Wikipedia page – Official site – Official microsite

I love how the store credit system works on the Nintendo eShop. When you purchase games, you get golden coins that you can use as a discount for other games. If you have enough coins, you can even buy the game outright. One of the games I have bought with this system is Trinity Trigger. From the description, it sounded like an interesting and unique action JRPG, and I’m always interested to play new and unique games. Especially since key staff on this game worked on amazing games like Chrono Cross and the Mana series. Now, is it any good and should you pick up this game, or is it a game that you should skip? Well, in this first impression I have after playing 1/4th of the game, I want to tell you my opinion so far. I’m also curious to hear your opinion on the game and/or the content of this article in the comment section down below. And with that said, let’s dive right into Trinity Trigger.

Just A Bit More

In this game, we take on the role of Cyan. Cyan is an average boy from a small village. He is also a treasure hunter that one day learns he is chosen by the God of Chaos as his Warrior of Chaos.

In the fantasy world of Trinitia, there are two main Gods. The God of Order and the God of Chaos. In ancient times, they used to wage war for control of the lands. Now, they chose a warrior each to represent them and fight the other warrior to the death for dominance. Cyan doesn’t know what that even means, but it might explain why he has amnesia, those weird dreams and that special glowing mark in his eye. In search for answers, he sets out on a journey, and that’s how this game starts.

When this game was originally teased, the main setup for this game was to create a game and story that was nostalgic to those who played old school JRPG’s. A lot of talent who worked on other big titles like Xenoblade, Pokémon and Bravely Default II were working on this game as well. I always find it dangerous to mention these things, since it might set the expectations of players way too high. What if this isn’t going to work out or when the story just doesn’t hit the mark?

You can never predict how the chemistry is between people, and it’s possible that they are unable to work together. But, it’s also possible they hit it off big and make something extremely unique and special. I remember how a game like World’s End Club could have been so much more with two amazing directors behind it, Kazutake Kodaka from Danganronpa fame and Kotaro Uchikoshi from the Zero Escape fame. Yet, that game was decent but could have been so much more if it had more depth and polish.

If I’m honest with myself, Trinity Trigger falls into the same boat then World’s End Club. Take the story, for example. When I started playing this game, an amazing world was being setup and I started to get interested and immersed in this new world. But, it didn’t take long before I noticed that this game hits all the familiar story beats you expect from a JRPG. But the biggest issue in this story is that it doesn’t do anything special during its journey. I have already visited a couple of towns and each time it’s the exact same basic premise that happens.

The best way I can describe the story is that it’s unoffensively bland. It does what it’s supposed to do, but nothing more. It’s a shame, since the amazing voice cast behind this game brought this game to live so much. I have nothing to critique there. The only thing that can be a bit annoying is hearing the same grunts over and over again while you are fighting in the dungeons, but that’s part of the course in JRPG’s.

Playing it safe

For some people, having a bland story in a JRPG’s is a dealbreaker. But, I can handle that if the main gameplay loop is enjoyable. In this game, you go from town to town and explore the town dungeon to become stronger and get new unique abilities.

The battles in this game aren’t turn based like in other JRPG’s. This is an action JRPG, after all, so you have to dodge and time your attacks well. You can even choose to ignore battles if you want to, apart from scripted fights or boss battles, that is. The combat system is decent and does the job. The only complaint I have is that your stamina drains a bit too fast, making your attacks quite weak against enemies. So, you have to use other mechanics like having better damage when you dodge roll an attack in time.

After each dungeon, you unlock a new weapon that has a slightly different playstyle. You can choose between which weapon you use on the fly with a weapon wheel. It works quite well, and it’s fun to figure out which enemies are weak against which weapons. Especially the bosses, since hitting them with the right weapon creates even more damage.

During your exploration, you can find hidden chests with items. Underneath the mini-map, you can find a counter with how many hidden treasures are still left in the area. I find it quite enjoyable to explore the whole map to find these hidden treasures. Some of the hidden passages are hidden away extremely well, and finding them was a blast.

Something I also really enjoy is that you can easily choose between which character you control. Some characters have unique skills and being able to quickly switch between them is amazing. Since, some enemies have a long range attack, and then it’s a blast being able to switch to a character that can use a bow to take them out more easily.

