New York, The Home Of Crazy Housing Policy

In the private sector, when you fail you go out of business; but in the public sector failure is the springboard to argue that the taxpayers aren't giving you enough money and to try to get more.  New York housing policy provides some extreme examples of this phenomenon.  We're now about four generations into trying to cure a housing "crisis" through government actions that include rent regulations, extensive public housing, subsidies through a dizzying variety of different programs, onerous housing codes and inspection systems, and on and on.  And somehow the remaining "market" housing turns out to be the most expensive in the country.  Nobody seems able to look outward at places like Houston or Phoenix or Las Vegas with little to none of such programs, lots of construction, and much lower free market prices, as well as far better housing options for the low-income population.

Our new City Comptroller Scott Stringer looks to be trying to make a name for himself in this double-down-on-failure game.  Back in April he came out with a big report titled The Growing Gap: New York City's Housing Affordability Challenge.  It seems that that one didn't get the play he was hoping for, so he has just come out with another one, largely rehashing the first, titled  How New York Lives: An Analysis Of The City's Housing Maintenance Conditions.   Cutting to the heart of these reports, the big news is that the public and rent-regulated housing in New York City are in far worse condition than the free-market rentals and the owner-occupied housing.  Now there's a shocker!  And not only that, it's getting worse.  Consider these finding as to the low income public housing units under the jurisdiction of the New York City Housing Authority (home to about 500,000 people, or about one-seventeenth of the population):

• In 2002, 60 percent of public housing apartments had at least one deficiency.  By 2011, 79
percent of public housing apartments had at least one deficiency.

• Water leaks, a key element of a recent tenant-filed federal lawsuit, also rose substantially.  In 2002, water leaks were observed in approximately one-fifth of NYCHA apartments. By 2011 that percentage was nearly one-third.

• The number of units with broken or missing windows increased 945 percent from 2005 to 2011.

• From 2005 to 2011, rodent observations increased 12 percentage points, with over 36 percent of NYCHA apartments experiencing this condition in 2011.

• From 2008 to 2011, heating equipment breakdowns increased by 72.8 percent and units with broken plaster and peeling paint increased by 111 percent.

Well, there's nothing like socialized housing to improve the lives of the people!  The September report lacks an explicit plea for the big bucks, but consider this from the April report:

In recent City Council testimony delivered by Chairwoman Shola Olatoye it was noted that
NYCHA needs approximately $18 billion dollars to bring all of their developments to a state of good repair.

Eighteen billion?  No problem, we can get that by, say, shutting down the school system for an entire year.  Since I don't foresee that happening, what I do foresee is continued decline for the properties of the NYCHA.  The chance that government functionaries will ever adequately maintain the properties is about zero, and it really doesn't matter how much money they have to do the job.  If you can do the job adequately on your current budget, what's the argument for getting a bigger budget?  And without a bigger budget, how are you going to be able to hire yourself five assistants and a chauffeur?  The whole idea is to fail, and without a doubt they will fail and continue to fail.

Of course there is a way to get the current public housing stock maintained at no cost to the taxpayers.  That is to give  the projects to the current residents.  As owners, I predict that the residents will magically maintain their properties without cost to the taxpayers, just like the other housing owners do, in order to enhance their property values and make money on sale.  Oh, and by the way, we will have created several hundred billion dollars of housing value out of thin air -- value that today is suppressed by the lack of private ownership of the properties.  And we will also have removed hundreds of thousands of people from poverty.  More on that in future posts.

But anyway, in the category of housing policy craziness, we have an even crazier one out this week.   Something called the Fiscal Policy Institute has proposed a new property tax to apply only to residential properties of market value higher than $5 million and only when the property is not the "primary residence" of the owner.  FPI estimates that there are 1556 such units in the City.  Its proposed tax would be on a sliding scale, where property value between $5 and 6 million would get 0.5% of full fair market value per year additional tax, up to 4% additional tax on value above $25 million for the unit.  FPI, which assumes that all of these people are too dumb to take evasive action, calculates that the tax will raise $665 million per year, of which 83%, or $551 million will be paid by just 445 people at the rate of $1.2 million average per year each.

