General Motors and a Chinese partner will spend $1 billion to build a third major factory in China, the Associated Press reports. The Wall Street Journal has a similar article.

George Will writes:

When the Republican House majority acts as though it has a mind — and a mandate — of its own, this is not Washington being "dysfunctional," it is the separation of powers functioning as the Founders intended...at least 219 of the 234 House Republicans won in November by margins larger than Obama's national margin.

Gallup is out with a new poll that says 53% of Democrats or Democrat-leaners have a positive view of socialism. Overall, 61% of Americans rate capitalism positively, while 39% rate socialism positively. That 39% figure is up from 36% in 2010. Small business, free enterprise, and entrepreneurs all poll at least 85% positive. Those terms do better than either capitalism, socialism, or the federal government, even among respondents who identify themselves as Democrats or Democrat-leaners or as liberals.

Says Gallup: "Practically, these data suggest that politicians seeking the most positive overall reaction from voters should choose to use the term 'free enterprise' rather than 'capitalism' in describing America's prevailing economic system and preface mentions of the word 'business' with the adjective 'small.'"

Retailer Costco announced plans to pay out a special $3 billion dividend this year. As Reuters reports, "Several companies have declared one-time cash payouts in recent days ahead of a likely increase in the dividend tax rate due to the so-called fiscal cliff."

Other companies doing similar things include Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands, Dillard's, Brown-Forman, and Wynn Resorts Ltd. Apple started paying a dividend, and Walmart "moved its planned dividend to late December from early January to help shareholders avoid any increase in the tax rate," the Reuters article says.

Via Politico Playbook comes the Bloomberg article reporting that on November 16 President Obama dropped by a White House meeting with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and "Blackstone Group LP President Tony James; Evercore Partners Inc. chairman Roger Altman; Robert Wolf, chief executive officer of 32 Advisors LLC; Centerbridge Capital Partners LLC managing principal Mark Gallogly; Glenn Hutchins, co-founder of Silver Lake Management LLC; Marc Lasry, founder of Avenue Capital Group LLC; Blair Effron, co-founder of Centerview Partners LLC; and Orin Kramer, general partner at Boston Provident Partners LP."

The meeting wasn't open to the press or the public and it wasn't on Mr. Obama's publicly announced schedule. The Bloomberg article says "many of the participants at the Nov. 16 meeting have been among Obama's staunchest supporters on Wall Street and top campaign donors."

"More than 70 percent of Harvard undergraduates voted in favor of a referendum" calling for Harvard's $30 billion endowment to divest from the fossil fuel industry, the Crimson reports.The Harvard administration says it is not considering any action on the issue. Similar movements are apparently under way at Syracuse, Swarthmore, and Amherst, the Crimson reports. The 70% figure is of the students who turned out to participate in the election, where turnout was about 3,600 of Harvard's 6,700 undergraduates.

Mark Kitto writes in Prospect magazine about why he is leaving China after 16 years:

I must stress that this indictment has nothing to do with the trajectory of my own China career, which went from metal trading to building a multi-million dollar magazine publishing business that was seized by the government in 2004, followed by a retreat to this mountain hideaway of Moganshan where my Chinese wife and I have built a small business centred on a coffee shop and three guest houses...That our current business could suffer the same fate as my magazines if the local government decides not to renew our short-term leases (for which we have to beg every three years) does, however, contribute to my decision not to remain in China.

Property rights are important.

Warren Buffett's latest New York Times op-ed calling for higher taxes on high earners has prompted some additional responses worth linking to, including one from the chairman of the Harvard economics department, Greg Mankiw; one from the Heritage Foundation, and one really fine one from Adam J. White at the Weekly Standard, who cites specific examples from a Buffett biography of cases in which, contrary to what Mr. Buffett claims, taxes did affect his investing decisions.

