Why did Disney want and get its own county?

by philg

Disney World opened 51 years ago, with tickets priced at $3.50 for adults, $2.50 for teens, and $1 for kids.

The company has been in the news recently for wanting to undo Florida legislature’s work in preventing public school systems from teaching sexual orientation and gender identity lessons to kids in K-3 (at the same time, Walt Disney won’t live its principles by building a 2SLGBTQQIA+ ride for K-3-age kids).

The company has also been in the news after the same legislature passed a law undoing the company’s ability to run its own county, the Reedy Creek Improvement District (WPTV). Democrats in Massachusetts and California have been predicting that this will be disastrous for ordinary taxpayers in Florida, who will be on the hook for the $1 billion that Reedy Creek has borrowed (applying the general principle that people in Florida are too stupid not to understand their own interests).

Buying Disney’s World: The Story of How Florida Swampland Became Walt Disney World, a 2021 book by Aaron Goldberg, was written before these 2022 disputes, but provides interesting background information.

First, why did Disney want to have its own county?

To pay for the infrastructure throughout the property—such as roads, sewer systems, and water lines—the Reedy Creek Improvement District sold federally subsidized tax-exempt municipal bonds.

Florida did not have a personal income tax at the time (nor does it now). Therefore, allowing Disney to borrow money tax-free did not cost Florida anything. The Federal income tax rates hit 50 percent at $22,000 per year and 70 percent at $100,000 per year, so Disney would have been able to borrow at a substantial savings compared to if the company had to issue conventional taxable corporate bonds (see discussion in the comments about whether a 50 percent tax rate implies that a muni can be sold at half the yield of a same-risk same-duration corporate bond).

How could the arrangement be justified? If it is that easy, why not have the Florida state government give every company a 1-foot-square county-like “district” to administer and then the company can use its district to issue tax-exempt bonds? Disney told the legislature that the planned primary use for the 27,000 acres it had purchased was a town: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT). Walt in 1966:

But the most exciting, by far the most important part of our Florida project—in fact, the heart of everything we’ll be doing in Disney World—will be our experimental prototype city of tomorrow. We call it E.P.C.O.T. spelled E-P-C-O-T: Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Here it is in larger scale.

No city of today will serve as the guide for the city of tomorrow. E.P.C.O.T. will be a planned environment demonstrating to the world what American communities can accomplish through proper control of planning and design.

E.P.C.O.T. begins with an idea new among cities built since the birth of the automobile. We call it the radial plan. Picture a wheel: like the spokes of a wheel, the city fans out along a series of radials from a bustling hub at the center of E.P.C.O.T. A network of transportation systems radiate from the central hub carrying people to and from the heart of the city. These transportation systems circulate to and through four primary spheres of activity surrounding the central core. First, the area of business and commerce … next, the high-density apartment housing … then the broad greenbelt and recreation lands … and finally the low-density, neighborhood residential streets. E.P.C.O.T.’s dynamic urban center will offer the excitement and variety of activities found only in the metropolitan cities: cultural, social, business, and entertainment.

Among its major features will be a cosmopolitan hotel and convention center towering thirty or more stories. Shopping areas where stores and whole streets recreate the character and adventure of places ‘round the world … theaters for dramatic and musical productions … restaurants and a variety of nightlife attractions. And a wide range of office buildings, some containing services required by E.P.C.O.T.’s residents, but most of them designed especially to suit local and regional needs of major corporations. But most important, this entire fifty acres of city streets and buildings will be completely enclosed. In this climate-controlled environment, shoppers, theatergoers, and people just out for a stroll will enjoy ideal weather conditions, protected day and night from rain, heat and cold, and humidity.

Here the pedestrian will be king, free to walk and browse without fear of motorized vehicles. Only electric powered vehicles will travel above the streets of E.P.C.O.T.’s central city.

One of the ideas was a three-level road system. Trucks on the bottom. Cars in the middle. Pedestrians, bicycles, and electric golf carts on the top. There would be a “greenbelt” around the high-rise offices and apartment buildings. Beyond the greenbelt would be single-family homes. At least 20,000 people, which was a substantial number in a time before mass immigration, would live in E.P.C.O.T.