This idea arises out of the noticeable building boom going on in Manhattan of super high end condos, many selling for $5 million and up, of which, according to FPI, approximately half are purchased by non-City residents as part-time pieds-a-terre.   OK, but do we really believe that this handful of people is going to fork over an average of $1 million or so each per year for the privilege of owning this part-time pad?  The reason that New York has been attracting this market in the first place is precisely that its property taxes are moderate compared to the international competition.  At this level of gouging, why won't those Russian oligarchs go to Rio or Hong Kong?  And nobody seems to counting for anything the salaries of the construction workers and salespeople and the like that will go away when the building boom gets killed off.  It's not clear to me at all that this tax will even be a net positive in revenue when all is taken into account.

But needless to say, the City Council and State Legislature are panting with excitement with this opportunity to "get" these non-voting rich people.  Already, a resolution has been presented in the City Council, and a bill in the Legislature.  And who, you may ask, are the legislators presenting these items?  Why, none other than my own representatives, City Councilman Corey Johnson and State Senator Brad Hoylman.   Of course, these are the guys from the wealthiest districts in town, Greenwich Village and Chelsea.  Proving once again my proposition that the people who are most consumed with jealousy for the top one percent are in fact percents 97 and 98.

Obama Becoming A Laughingstock On Climate Change

After our big climate march here over the weekend, our President came to New York yesterday, supposedly to deal with other world leaders to solve the "climate crisis" and save the planet.   The New York Times tells the story today in a big front page article headlined "Obama Presses Chinese to Move to Curb Warming."

President Obama, emboldened by his use of executive powers to fight climate change at home, challenged China on Tuesday to make the same effort to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions and join a worldwide campaign to curb global warming.  Declaring that the United States and China — the world’s two largest economies and largest polluters — bear a “special responsibility to lead,” Mr. Obama said, “That’s what big nations have to do.”

Could this whole thing have been more embarrassing?  President Xi of China (number one emitter of so-called "greenhouse gases") did not show up.  Neither did new Prime Minister Modi of India (number 3 emitter).   Same for Putin of Russia (number 4 emitter); Putin is a climate skeptic (this guy is no dummy, unlike others mentioned in this post).   Merkel of Germany (number 6 emitter and first in the EU)?  Absent.  (Here is a list from Wikipedia of total and per capita emissions by country.)

In countries with smaller populations but high per capita emissions, we have Australia, the champion of per capita emissions.  Its Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, did not attend.  Neither did Stephen Harper of Canada, number 3 in per capita emissions after Australia and the U.S.  Oh, Australia just repealed its carbon tax.  And Canada?  They are madly developing their tar sands reserves, and planning to ship the oil by pipeline to the Pacific for export to Asia, since Obama will not approve the Keystone pipeline.

Of leaders of the top emitters besides Obama, only Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan (number 5) attended.  He said that Japan "is considering making an appropriate contribution" to a so-called Green Climate Fund.  That's powerful Shinzo!  Definitely don't try to pin him down on any specific amounts.  Also, he discreetly declined to mention that Japan shut down all 48 of its nuclear reactors after the 2011 earthquake and replaced all of that power with hydrocarbons.  Currently, they have set no timetable for restarting the nukes.

It seems that the New York Times style manual prescribes that despite the ridiculousness of the situation, it must be treated in the Grey Lady with the utmost seriousness.  The article by Mark Landler and Coral Davenport doesn't show even a touch of humor.  For example, they have extensive quotes from a guy named Zhang Gaoli, the Chinese flunky sent to stand in for Xi.  In one such quote, Zhang says that "his country would try to reach a peak level of carbon emissions 'as early as possible.'"  Don't crack a smile!  Do you realize how that came out, Zhang?  The guy may need to do some work on understanding the nuances of the English language.