Enemies also drop various items that you can use to craft items in shops or at special stations. And crafting these items actually cost in game money. The amount you have to spend for crafting is a lot lower, but this is a mechanic I’m hesitant about. It would have been quite a lot of fun to be able to craft healing items during your exploration. Maybe these healing items were less effective than the potions you can buy in the shops. But then again, it might break the balance of the game and make you a bit overpowered.

You can only carry so many potions and to be very honest, I never really had problems with a boss battle or a dungeon when I was stocked up on potions. When you don’t do anything crazy and keep your stock high and manage your stat boosting items well, this game becomes quite easy. So easy in fact that boss battles become an endurance test and extremely repetitive.

Each boss battle has the same basic premise. You have to dodge their attacks and use the right weapon to break the shield of the boss. In most cases, this is the newly unlocked weapon. After you have broken the shield, you can damage the boss. If you have broken the shield 4 to 5 times, and kept hitting the boss, you have beaten the fight.

Now, the dungeons play like your typical The Legend of Zelda dungeon to a degree. There is one main theme and puzzle mechanic for you to solve. Once you reached the final room of the dungeon, you fight a final boss and progress in the game. When I think about it, the structure of this game resembles 2D Zelda games here and there. And maybe, the structure of a Zelda game would have fit the game better than an action JRPG. Since, I wouldn’t be surprised if players drop this game and call it repetitive. Since, it really is. I tried to play this game in longer sessions, but I started to feel bored after playing it for an hour or two. Yet, I kept enjoying myself with the game while playing it on my 30-minute train ride from and to work.

Middle of the Road

The more I play this game, the more I feel like this game could have been so much more. The basic foundation of this game is rock solid, and I barely have anything to critique there. Like the controls and the UI for example. The controls are extremely responsive and a blast to work with.

Now, the other characters are AI controlled. Overall, the AI does an okay job following you and aiding you in combat, but it can do some brain-dead actions as well. One of the dungeons where it frustrated me to no end was the ice dungeon, where your AI allies slid into the spikes every single time.

Visually, this game looks pretty decent. There is quite a lot of detail put into this world and the underused area exclusive mechanics are quite a lot of fun to play with. For example, I love how in the forest area the mushrooms can have different effects depending on the color. Especially the one that allows you to light up the area.

But then you have moments where some textures are bland and look like they are from an earlier generation, creating a mismatch. And on top of that, some battle animations can’t be canceled. And the final attack of the bow is just silly. Yet, if a certain attack is in progress, you can’t switch weapons. This is something that annoyed me quite a lot as well.

The soundtrack of this game is quite enjoyable. It fits the atmosphere of the game like a glove. Overall, this orchestral soundtrack is a joy to listen too. But, there are some tracks that are a bit too short and the rather repetitive melody isn’t it doing any favors. Thankfully, these tracks don’t appear to often so I don’t mind it too hard.

The sound effects are pretty good too. I’d recommend that you use the option menu to tweak the sound balancing to your liking, since the basic sound balancing is a bit off when it comes to the balance between sound effects and music. I had to lower the music a little bit so I could hear the important sound effects better during battles.

This game really feels like it’s walking the middle of the road here. My biggest complaint with this game is that it lacks depth in almost every aspect of the game. And it’s just that lack of depth that’s hurting this game. This game has a lot of great idea’s like how easy to read the UI is, but it barely does anything with the stat boosting items.

The game also has local co-op, but I don’t see a reason why to play this game in co-op. There aren’t enough elements to justify for me to have a friend over and play this game. It’s just too bland for that. It’s a shame, since if the combat system was more in depth, it would have been an amazing feature. Now, it’s just another ticked box of features this game has.

Just like how some of the monster design is amazing and sometimes even looks somewhat creepy. They also telegraph their attacks quite well, so you can easily dodge them. Dodging attacks in time is quite important, since you can do special attacks or even more damage. Now, you also have your typical enemies like your slimes and bees, but they look unique and fit their setting quite well.