Since it would be primarily a municipality, in other words, it made sense for Disney to have the right to issue tax-free muni bonds.

An unrelated tidbit of potential interest is that two of the principal managers for getting Disney World ready for visitors were MIT graduates.

General Joe Potter (birth name William Potter, nickname Joe) was an integral part of the early team working on the Florida land acquisition and helped with the legislation to form the RCID.

A graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in civil engineering, General Joe was a logistics planner for the invasion of Normandy and commanded the troop section of the Propaganda and Psychological Warfare Division during World War II.

Potter worked behind the scenes, overseeing the construction of the park’s infrastructure, which included underground utilities, a sewer system, and a power grid, along with water treatment plants and land reclamation measures. The other Joe, Rear Admiral Joseph W. Fowler, was at the helm of just about everything else Potter wasn’t handling, including the creation of the theme park itself, the hotels, transportation, and the like. Admiral Fowler had graduated second in his class from the US Naval Academy in 1917. Like General Potter, Fowler was also a graduate of MIT, with a master’s degree in naval architecture.

What was the land worth before Disney showed up? Somewhere between $45 and $150 per acre (950 in 2022 Bidies). By keeping its plans secret, the company paid roughly $200 per acre to buy up 43 square miles of land (2X the size of Manhattan and similar to San Francisco, but without all of the homeless encampments). As soon as word leaked out to the media, “land prices in the area skyrocketed to over $1,000 an acre.” (Disney paid $7,000 an acre in 2019 for 1,600 additional acres of swap.)

The prices on opening day in 1971?

General Admission: adult admission, $3.50; junior admission, ages twelve through seventeen, $2.50; and children three through eleven, $1.00. If you felt the need to bring man’s best friend, your four-legged friend could stay at the Disney kennel for fifty cents a day, which included a lunch. The cost of individual attractions ranged from ten cents to ninety cents. … you could spend the night at the Polynesian Village or the Contemporary for $25.00 to $44.00 a night at either hotel.

The book notes that in 2010, Disney actually did build a handful of houses inside Disney World: Golden Oak. Right now they seem to be selling for about $1,000 per square foot. A few hundred people live there, but presumably anyone with $5-20 million to spend on a house will also have additional houses in which to live.

Circling back to the original topic, Disney was able to cut its costs tremendously at the expense of the average Federal taxpayer. What’s curious is that DeSantis-hating folks in other states who’ve been paying Disney’s tax bills advocate for this arrangement to continue. They’re so against DeSantis that they’re in favor of corporate welfare that actually costs them personally (since if people who buy Disney World (“Reedy Creek”) bonds don’t have to pay tax on the interest, taxes necessary to run the Federal government will have to be extracted from ordinary schlubs) and if you ask them “How much longer do you think Disney should have the right to issue tax-free municipal bonds?” they don’t propose any end date.

From Disney World during Code Orange coronapanic (September 2021):

(I still can’t figure out how President Biden’s first executive order wasn’t shutting down all U.S. theme parks. Schools were still closed in many big U.S. cities when Biden took office. Why allow daily superspreader operations if it was too dangerous to run schools New York, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.?)

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Did the Twitter search programmers deserve to be fired?

by philg

Elon Musk fired a lot of people from Twitter today (CNN). But the advertisers are leaving even faster, now that there is the potential for users to utter misinformation, e.g., that COVID-19 “vaccines” don’t prevent infection and transmission.

Appeasement doesn’t work, apparently. Government-funded General Motors and Pfizer, for example, will no longer advertise on a platform that allows people to say things that are contrary to what the Biden administration wants residents of the U.S. to hear.

Let’s look at the overall quality of the product that the pre-rightsizing crew developed. Suppose that we are searching to see if Kanye West has been unpersoned. A search for “kanye west” does not yield Kanye West’s profile:

How about “@kanyewest” as a search string?

What if we type “kanye west twitter profile” into the Google?