Any reasonable press coverage would treat this as the huge embarrassment that it is, but we don't have that kind of press.  And even if the only sarcasm that Obama must endure is from the Manhattan Contrarian, why would he do even that?  Well, the answer is simple:  This is not really about getting international agreements to save the planet.  It's about raising money to keep the Democratic Party in power in Washington for another election cycle.

Don't believe me?  You won't find this in the Times, but according to an article today in the Guardian,

After a day of set-piece speeches by leaders including Barack Obama that yielded little in the way of new commitments, world leaders were supposed to meet over dinner to discuss climate change, and engage in “soft diplomacy” to iron out differences ahead of crunch negotiations on a new global climate agreement.

And who didn't show up for that one?  Barack Obama.  He was "a few blocks away [from the dinner] at a party in the Waldorf-Astoria."   Raising money, of course.

Still Getting Economic Policy 180 Degrees Wrong

In economic policy, there is one big question, which is, to improve the economy, should the government spend more or should it spend less?  Obviously these two things are the opposite of each other, and both can't be right.  If one is right, the other is wrong, and indeed destructive.

To decide the right answer, we can look out into the real world for evidence of what works.  And there we find the absolute champion of fiscal discipline, where government spending is well less than 20% of GDP, namely Singapore.   Singapore has averaged 5.28% annual growth of GDP since 2007 (a period that includes the financial crisis) and has unemployment of around 2%.   There is an abundance of jobs for young people.

At the other end of the scale, where government controls absolutely everything, we have Cuba and North Korea.  The people starve.  And of course there's the blow-out spending champion, claiming to "help" its people with every kind of handout and the most massive government housing program ever attempted -- Venezuela! How's that going?  Well, it seems that Venezuela has $5,3 billion of bond payments due in October, and it can't pay both those and also for its imports of food and consumer goods.  So as it saves up money to pay the bondholders, everything is disappearing from the stores.  There is a "massive default on the country's import chain."  From Bloomberg News on September 8:

With foreign reserves at an 11-year low and arrears to importers growing, Venezuelans are struggling to find everything from basic medicines to toilet paper. And prices are surging on the goods that they can buy, saddling the country with the world’s highest inflation rate.  The nation’s bonds are sinking as President Nicolas Maduro fails to stem the crisis, extending declines today.

And in Europe, where government spending hovers around or even above 50% of GDP for almost all countries, the economies languish.  OK, Switzerland does very well; but its government spending is well below that of all its neighbors, at about 34% of GDP.    Really, this is not all that complicated.

Enter the UN, OECD and World Bank.  These are the grand know-it-alls purporting to tell the governments of the world what to do.   The three have just come out with a big joint Report prepared for something called the "G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting" that took place in Melbourne, Australia on September 10-11.  And what solution do these grand know-it-alls propose for the world's economic woes?  You guessed it -- higher government spending. 

OK, their recommendations are couched in nearly impenetrable doublespeak.  Try this:

In conclusion, the current situation calls for strong and well-designed employment, labour and social protection policies to address both cyclical and structural challenges, applied in conjunction with supportive macroeconomic policy mixes. The effectiveness of such policies would greatly increase if actions are taken collectively at the G20 level in a coordinated manner.

The "supportive macroeconomic policy mix" thing is their code for more government spending.  And then, pay particular attention to that last phrase, which demands that "actions [be] taken collectively at the G20 level in a coordinated manner."  Translation:  none of you are allowed to cut spending and prove us wrong by outperforming the rest of us.

The New York Times jumped right in on September 20 to parrot the line of the international organizations.

The report is clear that when consumption and investment wane, government is supposed to make up the shortfall to revitalize the economy.

Well again, the options are increasing government spending and cutting government spending.  Both can't be right.  In one direction lies Singapore and Switzerland, and in the other Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.  Turns out that all of the UN, OECD, World Bank and New York Times favor the direction of Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.  No surprises there.  But how could such seemingly authoritative people be so completely and utterly wrong on something so important and so obvious?  Got me.