To be honest, this game is the perfect entry game for young childern to get into roleplaying games. I think that if you have played other more expansive JRPG’s, you will notice the cracks this game has and feel mixed about the game like the whole reception is for this game.

This brings me to the price. To be honest, I wouldn’t pay the full price for this game. The asking price for this game is 40€. And if you want all the DLC, it’s even more. Around 50€. Now, I don’t recommend buying all the DLC apart from the one that comes with the Deluxe edition. The other DLC is just a one time booster pack you can buy to make the game even easier than it already is.

The asking price is too high for this game and it’s length. This game can be beaten in 15 hours and it doesn’t really have replay value. I personally feel that 25€ would have been a better price for the base game and Deluxe edition should have been 40€. If you are interested by this game, I’d buy it if it were on sale. While this game isn’t doing anything new or innovate, it still manages to be enjoyable.

I’m happy that I gave this game a chance. While I expected a lot more from it, I don’t think it’s a bad game. I can totally understand why people don’t like this game or drop it. Since, it’s a very basic middle of the road JRPG that could do something unique but doesn’t. Now, the Japanese publishers of this game FuRyu have developed a game that became the basis for another larger game (The Legend of Legacy feels like the basis for The Alliance Alive). Maybe this game is creating the basis for another larger and better game.

If that’s the case, I’d love to see more unique puzzles in the dungeons for a start. The dungeons were so easy to beat and didn’t provide too much challenge. Maybe some puzzles were only the unique dungeon weapon has to be used to progress or even exit the dungeon.

I’d also love to see more expansion on the armor and stat items. I felt they barely had any impact in this game and I often forgot you could change the stones in your equipement to increase the damage output in certain cases or decrease the taken damage in certain cases.

The biggest thing I’d love to see improved is more depth in the game. Develop the town more and make them more memorable, instead of just a stop to stock up on supplies to go to the next dungeon. The side quests were introduced too late into the game.

I could go on for a while giving examples of what they can expand or improve, but I want to avoid that you get the impression that this game is bad. This game is decent, but not great. That’s the best way to describe this game. I’d recommend it to younger players who want to give an action JRPG a try. If you are in love with the action JRPG games, I’d highly advice you to lower your expecations. I’d compare to that animated summer blockbuster movie that everybody forgets about in a few months. It didn’t do anything memorable but it a fun time while it lasted. It’s a great snack inbetween games for me and I’m curious to see what the developer does next. Since, the potential is there.

With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about the game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.

Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has been in the news for an old clip of him talking about how the tax code should punish adults without kids. While Vance's proposal probably aims to address demographic concerns, it represents a misguided approach that contradicts fundamental principles of economic freedom and fairness.

And you know what? That's precisely what our tax code already does, in this case and many others.

Using the tax code to "reward" parents and "punish" nonparents is at odds with the idea of a neutral, efficient tax system. In an ideal and fair world, the tax base would be broad but taxed at a low rate. People making the same income should be paying the same level of taxes no matter how they choose to live their lives.

Unfortunately, the tax code is neither fair nor neutral. It punishes and rewards all sorts of behaviors based on what government officials decide is good or bad.

For instance, the tax code does, in fact, treat people with kids more favorably than it treats those who do not have kids.* There's the child tax credit, of course. Then there's the earned income tax credit, which is more generous for families with children than those without. And there is no shortage of other provisions, such as a very significant deduction for heads of households and another for dependent care, which do the same thing.

It's hard to know what Vance's proposal really entails. Does he want another surtax on childless parents? Does he want to expand the child tax credit and make it a universal basic income like many conservatives and progressives want? It's also unclear whether he is simply failing to see that our tax code already delivers on his wishes and punishes childless adults. Either way, I assume he is well intentioned and that he is rightfully concerned about the decline in fertility we are witnessing not just in this country but across the world.

Unfortunately, punishing childless parents with additional taxes wouldn't boost fertility. For one thing, we've had a child tax credit since the 1990s, and the tax break has been regularly extended. That hasn't encouraged people to have more kids.

That's not unique to the child tax credit. Lots of evidence exists showing that government programs of all sorts meant to encourage, reward, or stimulate the supply of babies usually fail. One of the most dramatic examples is South Korea. The country has spent over $200 billion on such policies over the past 16 years, and fertility rates are still falling.