There is an account and it exactly matches one of our search strings (“@kanyewest”), but Twitter couldn’t find it! Maybe this is because Google hired everyone competent? Bing also shows the @kanyewest account as the number 1 result. So does Duck Duck Go.

How soon do we think we can start seeing the kind of big improvements in Twitter that a good product manager could drive, e.g., “If you type ‘Kanye West’ it has to return Kanye West’s account as the first result.”

How did Elon Musk and team zero in on the low-productivity workers? You’d think it would take a few months for new management to figure out which programmers on the search team were the good ones.

Also, when do we get a high-quality remake of the following:

Elon Musk can play himself.

Some lines:

  • Put that kombucha down! Kombucha’s for accepted check-ins only.
  • The good news is you’re fired. The bad news is that all you’ve got is just one week to regain your jobs. Starting with tonight’s git. .. First prize: a Tesla S. Second prize: a set of pronouns. Third prize is you’re fired.
  • f*ckin’ f*ggots -> f*ckin MAGAs
  • ABC = Always Be Censoring
  • I made $970,000 last year -> I lost more than $100 billion this year.

Update, November 5:

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Florida comes up with a scheme for increasing taxes on private workers via a property tax exemption for government workers

by philg

On the ballot this year… “Florida Amendment 3, the Additional Homestead Property Tax Exemption for Certain Public Service Workers”:

A “yes” supports authorizing the Florida State Legislature to provide an additional homestead property tax exemption on $50,000 of assessed value on property owned by certain public service workers including teachers, law enforcement officers, emergency medical personnel, active duty members of the military and Florida National Guard, and child welfare service employees.

I wonder if this will catch on nationwide as a stealth way to increase the amount of money that flows from those who aren’t part of the government to those who are. Instead of increasing property tax rates and then giving government workers a raise, which would be readily noticed, the scheme gives government workers a boost in spending power by relieving them of paying property taxes (to at least some extent). Note that this only helps government workers who are rich enough to own houses. Landlords who rent to government workers won’t get a property tax reduction so government workers who rent, like our local friend who is a police officer for a city down the coast, won’t get a rent reduction.

This could be expanded so that when government workers purchase items at retail they don’t have to pay sales tax (there is typically already a mechanism for sales tax exemption for resale, non-profit orgs, etc.).

Separately, the local police officer renter is an interesting example of someone who benefits from open borders. Without all of the crime committed in a Haitian immigrant neighborhood, the seaside city where she works wouldn’t have needed or wanted to hire additional police officers.

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HondaJet at NBAA (third time is the charm?)

by philg

One of the long-held dreams of people in general aviation is that a car company would come in and fix all of our woes (high costs, low volumes, intensive maintenance requirements, dumb-as-bricks systems). If Honda, for example, could make an airplane that is as comfortable and reliable as a Honda Odyssey minivan, mass-produced at a reasonable price, life would be awesome.

Well, Honda actually did go into the airplane business! And it took them way longer to push the plane out the door than it would have taken Cessna or Embraer. And an operator of the first-generation plane at NBAA 2022 gave the airplane low marks. (I wrote a review of the plane in 2016.) The airplane is fueled from a single point in the tail, which requires a ladder, and can take nearly 30 minutes for a line guy (this desirable job working in the cold or heat is almost always done by those who identify as “men”) to fill. During this time there will be periodic overflows that will cover the line guy in Jet A. When finished, the plane was never able to hold the advertised maximum capacity. “We were always 100 lbs. light.” The lav is externally service, but in a non-standard way that results in some bad outcomes. “Ten percent of the Gen 1 airplanes went off the runway,” noted the operator. “They’ve maybe fixed that in the newer ones by limiting nosewheel travel depending on speed.”

The plane itself did not end up having way better specs or a lower price than the very light jet/light jet competition. Honda announced a variety of Gen 3 features at NBAA. There is an extra fuel tank under the tail, which increases the ability to accept fuel, extends range slightly. A light next to the fuel filler comes on when the massive overflow spray is imminent:

The cockpit is more or less unchanged. It is a clean Garmin G3000, with no overhead panel and a general lack of clutter:

What will be new in the cockpit are autothrottles and a big button for the amazing Garmin Autoland system.