The Gap Between Rich And Poor In Manhattan

Yesterday the Census Bureau released the results of the American Community Survey for 2013.  This is the survey that gives us, among other things, the so-called "poverty rate" and the statistics on "income inequality."  As discussed many times on this site, for example here, these numbers are complete scams.  Equally complete scams are the uses to which the left wing press puts these numbers, whether in ignorance of the underlying government scam or in intentionally misleading use of the numbers.

So the big news coming out of the data release is that yes, once again Manhattan has been found to be the champion of income inequality in the whole United States.  From the New York Times yesterday, we have an article by Sam Roberts headlined "Gap Between Manhattan's Rich and Poor Is Greatest in U.S., Census Finds."  And, if you buy into the numbers broadcast by Mr. Roberts from the Census data, it sure sounds like the gap is rather extraordinary:

The top 5 percent of households earned $864,394, or 88 times as much as the poorest 20 percent, according to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, which is being released Thursday and covers the final year of the Bloomberg administration. . . .  In Manhattan, the ratio between the top 20 percent and the lowest 20 percent fluctuated around 36 since 2006, but has soared more than 7 points since 2012.

So the first question I have is, how could it possibly be that the jurisdiction of all in the country that claims to be the most "progressive" and that has the most extensive government efforts to address income inequality still has the very highest income inequality of all?  We have the highest taxes in the country, and also the most extensive variety of social programs for the low income population.  We spend about double the national average per beneficiary on Medicaid, and about double the national average per student on K-12 education.  We have far more public housing than any place else.  We have welfare programs that no one else has.  If any of that stuff worked even a little, wouldn't we at least be somewhere in the middle in the income inequality ranks, rather than right at the very, very top?

The answer, of course, is that exactly none of these measures which seemingly would combat income inequality are counted by the Census Bureau in its measures of income inequality.  Its income numbers are "pre-tax."  That means that that guy at the top who made the $864,394 is counted at $864,394, even though he probably paid close to $400,000 in federal, state and local income tax before he had one dollar to spend for himself.  And at the bottom?  The Census also excludes all the in-kind benefits and all the tax credits from its numbers.  To get the "88 times" gap between rich and poor, they're using a figure of about $10,000 as the "cash income" of the family in the bottom 20%. 

• Such a family very likely got between $5000 and $10,000 from the EITC; but it doesn't count. 
• Such a family also very likely got a spot in public housing.  There are about 285,000 people in Manhattan calculated by Census as being "in poverty" and there are 53,570 apartments in low-income housing projects in this borough.  At 3 people per housing unit, that's enough housing right there for over 160,000 people, which would be the majority of the low income population, without even getting started on the huge array of other affordable housing and housing subsidy programs.  The value of an apartment in public housing in Manhattan, measured by the market rent of nearby comparable apartments, averages about $36,000 per year per family.  But it doesn't count.
• Such a family almost certain receives Medicaid.  The cost of that to the taxpayers in Manhattan exceeds $10,000 per beneficiary per year, $40,000 for a family of four.  But it doesn't count.
• Such a family almost certainly receives food stamps (SNAP).  That would average about $8000 per year for a family of four.  But it doesn't count.
• Such a family almost certainly receives free cell phones.  That would be worth about $3000 per year.  But it doesn't count.

Put together all the tax credits and in-kind distributions to which the low income family has access, and it approaches $100,000 per year.  That makes the post-tax, post handout "gap" between the top five percent and bottom 20 percent a factor of about four to five, not the 88 bandied about by the Times and the Census Bureau.  You may think that a gap of four or five is still too high, but at least it's honest.  

But the real fraudulence of the Census figures lies not so much in the gross exaggeration of the income gap as in the implication of the appropriate remedy for the situation.  The universal use of these fake numbers is to advocate for more spending on "programs" to address the income inequality.  The programs advocated for are always the same: higher taxes and more in-kind distributions.  But wait:  neither higher taxes nor in-kind distributions will ever be counted in these numbers.  More taxes and more in-kind distributions will not and cannot improve income inequality as measured by these numbers.  In fact, at least the in-kind distribution part clearly makes the measured income inequality worse by substituting for income that the recipient otherwise would have had to earn in a way that counted.