There isn't any doubt that more people, and hence more babies, are a boon for our lives and our economy. But that alone isn't a good reason for government subsidies. And while raising kids is expensive, that's no justification for a government tax break, either.

Besides, careful studies have shown the cost of raising a child in America has been decreasing for six decades. In the end, rather than rewarding families with lesser taxes at the expense of childless adults, I would encourage advocates to focus on removing existing government barriers—like overzealous policies that make child care more expensive without making kids measurably safer—that make life more complicated for families.

Ultimately, these are only secondary aspects of a much bigger debate. Our tax code is incredibly unfair. It's not just childless adults that face a surcharge compared to parents. Tax breaks for homeowners mean that renters pay more money for the same amount of housing. Households which include a college student pay less in taxes. People who can afford an electric vehicle can secure a tax break that others cannot.

These tax breaks for some are not just unfair to the taxpayers who don't get them—they also turn our tax code into a complicated mess that requires many millions of collective hours to comply with. Instead of adding more complexity and bias, we should be moving in the opposite direction—toward a simpler, flatter, and more neutral code that treats all taxpayers equally.

Using the tax code as a tool for social engineering is misguided. It leads to economic inefficiencies and infringes on individual liberty. Rather than doubling down on the problematic aspects of our current system, we should be working toward comprehensive reform. Only then can we hope to see taxes as something that truly serves the interests of all Americans, regardless of their personal choices.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM

*CORRECTION: The original version of this article misstated in part who benefits more from the current tax code.

The post J.D. Vance Wants To Control You With Taxes appeared first on Reason.com.

A powerful New Jersey businessman has been accused of Mafia-like behavior in order to enrich himself and his associates on the taxpayer's dime. But is it all that different from business as usual?

At a press conference this week, New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin announced a 13-count indictment, with charges including racketeering and extortion, against six defendants—chiefly George Norcross III, whom the New Jersey Monitor referred to as "a Democratic kingmaker widely regarded as New Jersey's most powerful unelected person." In an impressively bold move, George Norcross attended the press conference and sat in the front row, apparently even refusing to switch seats when asked by someone from Platkin's office.

According to the indictment, George Norcross has "led a criminal enterprise" since 2012, whose members "would extort others through threats of economic and reputational harm" in Camden, New Jersey. Specifically, in 2012–13, George Norcross and other indicted co-conspirators "used their political influence to tailor New Jersey economic development legislation to their preferences."

The Economic Opportunity Act of 2013 expanded the state's existing economic development grant programs, allowing a developer to claim "a credit of up to 35 percent of its capital investment, or up to 40 percent for a project located in a Garden State Growth Zone," defined as "the four New Jersey cities with the lowest median family income"—which would include Camden, the state's poorest city. The credits were intended to bring companies to the state or keep them from leaving. Recipients could claim the credits or sell them to other New Jersey taxpayers.

In 2019, The New York Times found that before that law passed, one attorney "was allowed by lawmakers to edit drafts of the bill in ways that opened up sizable tax breaks to his firm's clients." That attorney's firm was Parker McCay—whose CEO was George Norcross' brother, Philip Norcross, who is also indicted. The indictment alleges that after the law passed, Philip Norcross told a group of people, "We re-wrote a tax credit law…that says in essence, if you come to Camden, we're going to give you one hundred percent tax credit for all capital and related costs" over 10 years. "It will cause real havoc, it's unlimited."

Once the law passed, according to the indictment, the defendants "extort[ed] and coerce[d] others" in order to obtain their property along the Camden waterfront, "then occupied the properties they obtained interests in and sold the tax credits they obtained for millions of dollars."

George Norcross also apparently leaned on members of the Camden city government—including then-Mayor Dana Redd, who is also indicted—to pressure owners and developers to sell by denying necessary building permits or publicly disparaging them.

In one given example, George Norcross allegedly threatened a developer who refused to sell, saying he would "f**k you up like you've never been f**ked up before." City officials also denied him a permit to redevelop another site he owned, at Philip Norcross's insistence.