Performance:

How many Bidies for this wonderful device? About $7 million, which sadly means that all of Honda’s manufacturing and engineering expertise aren’t doing anything to bring the price of new aircraft down (it’s cheaper than the Embraer Phenom 300, but not if you adjust for size, seats, range, etc. (and the per-hour operating cost may be similar); it is more expensive than the Embraer Phenom 100 and Cessna M2 jets and provides some additional performance and cabin size).

Related:

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What kind of economic advice is Joe Biden getting?

by philg

Joe Biden’s economic policy seems to follow the same logic as that used by my 88-year-old mom’s circle of friends. These women are generally innumerate, despite having enjoyed elite educations, because they took their last math class in high school and, as stay-at-home wives, could enjoy afternoons at the theater rather than reviewing accounting reports or doing the other tedious stuff with numbers that is required to earn money. They believe that the U.S. has an infinite supply of wealth, partly because Asians are inferior to Americans in creativity and, therefore, cannot truly compete with us. Due to the fact that our wealth is infinite, there shouldn’t be any limit to what the government can spend. Any spending program that might help at least one American, therefore, should be approved.

Joe Biden seems to hold similar beliefs, but what about the professional economists who have been advising him on his Inflationary Journey? Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, must be one of the world’s leading experts on macroeconomics, right? Wikipedia says that his/her/zir/their degrees are in “politics” and law. I.e., there was no formal training in economics behind “Fed’s Powell says high inflation temporary, will ‘wane’” (AP, June 2021).

The Chair of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisors is Cecilia Rouse. In May 2021, she characterized inflation as “transitory” and “temporary” (Reuters). Here she is in June 2021 doubling down:

And then in December 2021… “Top Biden Economist: ‘I Really Do Believe’ Inflation Will Ease” (Bloomberg):

“As supply chains ease, as people get back to work, as we normalize our economy, the price pressures will start to ease,” said Rouse, who’s on leave from her post as a Princeton University economics and education professor.

Rouse called the coronavirus the biggest, ongoing threat to the U.S. economy — one that could upend Americans’ willingness to take jobs, travel and spend money on activities like dining out. It’s still too early to know the ways in which the new variant called omicron could affect the U.S. economy, she said.

(It is not politicians ordering lockdowns and school closures that are threats to the economy, but SARS-CoV-2 itself.)

She’s 58 years old so at least has the potential to not be senile. On the other hand, Cecilia Rouse seems to be a specialist in labor economics, a potentially irrelevant specialty given a country where the long-term trend is people preferring not to work:

Google Scholar shows this top advisor’s papers. A sampling:

  • “Orchestrating impartiality: The impact of blind auditions on female musicians” (possibly flawed; see also this critique)
  • “Diversity in the economics profession: A new attack on an old problem”
  • “Constrained after college: Student loans and early-career occupational choices”
  • “The Costs and Benefits of an Excellent Education for All of America’s Children” (Science says that the obvious answer is to close schools entirely for 12-18 months, particularly anywhere that Children of Color are to be found)

None of these seem to relate to the central questions of our day: Can the government borrow and/or print $31 trillion without causing hyperinflation? If everything that the government spends is indexed to inflation, can the government itself cause an inflation spiral?

Is it possible that the central planners are completely unqualified for the job that they’ve given themselves?

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Dumb question: Why didn’t the Fed raise interest rates by 3 percent once it realized its incompetence?

by philg

The Fed has raised its primary credit rate by 3 percent compared to the spring of 2022 (this chart doesn’t show today’s bump):

If the Fed recognized back in the spring of 2022 that low interest rates plus wild deficit spending was a toxic combination, thus leading to the 0.75 percent bump in June with forecast additional bumps, why didn’t it increase the rate to today’s level immediately? If you want to stop inflation, and convince markets that you’re serious about the effort, why keep lending money at an interest rate dramatically lower than the inflation rate?

