Minor Thoughts from me to you

The Tax Foundation runs the numbers on Romney's tax plan.

The debate over Mitt Romney’s tax plan has largely revolved around the short term concerns of who gets what and how much, rather than the more long term concerns of economic growth, job creation, deficit reduction, and tax reform. This is unfortunate, especially in a time of record unemployment and debt levels. These serious issues have been put aside to focus particularly on the results of a single study by the Tax Policy Center (TPC), which finds Romney’s tax plan would require raising taxes on low- and middle-income earners to pay for tax cuts for high-income earners. However, to get there, TPC assumes that tax rates do not matter for economic growth, i.e., Romney’s plan to cut income tax rates by 20 percent across the board will have no effect on labor supply or saving and investment decisions. Only among Washington score keepers does such an assumption make sense, but it certainly has no credibility among academic economists.

So, what will be the effect of Romney's tax plan?

The results are considerably different from TPC’s. We find that fully 60 percent of the static revenue loss from Romney’s plan is recovered when the dynamic effects of economic growth are taken into account. We find that while the cuts in the individual income tax rates do not “pay for themselves,” they do grow the economy 1.8 percent over the long run. The biggest boost to the economy comes from the 10 point cut in the corporate rate, which grows GDP by 2.3 percent, the capital stock by 6.3 percent, and the wage rate by 1.9 percent. The corporate rate cut is so economically beneficial that it does pay for itself, when all federal revenue effects are considered. So does the elimination of taxes on capital gains and dividends for middle-income earners and the estate tax.

These benefits are widely shared. Every income group experiences at least a 7 percent increase in after-tax income.

That's reform I can get behind.

∞

Kate Paulk, an Aussie, talks about her view of Mitt Romney's character.

It’s clear from Mr. Romney’s manner that he steps in whenever needed without complaint because he regards this as just something that needs to be done. And to an Australian, that attitude is admirable. We tend to respect people who do this regardless of whether we agree with their beliefs (with the caveat that those beliefs don’t harm anyone else — the kind of belief that says Person X is less than human tends to get short shrift).

Mr. Romney’s so-called “wooden” manner is also a factor here, and yes, in my view it’s admirable. The thing about MS is you don’t know what it will take next. There’s no way to predict episodes, no way to guess what area of the brain will be attacked. It can’t be pleasant for Mr. Romney to see his wife suffering this kind of deterioration, and since he needs to be strong for her, he’s built up a pleasant, cheerful demeanor so that she doesn’t see how much her pain hurts him. It also protects him to some extent: the masks allow him to defer his suffering while he deals with the more important matter — namely supporting his wife. I’d be willing to guarantee that Mr. Romney’s calm assurance is something he only drops in the presence of those he trusts absolutely and knows he won’t hurt when he drops it. After any length of time, something like this becomes reflex: it takes conscious effort to drop it.

So no, I don’t expect to see any spontaneous reaction from Mr. Romney unless he’s badly shocked, and I certainly hope he never finds himself in that position. This is a good thing. No, he will never be spontaneous in politics, but he is also unlikely to throw unseemly tantrums.

I admit. I come clean. I like Mitt Romney. I've liked him for a while now. I think he's politically awkward in the same way that I'd be awkward if I were to run for political office. But that doesn't make him a bad man. And, the more I read about him, the more I like his character.

∞

A new paper from Georgetown University researchers suggests a third possible outcome: Absolutely nothing at all will happen. They looked at the three states – Maine, Georgia and Wyoming – that have passed laws allowing insurers from other states to participate in their markets. All have done so within the past two years.

So far, none of the three have seen out-of-state carriers come into their market or express interest in doing so. It seems to have nothing to do with state benefit mandates, and everything to do with the big challenge of setting up a network of providers that new subscribers could see.

Interesting. This is another argument in favor of spending out of pocket instead of purchasing healthcare through health insurance. You can negotiate and shop around immediately. You don't have to wait for an insurance company to set up a network and then pay them.

