states are moving toward and you could get a real education miracle.

3) We Are Winning the War on Cancer

It wasn’t so long ago that a cancer diagnosis was a death sentence. Not anymore.

Cancer death rates are falling for men:

And for women:

Survival rates have climbed dramatically for many cancers that used to be a death sentence:

We’re about to complete a study at Unleash Prosperity which estimates the economic benefits to curing cancer, and we won’t spoil the ending, but we can tell you that the value of a cure is in the multiple trillions of dollars.

4) Supreme Court May Curb Mail-In Ballots

The Supreme Court has just made it far more likely that laws allowing the counting of late-arriving mail-in ballots for up to two weeks will be thrown out.

Illinois law allows ballots postmarked by Election Day to be counted if they are received up to two weeks later. More than a dozen states have similar laws.

The Supremes ruled yesterday by 7 to 2 that Rep. Mike Bost, an Illinois Republican, has the legal right to challenge his state's law, even though it didn't affect the outcome of his race.

Later this spring will come the main event. The Supreme Court will consider the broader issue of whether states can continue to count late-arriving mail ballots.

The Bost decision is a big win for Judicial Watch, which argued the case, and those who think that election rules should be clearly settled in advance of the election.

One of those rules that needs to be restored is reasonable anti-fraud limits to mail-in ballots. A presidential commission concluded that mail in ballots are the tool of choice for fraudsters, are often cast before candidates make their final arguments this undermining the federal statute requiring a single, uniform Election Day.

Illinois clearly has overstepped its authority. In 2020 alone, the state received 4.4% of the votes it counted in the two weeks AFTER Election Day. Allowing late ballots to be counted extends Election Day for weeks and is an open invitation to fraud.

5) Don’t Teachers Know How To Spell or at Least How to Use Spellcheck?

Oops!! The teachers in Chicago are on strike (again!!) demanding a soak the rich tax hike so they can get a raise for the fabulous job they’re doing teaching our kids. Remember, this is the city where in nearly two dozen schools, the majority of the children can’t read or write or do math at grade level proficiency.

But then, as the signs on the picket line reveal, the teachers can’t spell. So why expect the kids to be able to?

Oh, yeah. More money will solve Chicago's school problems.

6) RIP, Dilbert (aka, Scott Adams)

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