The obvious answer is “Philip, you’re an idiot who took a few graduate level econ courses; Fed chair Jerome Powell is a brilliant macroeconomist who knows what he/she/ze/they is doing.” The problem with that answer is Wikipedia says that Mx. Powell has no formal training in economics. He/she/ze/they studied politics and then law. While it is still a safe bet that I don’t know anything about economics, it is also possible that Jerome Powell has no better insight into what will happen with inflation.”

I think that there is plenty of room for continued inflation in the U.S. economy. Now that higher mortgage rates make buying a house more expensive, landlords shouldn’t feel dramatic pressure to cut rental rates (though, presumably, they did get a little ahead of the market in the spring). There should still be steady demand driven by immigration and the resulting higher rents will ensure the continued misery of the working class that was forecast back in 2016 by a Harvard economist. After rent, cars are a big expense for Americans. A neighbor shopping for a Honda was told that it would be $6,000 over dealer cost and that he might have to wait a month. Those aren’t better terms that what I learned about in the spring of 2022 when getting an oil change for our beloved Odyssey. Let’s look at appliances. We recently priced a Sub-Zero refrigerator to replace our dying 42″-wide KitchenAid. The Sub-Z is plainly underpriced at $14,000+ (including sales tax and installation) because there is a one-year wait (in 2019 it was a 7-10-day wait). Why not buy another 42″-wide KitchenAid and then wait for that one to die? The cost would be closer to $12,000, but they are also out of stock, which means the correct price is higher.

Maybe the downturn in real estate occasioned by these higher interest rates actually will do enough damage to the economy to stop hyperinflation for 2023. But that leads us right back to the question above: Why didn’t the Fed do a full 3 percent raise back in June and stop hyperinflation perhaps 6 months earlier? (Presumably we’ll still have inflation of at least 2 percent, just not hyperinflation!)

Related:

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Gehry-designed Fondation Louis Vuitton museum

by philg

A heroic reader suggested that we visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton in the Bois de Boulogne and was kind enough to pick us up and drive us there. Frank Gehry designed the building in 2006 when he was 77 years old. In other words, he did a few sketches and let a platoon of nameless architects and engineers figure out how to make it happen. Some of the sketches are shown in the museum and they look like a 3-year-old’s art.

The museum is a triumph of form over function. There’s a building and then a bunch of decorative glass is attached to the exterior, supported by a frame. The galleries inside are chopped up so that a recent show was spread over 10 separate galleries for no reason other than each gallery is fairly small. A prefab aircraft hangar would actually work better for the required function of designing an art exhibit.

The exterior is striking and includes a staircase waterfall.

The museum lacks a permanent collection so it is all-special-exhibitions-all-the-time. We visited during a visit comparing Claude Monet, whom most people have heard of, and Joan Mitchell, who never met Monet and whose name is unfamiliar even to art nerds.

From the signage I learned that Monet cranked out 400 paintings from 1900 through 1926 and 300 of them were of water lilies at Giverny. Here’s a triptych that had been scattered to three different museums in the U.S., reassembled on a long wall:

What does Joan Mitchell’s work look like?

Tickets are timed, but the museum was jammed.

Note that a fair number of folks had elected to stay safe from an aerosol virus by voluntarily entering a crowded indoor public environment while wearing surgical and cloth masks. There aren’t enough books and movies featuring Monet’s art so it was impossible to stay home and #StopTheSpread?

My favorite part of the building, though unlikely to be of much use in typical Paris weather, was the series of outdoor terraces.

(Note the Heroes of Faucism, wearing their masks while outdoors.)

When you leave the museum, whose restaurant gets terrible reviews on Google Maps, you’re in the Jardin d’acclimatation:

From 1877 until 1912, the Jardin Zoologique d’Acclimatation was converted to l’Acclimatation Anthropologique. In mid-colonialism, the curiosity of Parisians was attracted to the customs and lifestyles of foreign peoples. Nubians, Bushmen, Zulus, and many other African peoples were “exhibited” in a human zoo. The exhibitions were a huge success. The number of visitors to the Jardin doubled, reaching the million mark.

The Fondation LV is not part of the Paris Museum Pass system and the trip out to the park might not be cheap or simple. I give this place a thumbs-up on a beautiful day and a thumbs-down if the weather is less than perfect.