∞

Economists agree on theoretical grounds and have shown empirically that all contributions toward premiums—those made by employers and workers alike—are forgone wages. In other words, wages are lower by exactly the amount of the premium, even when the employer seems to pay it. What’s going on here is that employers are shifting compensation from wages to premiums. The preferential tax treatment of the latter encourages this.

Because wages are taxed, compensation in the form of health insurance in lieu of wages reduces government revenue. In fact, it reduces it a lot: $250 billion per year. Just to put that figure in perspective, $250 billion is almost half the Medicare budget. It is more than 3½ times the average annual cost of the Affordable Care Act’s low-income health insurance subsidies. Employer-sponsored health insurance is among the most subsidized types of health insurance in America, almost as subsidized as Medicaid.

The preferential tax treatment of employer-sponsored health insurance also encourages more generous coverage and higher health care spending. By one estimate, health spending among insured workers is 26% higher than it otherwise would be if not for the tax break.

We should get rid of the employer healthcare tax subsidy. It distorts purchasing incentives, it's a massive middle class welfare program, and it drives up the cost of healthcare. It's toxic and it needs to go. (McCain's healthcare plan would have accomplished that. The Obama campaign blatantly lied about it for 6 months and we got Obamacare instead. I'm still angry about that.)

∞

It's a crime to fraudulently register to vote. Registering twice, in two different states, would definitely fit that bill. Apparently, Obama for America staffers are totally cool with that, if the goal is to defeat Mitt Romney.

But, hey, there's more.

Kenric Ward, of Watchdog.org, details all of the ways that this is wrong. The Obama campaign's response so far? Crickets.

States should have authority to purge their voter rolls of fraudulent registrations. But I'd go further than that. Driver's licenses expire. Why not expire voter registrations at the same time? You can have the option of renewing your license and registration at the same time. Or, how about automatically removing people who haven't voted in a certain number of elections, say, 4 years worth? If your name is no longer on the rolls, that would make it harder to fraudulently vote either by double voting or by stealing someone's identity.

This sort of criminal behavior should be absolutely beyond the pale. And we should make it harder to commit this kind of fraud, not easier.

It's not just the wheels that are coming off of the Administration's story about the Benghazi attacks. The whole bus is disintegrating.

The Atlantic Wire: State Department Disowns Susan Rice's Libya Narrative

In an unusual display of disunity, State Department officials have disowned remarks by one of their top officials, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, regarding her explanation of the deadly terrorist assault on U.S. diplomats in Libya in September. Not only did they say Rice's characterization of those attacks as "spontaneous" was wrong, but also, they said that assessment was never the conclusion of the State Department at any point in time.

In a conference call to reporters on Tuesday, senior State Department officials said they couldn't explain why Rice went on a Sunday talk show blitz last month describing the Benhazi attacks as a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam film in the U.S. "That was not our conclusion," the officials said. "That is the question you'd have to ask others."

In the Rice version of events, the attacks that led to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans began as an anti-film demonstration and devolved into a deadly assault. But State Department officials say there was no anti-film demonstration. "Everything is calm at 8:30 p.m., there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside," officials told reporters Tuesday. "Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound."

Reuters: U.S. officer got no reply to requests for more security in Benghazi

A U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.

The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi "artificially low," according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.

Nordstrom also argued for more U.S. security in Libya by citing a chronology of over 200 security incidents there from militia gunfights to bomb attacks between June 2011 and July 2012. Forty-eight of the incidents were in Benghazi.

BBC News: US security 'cut' before Benghazi consulate attack

Lt Col Wood told Wednesday's hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that when he arrived in Libya in February there had been three US diplomatic special security teams in the country, but by August they had been withdrawn.

He also said that the security situation in Libya had worsened before the 11 September attack, in which four Americans died, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

He said he had visited Benghazi twice and was there in June when the British ambassador's convoy was attacked, one of a dozen incidents before the assault on the consulate.