So here we have Roberts of the Times going to one Andrew Beveridge of Queens College for a typical piece of total ignorance on this subject:

“The recovery seems to be going to those at the top, much more than those in the middle, while those at the bottom may even be losing ground,” said Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociologist at Queens College of the City University of New York. He attributed the disparity to the surging costs of housing and the lack of housing subsidies and other forms of public assistance available to many needy families.

Really, is it possible to be this stupid?  "Surging housing costs" have literally nothing to do with the Census Bureau's income disparity numbers.  Housing subsidies for the low income are not counted in the numbers and they can be doubled, tripled, or quadrupled without raising the measured "income" of the low-income population by a single dime.  To the extent that extensive housing subsidies cause some people to keep their visible incomes low to qualify, housing subsidies do have the effect keeping the measured incomes of low income people down, and thus they increase the measured inequality.  That's why the places like Manhattan with the most in-kind distributions have the highest measured inequality.  Beveridge, Roberts, New York Times, how could you possibly not know this?

Fourteenth Warmest August Since 1979 Or Number One Warmest August Since 1881?

There's a big global warming alarmism march scheduled here in New York for Sunday, so time for some support from the fake "scientists" who keep this thing going.  And right on cue the good folks at the Huffington Post have spoken to Gavin Schmidt of NASA for the information they need.  Schmidt, for those who don't know the name, is the officially-designated successor to James Hansen, who was the prior head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and scare monger extraordinaire who helped Al Gore launch the global warming enterprise back in 1988.  And the word from NASA/GISS/Schmidt is, this recent August was the warmest August since records began all the way back in 1881!  Number one warmest in 134 years!  Oh, and by the way, May was also a record-breaker.  We're all going to broil!

This past August was the warmest since records began in 1881, according to new data released by NASA. The latest readings continue a series of record or near-record breaking months. May of this year was also the warmest in recorded history.

The information was promptly picked up by other alarmists and spread widely.  Here is the take from scare-monger Greg Laden:

According to data just updated by NASA, last August was the warmest August for the entire instrumental data record, which begins in 1881.

Funny thing is, in 1979 the government put up satellites to get more accurate measures of average world temperatures than could be obtained from the scattered ground-based thermometers monitored by NASA/GISS.  Somehow, HuffPo, Laden, and others of their type don't mention the satellite results in their "warmest August ever" articles.  Should we check?

Two different groups monitor the satellite data and put out monthly reports on the "global average lower troposphere temperature anomaly."  The two are RSS and UAH.  So where does August stack up in their history? The answer is, in the UAH data set August 2014 is the ninth warmest August, and in the RSS set, it ranks fourteenth.  And that's out of only 35 years.  Fourteenth out of 35 puts 2014 barely above the average.

Well, these can't both be right.  Can they?  Can anybody help us reconcile whether the weather we are experiencing is really the hottest ever or, on the other hand, not really warming at all?

Steven Goddard (real name: Tony Heller) has a detailed analysis at the realscience website.  It is not a pretty story for NASA.  To understand Goddard's post, you need to know that while the satellites essentially measure the whole world equally, the surface thermometers monitored by NASA/GISS are not evenly spaced.  There are lots of thermometers to monitor in the U.S., lots in Europe, fewer in places like Central Asia and Africa, and almost none over the oceans (70% of the earth's surface) or in the polar regions.  That fact gives NASA/GISS tremendous ability to play with its results by giving extra weight to a handful of stations claimed to represent huge areas, such as all of Antarctica.  Goddard:

There were three stations in Antarctica on the right side of the 250 km map below which he [Schmidt] marked as very hot. Those three stations averaged about -20C. This map has 250km extrapolation, and gives a feel for where the stations are located, and where there is no data.

He extrapolated those three -20C Antarctic stations across a huge area of below normal  temperatures on both the lower right and lower left side of the map, and massively skewed his global average anomaly using a large area of fake +6C anomaly, which he declared hot at -20C. . . .

