Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

The endowment effect and the taxation of wealth As you may recall, I am reading the histories of a number of past Republics which have had various levels of success. Without getting too far ahead of myself, it appears that one constant is that, once plutocratic oligarchies are entrenched, they will refuse to yield power or money, even to the point of destroying democratic or republican institutions.  In other words, David Frum‘s observation that “If...

How Long Will US Foreign Net Income Dark Matter Continue? The United States became a net foreign debtor in 1985. With current account deficits every year since then, net foreign indebtedness has steadily increased since and reached a reported total of -$10.56 trillion as of Sept. 30 this year, a substantial total. However, while many have long predicted that this mounting net foreign indebtedness would eventually lead to the US also having a net negative...

Via Naked Capitalism  comes an explanation of what income inequality looks like in the US.  It stands in contrast to the Bloomberg article pointed to by Yves in her introduction.  I pulled the quotes with a non-economic person in mind. THE WOLF STREET REPORT    transcript of podcast by Wolf Richter. Subprime doesn’t mean poor or uneducated. Subprime means having a credit score below 620… (Dan here) For example: Aggressive subprime lending went into...

The Current State of the U.S. Dairy Industry  I had to endure a discussion of the plight of American dairy farmers where Trump’s trade policies were somehow to blame. Stephanie Mercier confirmed some of the facts: According to data reported by the National Farmers Union (NFU), the average dairy farm has shown a positive net income only once in the last decade, in 2014. In 2018, the average value of production exceeded the total cost of producing each...

Bicycles and Wine Tariffs Jeffrey Frankel has a must read blog over at Econbrowser: The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy. Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said that international trade negotiators must continue to engage in successive rounds of liberalization, or else the open global trading system would be pulled down by...

A few thoughts while you are digesting Thanksgiving dinner There was a bunch of data released Wednesday, while yours truly was on the road along with everybody else. So here are a couple of thoughts for you as you sit there with your loosened belt figuring out what leftovers you’re going to be eating for the next few days . . . Initial jobless claims declined back to their recent baseline last week, so the four week average declined slightly, further...

by David Zetland  (originally published at One handed economist) Real decentralization is radical Visionaries, consultants and public speakers love to explain how they are embracing distribution over decentralization over centralization, using an image like this: Figure 1 What drives me crazy about this image is that it actually undersells true decentralization, i.e., when everyone is connected to everyone: Really decentralized (D) We already have...

The problem of plastic waste seems insurmountable. The good news is plastic recycling is on the rise and that is good for the circular economy. In parts 1, 2 and 3, we delved into the role of the waste management and recycling industry and how material sorting technologies can help. Part 4 is all about the increased use of recyclates as an essential part of properly closing the plastic cycle. [embedded content] The plastics industry is facing a great many...

by Eric Kramer Russ Roberts and The Rat Hole Fallacy Liberals believe that unregulated markets do not adequately supply public goods like roads, parks, and scientific research, and that government should use its taxing and spending powers to provide these goods.  Conservatives agree that markets fail to provide ideal quantities of public goods, but they emphasize that government spending is often wasteful and inefficient, and they argue that waste and...

There is an interesting discussion among smart, expert, thorough economists about wealth taxation. It is clearly stimulated by Warren’s proposal to tax wealth. Gabriel Zucman, Roger Farmer, and the much less famous but also super smart Noah Smith are debating the issues. I’m sure AngryBear readers can benefit from their discussion (to which I don’t link cause I just saw one tweet). I am also sure that it will be a waste of time to click “more” and...