Links 10-19-11

Here's one way to spur innovation and job growth: pledge hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and infrastructure improvements to the prestigious school that will open a branch engineering campus in your city.  That's what NYC is doing in order to spur an East Coast version of Silicon Valley: Cornell and Stanford currently look like the front-runners.

Grover Norquist says he's not a huge fan of Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan because "it gives you three taxes, all of which could grow".  Norquist said he'd prefer to keep the present system and "prune it back like a rose bush".

And here's a chart capturing the liberal objection to the plan: that it (according to one calculation) lowers taxes for the rich while raising them for the poor and middle class.

Despite the criticisms, Cain's fast-rising poll numbers seem to have convinced Rick Perry that he should introduce his own flat-tax proposal . . . which he plans to do next week

We talked about Pigovian taxes in class . . . a new CDC study found that each serving of alcohol costs the country about $2 in social costs spread across federal, state, and local governments, drinkers, drinkers' families, health care providers, and victims.  The CDC director summarized the study as finding that "binge drinking results in binge spending".

David Brooks argues that while the media focuses on the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protesters, most Americans are in the middle of a "great restoration" with a back-to-basics financial focus characterized by three things: 1.) people returning to spending more than they take in (e.g. no more credit card debt); 2.) re-establishing the link between effort and reward (e.g. no more bailouts); and 3.) the resurgence of loyalty (e.g. working for one company rather than 5 or 10).

A new CNN poll finds declining support for the death penalty: from 56% in 2003 to 53% in 2009 to 48% (versus 50% who'd prefer life in prison) today.

Another new poll (this one by Gallup) is the first to find that a plurality support marijuana legalization, with 50% in favor and 46% opposed (the link also looks at trends in support over time).

If Republicans are right, we might be seeing an unintended consequence of the financial reform legislation.  The bill passed in Congress capped banks' processing fees for a debit card swipe at 24 cents -- the previous average was 40 cents.  Bank of America was recently the first major bank to announce consumer fees for debit card use ($5 per month, in their case).

And in a story that has nothing to do with politics but has generated substantial interest, the owner of a zoo in Zanesville, OH allegedly released most of his animals and then shot himself.  Police have been busily tracking down either 48 or 51 wild animals, including bears, tigers, wolves, and monkeys.