First, private prisons area only 8% of the prisons in the U.S., so if what you're claiming were true, then the other 92% wouldn't have the same issue, and yet they do.

Second, if you go look at the web sites of most states' prisons, they specify the same company as the sole provider for all of that state's prisons. It's not because they all independently chose that monopoly provider, but because the state prison officials mandated or did all of them.

When you see a difference is when the government officials responsible change, fine state to state, or from prisons to jails, because jails in most areas are run by a local government official, the sheriff or city police department, so they can make their own selection.

But while maybe there is an exception or two, it's almost always a government official making these decisions, not a private organization.

In short, you have no ideas what you're talking about here.

In a purely Capitalist society, government would longer a be monopoly, nor be able to enable other monpolies. Providers of the services our current government supposedly supplies, like prison communications, for example, would need to compete with each other to serve their customers, rather than have a government official declare that they're the only supplier who is allowed in that niche.

In short, government official's decisions being for sale to the highest bidder (in whatever currency - money isn't the only one) is how governments have always worked, from monarchies to totalitarian communist states, to modern day China. It's only when power is taken back from the government and people are allowed to voluntarily serve others that competition in benefiting others exists and people prosper. That's called Capitalism, and it has nothing to do with government favors for sale.

"Capitalism" is not the term for "government created and run prison systems".

A bunch of government officials using their office to benefit their buddies with exclusive contracts? Yes, that is typical of how government at all levels tends to work, though.

By "prison-industrial complex", do you mean, "government officials who oversee prisons"?

They're the ones who made the actual decisions to create these sole-source contracts preventing any competition for inmate communications. You can't even give money to an inmate without going through their pre-determined vendor. It's government officials overseeing prisons steering exclusive contracts to their buddies.

It's not a market because there is no competing providers allowed. From your definition, it wouldn't be a cattle market if there was only one seller of cattle legally allowed. That'd be a cattle store with a government-imposed monopoly, not a cattle market.

First of all, generally speaking, incomes are taxed, not wealth. So attempting to compare wealth-based taxed rates (as opposed to taxes based on people's incomes, which are reported and tracked, and include income from investments) is doomed to fail, the data doesn't exist. Second, reality begs to differ. Third, if you care about wealth inequality at all, you should be caring about consumption inequality, not tax inequality. Raise the consumption of people who need it, rather than destroying the wealth-building activities of people who make modern consumption levels possible. Doing it the other way around is madness disguised as envy.

The problem is folks like the people writing this article forget about incentives. Activities the government taxes, you end up with less of, and activities the government subsidizes you end with more of. The power to tax is the power to destroy.

If you tax automation in the U.S., then you get less automation in the U.S., and everyone in the U.S. ends up poorer than they would have been. But you didn't tax automation elsewhere, so they'll do the automated tasks there instead of in the U.S., so you end up costing jobs in the U.S. compared to the pre-automation tax regime.

If you're concerned about consumption inequalities, then the place to address that is where things are consumed, not at where they are made. If the premise is that some people aren't able to consume enough, then give them the ability to consume more, rather than incentivizing others to produce less.

The major flaw is the focus on inequality, as if that is all that matters. Helping people who are poorer become wealthier is fine as a goal. Making it so that everyone is equally miserable (Ya! Inequality solved!) is a terrible terminal goal and the people who keep pushing it should be ignored at best.

American taxes are among the most progressive in the world, if not the most progressive. It's a ridiculous assertion.

I didn't back away from anything in my original contention, which was:
"If it made financial sense for parking lots to do this, they'd already be doing it and there would be no need for a law to force them to spend money on it in an unfunded mandate."

Not sure if you're missing me for someone else, or what...

What you've written is consistent with the fact that leases could have been written to include solar if it made financial sense, but they aren't already because it doesn't make financial sense. Which was my point in the first place.

And no, it wouldn't be hard to track me down, but I'm not going to openly dox myself in these comments, either.

Right, like the land is the capex for the landlord, and the asphalt, and any other parking covers, etc... Did you even stop to think that's what the landlord is already providing in the arrangement you describe?

There's nothing in the structure of leasing which would prevent a landlord and an operator from putting in solar cells (if it made sense) and the operator paying him instead of the energy company, or even the landlord putting them in and charging a higher rent to cover what the operator would otherwise spend on energy consumption.

But hey, I'm sure you spend lots of time on "real world biz cases" related to property and leases compared to someone like me, a lowly Senior VP at one of the world's largest financial institutions.

Go back to your socialist discussion group and leave the real world to people with a clue about how it works. This is a terrible law, both in effect and in fairness and equity.

If it made financial sense for parking lots to do this, they'd already be doing it and there would be no need for a law to force them to spend money on it in an unfunded mandate.

Even if you think turning all parking lots into solar farms is a good idea, what did parking lot owners do to deserve being required to be the ones to subsidize it? Have the people who want it done pay for it instead. Of course, that'd mean the government would have to do unpopular things to raise money for it, rather than waving a magical "screw those parking lot people over" wand instead.

Yes, FICA is part of those numbers and so are all the payments FICA facilitates, whether retirement, disability, Medicare, etc... So what? The largest amounts are related to retirement benefits.

Not sure what teenage pregnancy has to do with this discussion, but it turns out that you're confusing sex education with urban minority populations in southern states whose families were destroyed over the last 70 years by the federal governments "War on Poverty", prior to which teen and unwed pregnancy rates were not only much lower, but also trending downward rather than upward.

But no, rape isn't legal in any state, red or not, so you're just marking yourself as an idiot with that one. Is this just a general uninformed rant against your political enemies, or what?

So you define a "taker" as someone who paid taxes and FICA their entire working lives, and now draws down now less of a return than they'd have gotten by just sticking that money into a time deposit, an index fund, or even federal bonds. (Because the return on social security and such is so crappy when Congress spends the money on other things over time.)

Sorry, those are called involuntary contributors, not takers. It's not my fault you apparently have no concept of time, nor understanding that people can pay taxes at one time and then get benefits back at a later time and still be net contributors.

You didn't even read your own link (bold added):

MoneyGeek then identified data from the Treasury Department on payments from the federal government to individuals and organizations within each state

The article you're citing is completely consistent with what I posted above, so fuck off or come up with a data source which doesn't include retirement benefits paid to retirees, for example.

No, the Federal government provides people who live in the state of Florida with retirement benefits (social security, Medicare, military/civil service retirement, etc...) which are higher than the average state. That's because, drumroll.... people retire to Florida!

Those exact same people are also the ones who worked and paid taxes elsewhere, before retiring to Florida to collect their retirement benefits. The federal government isn't "providing the state of Florida with more money", it's paying benefits previously earned elsewhere by people who who currently live in Florida. Huge difference.

See also this comment below.

Feel free to cite numbers which don't include retirement benefits to individuals to prove me wrong.