Mr Nordstrom testified that he had been criticised for seeking more security.

"There was no plan and it was hoped it would get better," he said.

`He told the committee that conversations he had with people in Washington had led him to believe that it was "abundantly clear we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident".

Abdulateef AL-Mulhim writes in the ArabNews (of Saudi Arabia), about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Arab world has many enemies and Israel should have been at the bottom of the list. The real enemies of the Arab world are corruption, lack of good education, lack of good health care, lack of freedom, lack of respect for the human lives and finally, the Arab world had many dictators who used the Arab-Israeli conflict to suppress their own people.

These dictators’ atrocities against their own people are far worse than all the full-scale Arab-Israeli wars.

This certainly matches up with what Michael Totten sees (and reports) every time he visits the Middle East. If the Arabs stopped blaming Israel for everything, they might be able to make a start on making a better life.

∞

Veronique de Rugy sheds some light on the farm bill. Here's a small taste.

here is a little reminder of what is in the farm bill, how big it is, and other details relevant to this discussion:

The farm bill is massive; it would spend almost $1 trillion over the next decade.

For the most part, farmers are doing very well. As Drew White at Heritage reminds us, in spite of and partially thanks to this year’s drought, net farm income is estimated to set a new record of $122.2 billion in 2012.

∞

Suppose—just suppose—that there were a tested energy technology out there that

• produces electricity cheaper than coal, because of lower capital and fuel costs,
• uses a fuel that is in almost inexhaustible supply, both in the U.S. and elsewhere,
• operates continuously, in baseload or peaking mode, for up to 30 years,
• operates at an efficient high temperature but at atmospheric pressure, *can be factory-built and deployed in compact 100-megawatt modules close to the end use of the power,
• contributes nothing to air or water pollution and needs no water for operation,
• safely consumes long-lived transuranic waste products from current nuclear fission reactors,
• produces high-temperature process heat that can make hydrogen fuel for vehicles, and
• is walkaway safe.

Science journalist Richard Martin's book SuperFuel makes the case that such a technology exists. It's thorium, and particularly the LFTR—the liquid fluoride thorium reactor.

The Federal government's regulatory apparatus has been well and truly captured by the companies that make conventional nuclear reactors. As long as they hold sway, it will be very, very difficult for anyone to build an LFTR power plant. The government should give innovative energy companies a chance to see whether thorium reactors really can be the green energy source of the future.

∞

Charles Koch speaks out against the bipartisan corruption of crony capitalism.

Far too many businesses have been all too eager to lobby for maintaining and increasing subsidies and mandates paid by taxpayers and consumers. This growing partnership between business and government is a destructive force, undermining not just our economy and our political system, but the very foundations of our culture.

So why isn't economic freedom the "default setting" for our economy? What upsets this productive state of affairs? Trouble begins whenever businesses take their eyes off the needs and wants of consumers—and instead cast longing glances on government and the favors it can bestow. When currying favor with Washington is seen as a much easier way to make money, businesses inevitably begin to compete with rivals in securing government largess, rather than in winning customers.

We have a term for this kind of collusion between business and government. It used to be known as rent-seeking. Now we call it cronyism. Rampant cronyism threatens the economic foundations that have made this the most prosperous country in the world.

∞

Michael Strong talks about innovation in education.

Whereas once people believed that education would change the world, now people across the political spectrum tend to be skeptical. Academic performance remains stagnant despite a threefold increase in per pupil spending over the past forty years. We’ve tried thousands of new methods, pedagogies, textbooks, software, testing regimes, teacher training programs, etc. within the existing constraints without progress. Diverse thinkers (Plato, Rousseau, Kant, Jefferson, Dewey, etc.) in the western tradition believed that education could be transformative. The current zeitgeist is that we’ve reached the limits of what education can achieve. Were the earlier dreams of philosophers, humanists, and educators simply wrong about the potential of education?