But it is much worse than it seems. None of those three stations actually have any temperature data during the 1951-1980 baseline period, so his since recanted (disproven by his own data) claim is a complete fraud. How can he know what the anomaly is, if there was no temperature data during the baseline period?

Just letting you know this in case you think that any data that comes out of the U.S. government can be trusted. 

And if you are interested in pursuing the subject further, there seem to be more articles and posts every month where people compare current NASA and NCDC reports on historical temperatures to raw data from the sites in question, and discover that NASA and NCDC systematically cool the historical temperatures to make the present appear warmer by comparison.  Here's a September 4, 2014 article from Joe D'Aleo of IceCap titled "Data Games."  The article covers a recent comparison of raw temperature records with current data from NCDC for the state of Maine showing massive cooling of the past, as well as similar recently-documented tampering from Australia.  Sample:

Meanwhile, this tampering has now made its way down from the national to the state level. NCDC made yet another change this spring to how it calculates past state wide average temperatures. If you downloaded from NCDC the Maine state average annual temperature plot in March, you would have seen no real long-term trend for annual temperatures (-0.03C/decade) since 1895. 1913 was the warmest year - almost 46F for the annual average. The annual mean was 41.2F. 2012 was second warmest year, just short of 45F.

This spring after NCDC announced a new and better version of their state data. I downloaded the new Maine annual temperatures and found a remarkably different story. 1913 was cooled to 41F (almost 5F lower) and the average cooled to 40F. 2012 was now the warmest year, over 3F warmer than 1913. The long-term trend jumped to +0.23F/decade, the highest of any state.

On The Question Of Scottish Independence

The side favoring Scottish independence in next week's vote appears, at least for the moment, to have pulled even or slightly ahead in the polls, and this is sending the poo-bahs of British politics into a tizzy.  On Wednesday, the BBC reported that the leaders of all three major political parties (Cameron of the Tories, Clegg of the Lib/Dems and Miliband of Labour) had made pleas for a "no" vote:

Prime Minister David Cameron said he would be "heartbroken" in the event of a "Yes" vote, while Labour leader Ed Miliband said the case for the Union came from the "head, heart and soul".  [Cameron said:]   "I care hugely about this extraordinary country, this United Kingdom that we've built together.  I would be heartbroken if this family of nations that we've put together - and we've done such amazing things together - if this family of nations was torn apart."

Looks like it's time for a little contrarianism from the Manhattan Contrarian.  On balance, I come out in favor of Scottish independence.  I suspect it will be a good thing not just for Scotland, but also for the remainder of the U.K. and for the rest of the world.

Let's look at some background facts.  You might think of Scotland as a poor backwater, but according to data here put out by the Scottish government, Scotland actually has a higher GDP per capita than the rest of the U.K., $39,642 versus $35,671.  To be fair, these numbers include what they call "illustrative geographic share of North Sea [oil] output" in the Scottish figure.   I don't think it's by any means a done deal that an independent Scotland is going to get allocated a big share of the North Sea oil revenue, but I also don't think that that skews the numbers all that much.  Here is a briefing paper from something called Centre for Public Policy for Regions from April 2013 that analyzes Scotland and rest-of-U.K. per capita income excluding the oil, and concludes that the two are almost identical.

Although economically Scotland is not notably richer or poorer than the rest of the U.K., the politics of Scotland are dramatically different.  The Tories rule in the U.K., but are almost non-existent in Scotland.  According to Parliament's website, the current House of Commons has 650 seats, of which the Tories hold 304 and their coalition partners the Lib/Dems hold 56.  Labour holds 256 seats, and all other parties hold 36.  But in Scotland, Labour completely dominates.  Of 59 MPs from Scotland, 40 are Labour, and the Scottish National Party holds 6.  The Lib/Dems have 11, there is one "Independent," and that leaves exactly one seat held by the Tories.  An excellent question is why the Scots vote for Labour in such overwhelming numbers.  Analyses I have read of the subject trace Scottish support for Labour back to the 80s, when Thatcher pulled the plug on subsidies for Scottish heavy industry and refused to relent as most of it closed down.  Today Scotland seems to have mostly recovered economically, but apparently they have not forgotten. 