In the end, that developer apparently sold the rights to tax credits that eventually totaled $240 million, for a fraction of that amount. On one property, he sold credits for $1.95 million that would eventually total $18 million.

If this all sounds like a plot from The Sopranos, well, it basically is: For much of its run, the mobsters at the center of that show made money from a waterfront rejuvenation project in Newark, obtained through underhanded dealing with a crooked state official and which afforded plenty of no-show jobs and opportunities for graft.

The allegations against George Norcross are shocking, and yet also unsurprising. After all, the entire affair originated with a state economic development program, which already bears at least a passing resemblance to a Sopranos-style racket.

In 2019, The New York Times found that "over five years, 12 companies threatened to leave New Jersey" for New York—with each company even listing the exact same office complex as its intended destination—"unless the state provided tens of millions in tax credits." In each case, the New Jersey government agreed, totaling over $100 million in taxpayer money, and each company stayed. But the Times found that "nearly all of the 12 companies never seriously considered moving to New York." The leasing agent for the New York office complex even acknowledged, "We are aware that often times the tenant has no intention at all of relocating."

State economic development incentive programs are often sold on these sorts of "but for" incentives—as in, but for this tax break or grant, this company would go elsewhere. But these are rarely actually the deciding factors in a company's decision: In a 2018 paper, Timothy Bartik of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research found that "typical incentives probably tip somewhere between 2 percent and 25 percent of incented firms toward making a decision favoring the location providing the incentive. In other words, for at least 75 percent of incented firms, the firm would have made a similar decision location/expansion/retention decision without the incentive."

Companies lobby for state-level handouts, even if they were likely to set up shop in that state anyway. And even by the state agencies' own numbers, the expenditures are rarely worth the cost.

"Beyond the state-specific political ramifications, the case also highlights a persistent problem in corporate subsidy programs that extends well beyond New Jersey: They're too easily corruptible, and they create a vicious feedback loop between political actors and politically connected corporations," writes Pat Garofalo in the Boondoggle Substack. "There's a very clear connection in academic literature between corporate subsidies, political donations, and ultimately corruption."

The George Norcross case, Garofalo writes, "highlight[s] the nexus between corporate tax handouts and corruption that is very often there but not usually this blatant."

Ultimately, the entire affair would just be a lurid story but for the fact that it involved hundreds of millions of dollars in state incentives which will ultimately be borne by New Jersey taxpayers.

The post N.J. Businessman Indicted for <i>Sopranos</i>-Style Economic Development Racket appeared first on Reason.com.

Another Tax Day has come and gone, and most Americans believe they pay too much. One recent poll revealed that 56 percent say they pay more than their fair share. Unfortunately, I fear this is just the beginning considering the insane level of debt Washington policymakers have accumulated over the years. With this in mind, here are some important facts about our tax system that you might not know.

The payroll tax is the heaviest burden for most taxpaying Americans, but the income tax is more visible and painful to a lot of people. While we are accustomed to it—and while it affects some Americans' decisions about how much to work, invest, or save—the income tax didn't exist for most of our country's life.

In 1895, the Supreme Court ruled against a direct tax on the incomes of American citizens and corporations, something that had been included in the previous year's Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act. The court found that such a tax violated the constitutional requirement that tax apportionments among the states be based on population. It took a constitutional amendment—the 16th—to eventually change that and pave the way for the modern income tax.

The very first Internal Revenue Service Form 1040, introduced in 1913 after the ratification of the 16th Amendment, was remarkably straightforward compared to what we know today. It was only four pages long, including instructions, and the top tax rate was 7 percent on incomes above $500,000, which is over $15 million in today's dollars. Some people were horrified by a 7 percent tax and warned that it could put us on a slippery slope to higher rates—maybe even above 10 percent (!)—imposed on a vast majority of people. They were called crazy for fearing such a thing.

And yet, as predicted by a few realists, the income tax rate not only increased, but the threshold at which it's applied went down. During the 1950s and the Eisenhower administration, the top marginal tax rate on incomes reached 91 percent for individuals. This rate applied to incomes over $200,000 (about $2 million today) for single filers and $400,000 (about $4 million today) for married couples filing jointly. These high taxes were part of a broader policy to manage post-war fiscal adjustments and fund federal programs. These rates also failed to raise as much money as you would think due to many loopholes in the tax code.

