Tag Archives: Household

Getting Around The Second Amendment

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On Monday, Breitbart posted an article about a bill recently introduced in the California Assembly.

The article reports:

A bill introduced Friday by California Assembly Member Mike Gipson (D) would force insurance companies to provide lawmakers with an annual report highlighting homeowners with guns in their residence.

The bill, AB 3067, says: “This bill would require an insurer, by January 1, 2026, to include questions on an application for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance seeking specified information regarding the presence and storage of any firearms kept in the household, accessory structures, or vehicles kept on the property subject to any applicable insurance policy.”

It continues: “The bill would require an insurer to annually report this information to the Department of Insurance and the Legislature beginning on January 1, 2027, and would prohibit the inclusion of confidential identifying information in the report.”

Does anyone really believe that at some point a list will not be generated showing who owns guns and where they live? This is a violation of American’s right to own guns and our right to unlawful search. The insurance companies have no right to information on gun ownership.

The article concludes:

In addition to existing regulations, an application for homeowners’ or renters’ insurance shall include questions regarding all of the following:
(1) Whether there are firearms kept in the household, including in any accessory structures, and if so, how many.
(2) Whether the firearm, if any, is stored in a locked container in the home, including any accessory structures, while not in use.
(3) The number of firearms kept in a vehicle located on the property subject to the applicable insurance policy, and if any, whether they are stored securely in a locked container while not in use.

AB 3067 is now pending referral to a committee for continuance.

This is something to watch–if California passes this and it survives the ensuing court challengers, other liberal states will follow suit.

 

Lying With Statistics

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Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about the recent discussion on wealth inequality in America. French economist Thomas Piketty has written a book called Class Warfare in which he decries the unequal distribution of wealth in America and calls for extreme taxing of the ‘rich.’

The article includes the following chart and explanation:

“There are transcription errors from the original sources and incorrect formulas,” the FT noticed. “It also appears that some of the data are cherry-picked or constructed without an original source.”

But the bigger problem is that just looking at the actual data on U.S. inequality — using what is called the Gini ratio, a measure of how incomes are dispersed across society — you can see Piketty’s thesis is wrong.

As the chart below shows, contrary to claims by left-leaning economists such as Piketty, individual inequality hasn’t changed at all since 1960. But there has been an increase in household inequality.

Why? As economist Don Boudreaux and the website Political Calculations have noted, the changing composition and size of households are the reason.

Households have shrunk markedly. Since 1960, the average size has plunged from more than 3.4 persons to about 2.55, Census data show. One-person households have nearly quintupled since 1960 and today make up nearly 30% of all households.

When charted, the household Gini ratio looks as if there is growing inequality. But in fact it shows that households are smaller, with fewer earners.

Our point is that using tendentious data to bolster a case for taking even more private-sector output for government use is dishonest at best.

It is possible to make statistics say pretty much anything you want them to say. Mr. Piketty’s book is a current example of that fact.

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