Stanford University economics professor John Taylor has an illuminating chart tracking federal spending as a percentage of GDP and proposing what he calls a "pro-growth budget." Somehow this spending piece of the federal budget problem seems to be getting a lot less attention in the press than the "tax the rich more" piece, though three noteworthy exceptions are a front-page New York Times article today that runs under the headline "Efforts To Curb Social Spending Face Resistance," a National Affairs article by David Armor and Sonia Sousa estimating that the government could save $167.8 billion a year simply by limiting spending on anti-poverty programs such as food stamps and Medicaid to families who earn no more than 130% of the federal poverty line, and a Wall Street Journal editorial today that says:

My column for this week responds to the "tax me more" crowd by suggesting adding a "voluntary additional tax" or VAT line to the federal tax return:

Call it the Rattner-Tilson-Scaramucci Tax, or the Buffett Tax. The instruction lines could read something like, "If you think carried interest is an egregious and indefensible loophole, please enter the additional tax you would owe on your own carried interest if it were taxed as ordinary income here. And if you think the capital gains rate should more than double, please enter the additional tax you would owe here, too. Remember, this means you think the politicians and their lobbyist friends can spend this money better than you can invest it, spend it, or give it away yourself, or that you think for some reason that the politicians are not going to spend this money but are really going to use it for debt reduction."

Michael Wolff has a provocative column in the Guardian on the similarity between what insider-trader hedge fund managers do — call up people and get them to surrender information that the people are obligated not to disclose — and what journalists do. The journalists can say they aren't seeking the information to make money but rather for the public good, but they are saying that while in some cases making six- or seven-figure salaries.

Further to the post here last week about how the insider trading case involving a trader at Steven Cohen's SAC Capital who paid a doctor to find out early whether a drug company's trial of an Alzheimer's drug was working, last year Andrew Grove, the former CEO of Intel, came out with an article in the journal Science suggesting that the FDA approval process be limited to safety, and that questions about drugs' efficacy be handled not by the FDA but rather by storing patients' responses to a drug "in a database, along with their medical histories. Patient identity would be protected by biometric identifiers, and the database would be open to qualified medical researchers as a 'commons.' The response of any patient or group of patients to a drug or treatment would be tracked and compared to those of others in the database who were treated in a different manner or not at all. These comparisons would provide insights into the factors that determine real-life efficacy: how individuals or subgroups respond to the drug. This would liberate drugs from the tyranny of the averages that characterize trial information today. The technology would facilitate such comparisons at incredible speeds and could quickly highlight negative results. As the patient population in the database grows and time passes, analysis of the data would also provide the information needed to conduct postmarketing studies and comparative effectiveness research."

The so-called Sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, is back with another op-ed piece in today's New York Times, this one suggesting, "a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that."

This one would have little appreciable impact on Mr. Buffett, because most of his wealth has come from unrealized capital gains that don't count as taxable income under the federal definition. It's just posturing.

It's also not clear whether by "taxable income" Mr. Buffett would include interest on municipal bonds or bonds from government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae. If that doesn't count, it's another way that his proposal is just showmanship.

From an article in the real estate section of today's Wall Street Journal:

A spate of proposed tax hikes is leading hundreds of wealthy French to consider leaving the country and putting their homes on the market, real-estate agents say....Several high-profile businessmen have already packed their bags. Former L'Oréal Chief Executive Lindsay Owen-Jones has taken up residence in Lugano, Switzerland. Belgium now counts Amaury de Sèze, who served as chairman of supermarket giant Carrefour, as a local. Nicolas Chanut, founder of French investment advisory firm Exane, moved to London.

It's only a matter of time before the French react by proposing some Reichsfluchsteuer-style exit tax.

There are a lot of things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving. Among the things I am thankful for are:

• The Constitution
• The Declaration of Independence
• The Pilgrims who came here from Europe and survived long enough, with their descendants, to start a country with the character that when my family decided to come here from Europe about 300 years after the Pilgrims did, this country took them in.
• The members of this FutureOfCapitalism community that enrich the site with their comments, ideas, questions, and subscriptions.
• The technology that makes it possible for me to communicate with thousands of people via a laptop computer connected wirelessly to the Internet while a few steps away I'm baking dessert for Thanksgiving.
• Family and friends.

Best wishes to everyone for a joyous holiday. Feel free to add your own lists of Thanksgiving thanks in the comments.