While the top marginal rate is much lower today, the income tax code remains remarkably complicated. Will McBride, a scholar at the Tax Foundation, recently wrote that "as of 2021, the U.S. income tax code was 4.3 million words long and growing. That's much longer, and presumably much more complicated, than tax codes found in other countries." There are several reasons for this.

First, many welfare programs are administered through the tax code. In recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, the Cato Institute's Chris Edwards wrote, "The tax code is an increasing mess. The number of official tax expenditures has risen from 53 in 1970 to 205 today, making IRS administration and enforcement ever more difficult. We know from experience that complex tax expenditures, such as the low-income housing tax credit and earned income tax credit, generate substantial errors and abuse."

In addition, contrary to common belief, the U.S. income tax system is actually quite progressive. According to the Tax Foundation, "though the top 1 percent of taxpayers earn 19.7 percent of total adjusted gross income, they pay 37.3 percent of all income taxes. Just 3 percent of taxes are paid by the lowest half of income earners." Maintaining this progressivity through all kinds of tax provisions increases the complexity of the code.

This progressivity is generally ignored by those who argue that taxing the rich is the solution to reducing the burgeoning U.S. national debt. Soaking the rich, while perhaps appealing in its simplicity, misses the scale of the problem. Brian Riedl, a Manhattan Institute senior fellow, noted that if we were to confiscate 100 percent of the income of everyone making over $500,000 per year, it would fund the government for less than a year. This puts into perspective the enormity of the $34 trillion national debt versus the income of the rich.

Taxing the rich is a convenient distraction hiding the reality that if spending isn't cut, taxes will have to be raised on everyone, a lot. On this tax week, I suggest Congress starts cutting.

COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM.

The post This Tax Week, Remember That the Federal Income Tax Is Relatively New appeared first on Reason.com.

Luxury electric automaker Rivian made several big announcements this week related to its expanding product line. At the same time, though, the company announced that it would pause construction on a factory in Georgia that received some of the most generous taxpayer-funded incentives in state history.

On Thursday, Rivian unveiled three new vehicles that will be available in the coming years. The company already offers the R1T and R1S, a luxury truck and SUV, respectively, which start at $70,000–$75,000 and can cost $100,000 or more. CEO R.J. Scaringe announced the R2, a smaller and more modest SUV that would be available in 2026 with prices starting at $45,000, as well as the R3 and R3X crossovers, also expected to be less expensive than the R1 series.

As Reason has documented, Rivian went public in November 2021, promising luxury electric vehicles that would be both stylish and rugged. The following month, the company—which only had a single factory in Illinois—struck a deal to build its second factory in Georgia: Rivian would spend $5 billion on the factory, and in exchange, Georgia state and local governments authorized up to $1.5 billion in tax credits and incentives.

In the years since, however, the company has struggled. In May 2023, Bloomberg reported that the company had lost 93 percent of its share value, and its market cap reflected "almost no value beyond the company's cash hoard." In the fourth quarter of 2023, the company lost $43,372 on each vehicle sold, up from a $30,648 per-vehicle loss in the third quarter.

Branching out into the more affordable R2 and R3 models is key to Rivian's long-term survival, opening up its product line to appeal to more than just those who can pay over $75,000 for a luxury vehicle. And to do this, it had to make some adjustments.

"To enable R2 to be launched earlier and with a considerable reduction in the capital required for its launch, Rivian plans to start production of R2 in its existing Normal, Illinois manufacturing facility," the company announced. It is also pausing construction in Georgia: "Rivian's Georgia plant remains an extremely important part of its strategy to scale production of R2 and R3. The timing for resuming construction is expected to be later to focus its teams on the capital-efficient launch of R2 in Normal, Illinois."

The move is expected to save the company $2.25 billion "as compared to the original forecast of launching the first line of R2 production at Rivian's Georgia site."