He goes on to speculate that innovation is stalled because the vast majority of education happens in a government controlled system, where true freedom is limited. Everyone uses the type of school day, same type of textbooks, same type of tests, same type of teacher credentialing, same type of classrooms, etc. Even the private schools are constrained to follow this model, so that their students are more directly comparable to public school students for overall academic rankings and for college admissions.

It's an intriguing hypothesis and I think he might be on to something. Education has looked pretty much the same for the last 80 years. Is that true for any other industry? Might that very rigidity and conformity be holding back education?

∞

How safe do you feel?

Father Christiaan Kappes, a priest for the Indianapolis Archdiocese, went missing in Greece last Monday after telling his family he feared for his life. His father, Virgil Kappes, encouraged his son to go to the US Embassy for help. While at the embassy, Father Kappes called his father, who over heard the conversation. The State Department confirmed Father Kappes did visit the embassy, but he did not request safe haven. His father said his son left the embassy because he was denied safe haven. Mr. Kappes thinks the State Department is trying to cover up a mistake.

“This is the incompetency of the administration, not taking a person in,” he said.

∞

Which brings up the absolutely salient point that there is no U.S. government role in the creation of Innocence of the Muslims. In an editorial on September 12, the New York Times observed that "whoever made the film did true damage to the interests of the United States and its core principle of respecting all faiths." The makers of the video clearly aimed to incite Muslims, but they are under no moral or legal obligation to respect other people’s religious beliefs. Whatever damage to U.S. interests the film has caused among Muslims, the interests of U.S. citizens would suffer far graver harm if our government were permitted to engage in censorship.

As the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes plain, it is indeed a "core principle" that the U.S. government cannot favor one religious doctrine over any other and must respect everyone’s faith or lack thereof. President Thomas Jefferson expressed this view well in his 1802 letter to Danbury Baptists, "I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

This wall of separation is largely responsible for the relative social peace our religiously diverse country enjoys. A comparison of the Hudson’s Institute’s Index of Religious Freedom for countries in the Middle East and North Africa with the World Bank's indicators for political violence and for voice and accountability finds that the lack of freedom of religion and speech goes hand-in-hand with social violence and political instability. Where church (mosque) and state are entwined, social and political violence are far more common.

∞

Michael Totten again, quoting Paul Berman. It's dangerous to criticize Islam.

When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination. I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera–and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein, because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of [Tariq] Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding. I have no idea what security precautions have been taken by Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published the Muhammad cartoons. And van Gogh…

Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class, a subset of the European intelligentsia–its Muslim wing especially–who survive only because of their bodyguards and their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe during the last sixty years. And yet if someone like Pascal Bruckner mumbles a few words about the need for courage under these circumstances, the sneers begin–"Now where have we heard that kind of thing before?"–and onward to the litany about fascism. In the Times magazine, Buruma held back even from hinting obliquely about the fascist influences on Ramadan’s grandfather, the founder of the modern cult of artistic death. Yet Bruckner, the liberal–here is somebody on the brink of fascism!

∞

Here's a quick rundown of the various links I've been saving, related to Libya and Benghazi.

Michael Totten was one of the first to notice that the attacks weren't related to the anti-Muslim video.

Meanwhile, a London think tank with strong ties to Libya speculated Wednesday that Stevens was actually the victim of a targeted al Qaeda revenge attack. The assault "came to avenge the death of Abu Yaya al-Libi, al Qaeda's second in command killed a few months ago," the think tank Quilliam said Wednesday.

Michael Totten also noticed that the Libyan President was being more honest about the attacks than the American President.

Libya’s President Mohammed el-Megarif begs to differ.

“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” he said.

I wasn’t there and I don’t know what happened, exactly, but I have to say the Libyan government’s account is more credible than what the U.S. government is saying right now. I never thought I’d type that particular sentence—and I certainly would not have when Qaddafi was running the place—but this has been a hell of a week.

