Conventional economics wittingly or unwittingly provides cover for the One Percent, by professing that “the market” operates benevolently on its own. Alex Marshall gives us an entertaining, thoughtful, and well-written antidote to this dangerous abstraction. . . . → Read More: It Takes Government to Create Markets: Alex Marshall’s The Surprising Design of Market Economies
|
||||
 Comments are closed  Book Review  Adam Smith, City economics, government, Henry George, infrastructure, land taxes, Markets, Monopoly, Tax policy, Trade policy Conventional economics wittingly or unwittingly provides cover for the One Percent, by professing that “the market” operates benevolently on its own. Alex Marshall gives us an entertaining, thoughtful, and well-written antidote to this dangerous abstraction. . . . → Read More: It Takes Government to Create Markets: Alex Marshall’s The Surprising Design of Market Economies Comments are closed Book Review Adam Smith, City economics, government, Henry George, infrastructure, land taxes, Markets, Monopoly, Tax policy, Trade policy As most of us know, sales taxes are “regressive.” That is, when sales taxes are “passed on,” they fall harder on poorer customers than on richer ones. That’s why many states exempt food and medicine, as does New York, (except for restaurant food). But sales taxes are also “passed back” onto retailers and service providers. It’s the “passed back” portion of sales taxes that do the most damage, because—unlike profit taxes—they take a bite from gross revenues before expenses. Sales taxes fall hardest on small, labor-intensive retailers, with high volume and low profit margins. . . . → Read More: Grover Norquist is Right to Oppose Internet Sales Taxes Comments are closed Essay Floyd Norris, Inequality, internet sales taxes, sales taxes, small business, Tax policy, VAT My son is a low-wage worker, a short-order cook. President Obama just called for an increase in the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $9.00 an hour. Yet he made no effort to save the “temporary stimulus” 2% payroll tax cut, which expired at the end of 2012. That will cost workers like my son about a week’s gross pay over a year—not insignificant when you’re barely scraping by. So what’s better for low-wage workers: an increase in the minimum wage or a decrease in payroll taxes? . . . → Read More: Raise the Minimum Wage or Cut Low-Wage Taxes? It’s a truism of pop Keynesian economics that consumer spending drives the economy; if spending slows in a recession; government must make up the difference. In reality, consumer spending merely signals what consumers want; producers may be unable or unwilling to deliver. Government spending may compensate—or make matters worse—depending on the type of spending and whether it’s financed by progressive taxes or by borrowing. . . . → Read More: The Keynesian Stimulus Spending Fallacy One comment - (Comments are closed) Essay Deficit spending, Inequality, Keynesian economics, Macroeconomics, Military spending, Tax policy As medieval dragons do, the dragon in the Beowulf epic sleeps on a pile of gold. With magic sword and shield, Beowulf kills the dragon and, mortally wounded, distributes the gold to his grateful people. Today’s multinational dragons sleep not on gold, but on hoards of cash. Meanwhile little firms—the true “job creators”—perish for want of cash. We don’t need to assault the dragons; we do need to tear away the tax privileges on which they depend. . . . → Read More: Capturing the Multinational Dragons’ Gold We are in the midst of a finance-led counterrevolution. The long standing effort to roll back New Deal reforms has moved from triumph to triumph. The foundation was laid via increasingly effective public relations efforts to sell the Ayn Randian world view that granting individuals unfettered freedom of action would produce only virtuous outcomes, since the talented would flourish and the rest would deservedly be left in the dust. In fact, societies that have moved strongly in that direction such as Pinochet’s Chile and Russia under Yeltsin, have seen plutocratic land grabs, declining standards of living (and even lifespans), and a rise in authoritarianism or (in the case of Colombia) organized crime. . . . → Read More: Yves Smith on The Finance-led Counterrevolution and the Rush to Destroy the Safety Net In the May 24 New York Review of Books, Paul Krugman writes, “The truth is that recovery would be almost ridiculously easy to achieve; all we need is to reverse the austerity policies of the past couple of years and temporarily boost spending.” He continues, “… The strong measures that would all go a long . . . → Read More: How to (Really) End This Depression: a Response to Paul Krugman 10 comments - (Comments are closed) Book Review, Essay Deficit spending, Inequality, Keynesian economics, Macroeconomics, National debt, Tax policy In Higher Taxes Wouldn’t End Some Deficits (Jan 20) the New York Times reported how a few state governors have timidly proposed small income tax increases. There’s a better alternative: undo the legal shackles that keep residents of towns or school districts from voting themselves higher property taxes. Property taxes are wealth taxes, intrinsically more . . . → Read More: To End Deficits, Allow Localities to Raise Property Taxes State and local officials propose drastic cuts in public services. There’s an alternative: restore the property tax. It’s the oldest wealth tax of all, the tax that financed Chinese civilization over 2000 years ago, the tax that until World War II financed most of government in the USA. The property tax? Our most hated tax? . . . → Read More: To Save Essential Public Services, Restore the Original Wealth Tax! |
||||