In October, the company announced that the Georgia site was "95 percent graded" and "nearly ready for construction to begin." Notably, under the incentive agreement, Georgia officials paid over $32 million for "clearing and grading" the site.

One year ago, almost to the day, Scaringe reaffirmed the company's dedication to the Georgia project, telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, "We're committed to this state and this project," adding that "the future of our company in terms of scaling and growing really relies on the future of this project. There's not another option. We're not planning an alternative. This must work."

The electric vehicle market, while growing, is in flux, due to softening consumer demand and persistently high interest rates. Just last month, Apple—the first company in history to ever record a $3 trillion valuation—canceled its decade-long quest to develop an electric car. General Motors and Ford have also rolled back pledged investments in electric vehicles.

In that sense, Rivian's pivot would be perfectly reasonable—companies must be free to adapt to changing circumstances in a way that benefits both their customers and their shareholders. But as with any central planning scheme, state economic incentives don't tend to allow for those sorts of dynamic pivots. In this case, Georgia officials mortgaged a large amount of taxpayer money on a plan that foresaw the company continuing on a path that no longer seems financially feasible.

The post Rivian Pauses Construction at Factory That Costs Georgia Taxpayers $1.5 Billion appeared first on Reason.com.

America's high housing costs got a brief shout-out in President Joe Biden's State of the Union address tonight, with the president mostly proposing policies that would subsidize demand of this heavily supply-constrained good.

"I know the cost of housing is so important to you. If inflation keeps coming down mortgage rates will come down as well. But I'm not waiting," said Biden, proposing temporary tax credits of $400 a month to compensate for high mortgage rates and the end of title insurance fees for federally backed mortgages.

In addition, Biden proposed cracking down on the price fixing of big landlords and urged Congress to pass his plan to build or renovate 2 million affordable homes.

That housing policy got a shout-out at all in a State of the Union address is somewhat rare, despite housing being the largest line item in most Americans' budgets. Regrettably, most of the policies Biden proposed would do little to address the cause of high housing costs and could make the problem worse.

Higher rents and home prices are a natural consequence of local and state zoning laws, labyrinthine approval processes, federal restrictions on mortgage financing, and environmental reporting laws, to name a few.

All these laws limit the supply of new housing, which drives up the price for any given level of demand. That's a diagnosis the Biden administration itself has endorsed in various housing briefs and "action plans."

Despite that insight, the president's proposals to subsidize home buying will, all else equal, increase demand while leaving supply constraints in place. That will only raise prices further. People who claim new federal subsidies will be no better off. Anyone who misses out on the subsidies will be worse off.

Biden's proposal to crack down on price-fixing landlords is likely a reference to the hot new idea that landlords are illegally colluding on rents by paying for third-party algorithms that propose market-clearing maximum rents.

The Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice released a memo earlier this month saying that this could be illegal, without offering any clear guidance on when it would actually be illegal.

Even property owners who set their rents below whatever a third-party algorithm recommends could still be guilty of price fixing.

"Even if some of the conspirators cheat by starting with lower prices than those the algorithm recommended, that doesn't necessarily change things. Being bad at breaking the law isn't a defense," read the memo. One shouldn't expect this garbled threat to do much to move the needle on rents.

In his remarks tonight, Biden didn't elaborate much on the policy he proposed to increase actual housing supply, his plan to build or renovate 2 million affordable homes.

A White House fact sheet circulated earlier today provides a little more detail. The plan, such as it is, would involve increasing the number of tax credits available for low-income housing developers—something the tax bill approved by the House and being considered by the Senate would do.

The White House fact sheet also calls for creating a $20 billion competitive grant program that would directly fund affordable apartments, "pilot innovative models" for affordable housing production, and, more interestingly, "incentivize local actions to remove unnecessary barriers to housing development."

When it comes to housing funding, $20 billion is a lot of money. It's nearly a third of the current budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

As part of its existing "housing supply action plan," the Biden administration has allegedly retooled a number of federal transportation grant programs to incentivize local zoning changes. As I've written, that doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on where those grants go. San Francisco, the nation's beating heart of anti-development regulations, got one of the largest grant awards from one of these supposedly retooled programs.