Billy Birdzell, writing at Michael Yon's place, about the strategic context of embassy security.

The events of Sept. 11, 2012 and Ambassador Stevens' death do not mean the Department of State needs to change its procedures or decision making framework. U.S. embassies have been evacuated at least 20 times since 1979, the last year in which a U.S. ambassador was killed in the line of duty. Deploying hundreds of policemen, riot-control agents and various means of crowd control can be a significant burden on developing nations, yet they carry out the duties to which they have agreed via the Vienna Conventions and are successfully defending U.S. personnel in over two dozen countries currently experiencing civil unrest. The United States should never compromise on the safety of its personnel or material of national security, yet we must also understand that it is a dangerous world in which our enemies have a say. Overreacting to recent events and implementing unnecessary security measures may have worse consequences than not doing enough.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the timeline of the Benghazi attack

The deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya on Sept. 11 was preceded by a succession of security lapses and misjudgments, compounded by fog-of-battle decisions, that raise questions about whether the scope of the tragedy could have been contained.

U.S. officials issued alerts and ordered security precautions in neighboring Egypt ahead of protests and violence on Sept. 11, but largely overlooked the possibility of trouble at other diplomatic postings in the region.

The State Department chose to maintain only limited security in Benghazi, Libya, despite months of sporadic attacks there on U.S. and other Western missions. And while the U.S. said it would ask Libya to boost security there, it did so just once, for a one-week period in June, according to Libyan officials.

Gateway Pundit: Bombshell: Obama Administration Withdrew 16 Member Special Forces Team From Libya One Month Before Attack

The Obama State Department withdrew a 16 member special forces team from Benghazi one month before the deadly attacks on 9-11. Lt. Col. Andy Wood was the leader of the 16 member special forces team whose job it was to protect US personnel in Libya. His team’s mission ended in August a month before the deadly Al-Qaeda attack on 9-11. A six member mobile security team was also withdrawn around the same time. This was despite the fact that there were over a dozen attacks in the country this year. Lt. Col. Wood was subpoenaed to appear at a House committee hearing this coming week. Wood told CBS News it was unbelievable to him that the State Department withdrew security when they did because of the 13 security incidents before 9-11.

This is very interesting.

And on Wednesday in Washington DC, Soon-Shiong and his L.A.-based NantHealth will unveil a joint venture with Verizon, Intel, Blue Shield of California and others to create a nationwide system for doctors to share DNA and other data on cancer patients. It will enable doctors to do genetic analysis of a patient's tumor in less than a minute -- a job that now can take from eight to 10 weeks.

"This is something the federal government should have done, but we waited and waited for them," Soon-Shiong told Reuters in an interview.

"It's unconscionable that cancer patients get the wrong diagnosis 30 percent of the time and that it takes so long to treat them with appropriate drugs for their cancer."

Soon-Shiong emigrated to the United States more than three decades ago with his wife Michele Chan, an actress who had a starring role in 80's show "Danger Bay" that aired on CBS and the Disney Channel and guest roles on " MacGyver." Since then, he has methodically climbed the ladder of success by adroitly mixing science and business.

He created drugs to fight diabetes and breast cancer and then sold the companies that produced them for a combined $8.6 billion.

In the four years since selling those companies, he quietly spent more than $400 million of his own money to build a national fiber optic network that would link cancer clinics throughout the country -- the groundwork for the health superhighway.

∞

John Goodman links to a recent (gated) study from the Health Affairs Blog.

We examined both quality and actual medical costs for episodes of care provided by nearly 250,000 U.S. physicians serving commercially insured patients nationwide. Overall, episode costs for a set of major medical procedures varied about 2.5-fold, and for a selected set of common chronic conditions, episode costs varied about 15-fold…there was essentially no correlation between average episode costs and measured quality across markets.

That indicates to me that there is a lot of room for patient's to bargain for healthcare and push for lower prices. If more patients spent their own money, they'd do so. And, in so doing, they'd lower their own healthcare costs and the costs of the overall healthcare system.