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Should Palm Beach be renamed Elba?

by philg

One powerful obsession has been that a former leader will break out from his island exile and become an absolute ruler once again. I’m talking, of course, about Napoleon on Elba, which was indeed followed by a brief return to power (he was 46 years old at the time).

We face a somewhat analogous situation today. Donald Trump is mostly confined to the island of Palm Beach. It is common for people to express fears regarding the potential for Trump to return to power starting in January 2025 (when Trump will be a little older than 46…).

“Palm Beach” is frequently confused with the city directly across from the ritzy island (where a teardown can cost $110 million). The city has the airport, the office buildings, most of the housing (12X the population), the government offices for “Palm Beach County”, etc. It has the confusing name of “West Palm Beach”.

What about renaming the island that is home to the exiled ruler “Elba” and then we can just use “Palm Beach” to refer to the city and the region?

Speaking of Palm Beach County, here’s a 1974 newspaper article at the county’s massive Japanese garden.

He was one of the richest people in Palm Beach County with $1.5 million, mostly in land worth $10,000 per acre.

What does the garden look like? The Orange One seems to like it:

Cousin Itt’s cousin was inside the tea room exhibit (Halloween weekend):

There are some beautiful stone lanterns:

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Twitter won’t suspend a politician who lies to get money?

by philg

Twitter banned Marjorie Taylor Greene for saying, without seeking cash, that the COVID-19 “vaccine” did not prevent infection and transmission (CNN). Let’s look at a politician who asks for money and supports his request by saying that he’s 1% behind in the polls:

Charlie Crist and ActBlue wouldn’t lie to us, surely? The FiveThirtyEight summary of the polls, captured on November 1:

The $5 sought doesn’t seem as though it would help bridge the 8-14-point gap in the polls. More likely, Crist would need the miraculous help of Christ in order for Science (with the explicit promise of mask orders, forced vaccination, school closures, and lockdowns) to prevail.

Why aren’t Crist and ActBlue deplatformed for spreading misinformation, particularly since they seem to be spreading misinformation in order to get money.

Maybe the argument is that Representative Greene was putting lives at risk spreading misinformation about COVID-19 by falsely claiming that the pandemic-ending vaccines would not end the pandemic. But people with less money live shorter lives. Every person who donates to Charlie Crist can expect to live a slightly shorter life as a result. Maybe the sacrifice of lives would be worth it in order to avoid the Nakba of a second DeSantis term. But if there is no practical chance of a Crist victory, lives will be shortened without any compensating benefit.

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Is the rainbow flag the mezuzah for Democrats?

by philg

I hope that everyone has plans in place for Trans Awareness Month, which starts today. We recently went through JFK Terminal 5, which appears on casual inspection to be free of 2SLGBTQQIA+ messaging, but our 7-year-old noticed a much-too-small-for-the-building rainbow flag up high in a corner:

There was no explanation for the flag’s presence and, given its mounting point 10′ above any practical signage, most passengers probably wouldn’t have noticed it. But the flag kept the $550 million (pre-Biden; completed in 2008) building from being in an unsanctified state. I’m think that the rainbow flag might be the mezuzah for Democrats.

Loosely related….

If we click through on the above, we learn

This flag combines 40 different flags from LGBTQIA+ communities around the world, including: Abrosexual, Aceflux, Agender, Ambiamorous, Androgynous, Aroace, Aroflux, Aromantic, Asexual, Bigender, Bisexual, Demifluid, Demigender, Demigirl, Demiromantic, Demisexual, Gay/MLM/Vinician, Genderfluid, Genderflux, Genderqueer, Gender questioning, Graysexual, Intersex, Lesbian, Maverique, Neutrois, Nonbinary, Omnisexual, Pangender, Pansexual, Polyamorous, Polysexual, Transgender, Trigender, Two Spirit, Progress Pride, Queer, Unlabeled.

This leads to the question of how “Unlabeled” people can form a “community”. The Unlabeled will label themselves Unlabeled to join the Unlabeled Community? Don’t they then become Labeled due to the Unlabeled label?

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