Congress has also passed a smaller, $85 million "baby YIMBY" grant program more focused on paying local governments to change their zoning rules. Here too, the language of the grant program (and the applications it's received thus far from localities) suggests it will end up being more of a subsidy for routine planning work than a powerful incentive for liberalizing zoning laws.

Given the difficulty state governments have had trying to prod local governments into being more pro-housing with explicit zoning preemptions, I'm skeptical of how much federal carrots can do here.

Perhaps the best thing the president can do for zoning reform is to use his bully pulpit to argue for it. Biden had an opportunity to do that tonight, and he didn't take it. It was a missed opportunity.

The post Biden's Plan To Subsidize Homebuyers Won't Work appeared first on Reason.com.

The White House this month announced plans for how it will direct billions of dollars in funding toward semiconductors, marking a new phase in the implementation of the CHIPS and Science Act.

The $280 billion legislation, signed into law in 2022, aims to bolster semiconductor production in the U.S. President Joe Biden's administration said Monday that it will funnel $1.5 billion to GlobalFoundries, a semiconductor manufacturing and design company, to increase its domestic output. Perhaps more significant, however, was Biden's dispatch earlier this month announcing the administration will use at least $5 billion to establish a National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), which will, among other things, support "the design, prototyping, and piloting of the latest semiconductor technologies," according to the White House. 

This latest effort is part of the government's expensive and protectionist public-private partnership meant to address concerns over a reliance on foreign countries, like China, for chips.

"Semiconductors were invented in America and serve as the backbone of the modern economy," the White House said in a statement. "But today, the United States produces less than 10 percent of global supply and none of the most advanced chips."

The NSTC will supposedly also play a crucial role in expanding the semiconductor workforce to manufacture computing chips that can complement advances in artificial intelligence and related industries. Semiconductors are projected to become a $1 trillion industry by 2030, according to McKinsey & Company.

The CHIPS and Science Act has several eyebrow-raising elements, including $81 billion for the National Science Foundation—doubling the agency's budget over five years. Another $24 billion will go toward tax credits meant to subsidize and incentivize private companies to invest in semiconductors.

While the legislation was likely well-intentioned, it was doomed to have protectionist ramifications. "To defeat China, the argument goes, the U.S. must adopt the tactics of the Chinese Communist Party, at least when it comes to high-end manufacturing," Reason's Eric Boehm wrote in January 2023. But that ham-handed approach to industrial policy and corporate welfare drives up the deficit and hampers economic growth at very little benefit to the taxpayer, who are forced to fund these initiatives. 

It's likely unsurprising that many large corporations lobbied for the CHIPS and Science Act, including Meta, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Northrop Grumman, Carrier, Trane, and General Dynamics, as well as labor unions like the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Communications Workers of America. "Big government means big lobbying," wrote David Boaz, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. "When you lay out a picnic, you get ants. And today's federal budget is the biggest picnic in history."

The CHIPS and Science Act passed with bipartisan support. But its detractors were also made up of strange bedfellows. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) and then-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) both referred to the law as "corporate welfare" and a "blank check." Sanders went as far as to call it a "bribe."

"When the government adopts an industrial policy that socializes all the risk and privatizes all the profits, that is crony capitalism," Sanders said.

He's not wrong. The law "is another episode of politicians granting favors to their friends in the semiconductor industry," Veronique de Rugy, a contributing editor at Reason and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, wrote last year. Such an approach "punishes those who aren't elite or can't organize to extract favors from politicians."

Michelle Nuzzo-Kelly is an apt example. She was among the residents of Burnet Road near Syracuse, New York, who received several offers to purchase her home. But those offers didn't come from private buyers: They came from the government, as Onondaga County sought to expand a plot of land so it could attract a developer. Micron, one of the world's largest semiconductor manufacturing firms, is now set to build a facility there, thanks to lucrative taxpayer-funded subsidies from the state and federal government.

"The offers to buy Nuzzo-Kelly's home were never really just offers," Boehm wrote when covering the case in November 2022. "They were demands backed by a threat to use government power to force her to sell."

The post Biden Pours Out Another $6.5 Billion for the CHIPS Act's Costly Protectionism appeared first on Reason.com.