∞

John Stossel reports on "jobs centers" in New York City.

My intern learned a lot from this experience. Here are her conclusions:

• It's easier to get welfare than to work.
• The government would rather sign me up for welfare than help me find work.
• America has taxpayer-funded bureaucracies that encourage people to be dependent. They incentivize people to take "free stuff," not to take initiative.
• It was easier to find job openings on my own. The private market for jobs works better than government "job centers."

Yet now New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to expand Workforce1, claiming that it helps people "find real opportunities." I bet he never sends people in to find out whether they really do.

Keep that in mind whenever you hear politicians talk about expanding work programs or job training programs.

∞

Steven Landsburg reminds people that prices actually represent something concrete in the real world. When the President demagogues against prices, he's playing the dunce because he thinks you're an idiot.

This morning I heard President Obama call for universities to lower their tuition rates so that “everybody in America can go to college”.

... To believe what the President wants you to believe, you’d have to be not just stupid but badly misinformed. At the University where I teach, we do not lack for applicants. The reason we don’t have more students is not that they can’t afford us; it’s that we don’t have room for them.

∞

Post-debate tweet of the night.

That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car.

-- Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) October 4, 2012

Post-debate picture of the night.

How bad was Romney’s beat-down of Obama tonight? « Bob Owens

Fact Checking

• Avik Roy on Healthcare: In the First Presidential Debate, Mitt Romney Told the Truth on Health Care and Obama Tried Not To - Forbes
• Patrick Brennan on The Phantom $5 Trillion Cut.
• The Washington Examiner: No, Romney will not raise taxes on the middle class.
• Reality Check, from the National Center for Policy Analysis. One of the few "fact checkers" that I'd actually trust.

Tax Breaks for Outsourcing?

I thought one of the better moments in the debate was when the question of tax breaks for outsourcing jobs came up. Romney said "Mr. President, I've been in business for 25 years and I have no idea what you're talking about." I was glad he said it, because I've had no idea what the President is talking about. It turns out, the President was mostly just making it up.

Kevin D. Williamson: The Tax Credit for Outsourcing Is Fiction.

So, here’s the deal: Business expenses are deductible against income for tax purposes. That is it.

I’m not a tax lawyer, so this will be very general, but business income is not like personal income: Your personal income is how much money you took in last year, but business income is how much money you took in minus your business expenses. As Inc. summarizes it:

All of the basic expenses necessary to run a business are generally tax-deductible, including office rent, salaries, equipment and supplies, telephone and utility costs, legal and accounting services, professional dues, and subscriptions to business publications. . . . Some other miscellaneous expenses that may be deductible in this category include computer software, charitable contributions, repairs and improvements to business property, bank service charges, consultant fees, postage, and online services.

Debbie Stabanow, for my money one of the least impressive senators (and that is saying something), introduced a bill that says, in short: Business expenses are still deductible, unless you use incur those expenses doing things I don’t want you to do.

... In other words, if you send a letter to your lawyer, the postage is a deductible expense. If you send a letter to your offshoring consultant, the postage is not a deductible expense.

So the special outsourcing tax credit isn’t really there — it’s just regular-ol’ deductible business expenses. Rather than repealing an instance of tax favoritism, Democrats (and some Republican miscreants) propose to use the tax code to inflict punitive measures on businesses that make business decisions at odds with Washington’s political preferences.

In a follow-up post Kevin Williamson quotes another authority.

Some additional perspective on President Obama’s fictitious outsourcing tax deductions via the [Joint Committee on Taxation's] score of Senator Stabenow’s bill: “Under present law, there are no specific tax credits or disallowances of deductions solely for locating jobs in the United States or overseas. Deductions generally are allowed for all ordinary and necessary expenses paid or incurred by the taxpayers during the taxable year in carrying on any trade or business, which includes the relocation of business units.”