Whatever the cause, if Scotland suddenly pulled out of the Parliament, the Tories would instantly go to an absolute majority (304/591) without needing their Lib/Dem partners.  Also, Labour would be very substantially hobbled in trying to gain control of the Commons any time soon.  Given these facts, it is actually a fascinating question why Cameron and the Tories are so strongly against Scottish independence.  When the BBC put this question recently to Cameron, he responded, "I care far more about my country than I do about my party."

Given their leftist political proclivities, you might think that upon independence the Scots would promptly go to a higher tax, higher spend government model, and try to put their socialist fantasies into effect.  Maybe they will, but my bet is that they won't move far in that direction if at all.  And if they do, they are so small that they are subject to the economic discipline of the market much more quickly than a larger country like the U.K. as a whole.

Would an independent Scotland set up its own currency?  I would bet strongly against it.  Having your own currency gives the government huge license to steal from the people, at least in the short run, by inflation or exchange controls -- think Argentina or Venezuela; but it also imposes big, big costs for acquiring imports and for international travel.  The Scots are just too sensible to do this.  But as soon as you don't have your own currency, then when you borrow, you must repay in currency that you can't print.  This is the mechanism that keeps the U.S. states financially responsible (and would keep Eurozone states responsible if they didn't keep getting bailouts).

An independent Scotland could also theoretically run big deficits and get into economic "stimulus" in a big way after the fashion of an Italy or a Greece.  But the funny thing is that the smaller a country is, the more obvious it becomes that this "stimulus" thing is a fallacy.  In a place the size of the United States, when we run a deficit of a trillion dollars, nobody can really perceive who is paying for the massive income transfer to the government's cronies.  Even in the U.K., with about 64 million people, they run annual deficits of 5 - 10% of GDP, and have a cumulative debt of almost 80% of GDP, without the people really being able to tell how destructive it is.  But Scotland is only about 5.25 million people.  Somehow countries of this size are among those with the most responsible economic policies and the best economic results.  Think Switzerland (8 million), Singapore (5.4 million), Hong Kong (7.2 million), Norway (5.1 million).

At least according to what the leader of the Scottish National Party is saying, they have no intention of implementing dramatic changes in policy in a leftward direction.  For example, asked recently at a debate about taxes, party leader Alex Salmond responded

"We don't have proposals for changing taxation. We certainly are not going to put ourselves at a tax disadvantage with the rest of the UK."

So I think the worst thing that would happen to Scotland would be that they adopt something of a "blue state" model akin to New York, Illinois or California, and then find themselves in a position of slow relative decline compared to their more dynamic, lower-tax colleagues to the south -- much like New York and California find themselves in relative decline compared to Texas.  New Yorkers and Californians seem OK with that, but I think it's because the decline in New York and California is taking place out in the hinterlands where the smart set can't see it happening.  Scotland is small enough that the Scots are likely to see it happening and do something about it.

And meanwhile, England will be freed of those 40 Scottish Labour MPs constantly trying to vote themselves subsidies with someone else's money.  A frequently noted aspect of the Scottish independence debate is that Scotland is seeking to exit the U.K. even though Scotland is a net recipient of subsidies from the U.K.  Here is David Boaz writing today in USA today:

Critics of independence often say that Scotland is subsidized by wealthier England. The analysis is controversial, but it does appear that the United Kingdom spends about £1,500 ($2,500) more per person in Scotland than it does nationally. If it is true, as many British conservatives say, that Scots are whiny subsidy-suckers, then take them off the dole.

Somehow, this makes independence sound like a win, win to me.  The Scots get their independence and the English don't have to subsidize them any more.  And the English get a more conservative government at least somewhat likely to spend less money on foolish subsidy schemes.