Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

Given the debate about returning to 60s level top marginal tax rate of 70% amazingly re-opened by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, I decided to actually read the Romer and Romer paper (pdf warning) which includes evidence suggesting an even higher rate is optimal. It is a masterpiece, which I won’t try to summarize. Read it. I do however, want to grind a very old ax related to “Schlock Economics”. I am thinking of the time that Robert Lucas totally humiliated...

I wrote a post about optimal taxation of capital income which (the web is sometimes wonderful) was made legible by the blessed [person who choses to remain anonymous]. But that was back in Obama center left 2008. I want to update given what I learned since then and given the appearance of socialist US citizens. First, what I should have known already is that the standard Judd 85/86 result that the optimal rate of taxation of capital income goes to zero...

Economic Growth and Climate Change: Mistaking an Output Variable for an Instrument When I first started arguing against the degrowthers, I thought they were a small, uninfluential fringe, important only because they had a sway over a portion of the left—what we might call the Naomi Klein left.  That was then.  Today degrowth is entering the mainstream, as can be seen by the latest David Roberts piece in Vox.  Roberts reviews a discussion between several...

by Joseph Joyce Global Networks and Financial Instability The ten-year anniversary of the global financial crisis has brought a range of analyses of the current stability of the financial system (see, for example, here). Most agree that the banking sector is more robust now due to increased capital, less leverage, more prudent balance sheets and better regulation. But systemic risk is an inherent feature of finance, and a disturbance in one area can...

Real Military Pay Donald Trump lies about everything including military pay: Trump Brags To Troops About A Fictional Giant Pay Raise He Got Them – The president told military personnel in Iraq that they’ll get a raise of over 10 percent, their first in a decade. But it’s 2.6 percent, and they get a hike every year. Dave Jamieson even notes that Bill Kristol has called out Trump on this whopper. But to me this is not the story. The real story is that...

Taxes Up 30%! A couple of months ago yours truly complained a bit about some fiscal dishonesty coming from Team Trump: He was basically lying to us hoping the public would be too stupid to realize that when the price level rose by 2.5% during the same period, we are talking about a 2% real decrease in tax revenues. But if we look at customs duties we do see an increase in a category that represents a very modest part of Federal tax collections. Back in...

(Dan here…lifted from Robert’s Stochastic Thoughts) Paul Ryan wouldn’t recognize a free market if one bit him Robert Costa and Mike DeBonis wrote an excellent retrospective on the career of Paul Ryan‘He was the future of the party’: Ryan’s farewell triggers debate about his legacy They are quite harsh, but not, I think, quite harsh enough. My comment: This is an excellent article. Tough but fair with no sugar coating but also no discourtesy. However,...

Neoliberalism as Structure and Ideology As someone who has looked at the world through a political economic lense for decades, I am restless with the “cultural turn”.  Once upon a time, it is said, the bad old vulgarians of the left believed that economic structure—the ownership of capital, the rules under which economies operate and the incentives these things generate—were everything and agency, meaning culture and consciousness, were nothing.  The...

Rah Rah Economics Greg Mankiw read Trumponics by Art Laffer and Stephen Moore so we don’t have to: When economists write, they can decide among three possible voices to convey their message. The choice is crucial, because it affects how readers receive their work. The first voice might be called the textbook authority. Here, economists act as ambassadors for their profession. They faithfully present the wide range of views professional economists hold,...

Real retail sales very positive; industrial production decent Real retail sales for November, together with the revisions for October, were very positive. While November sales, both nominally and adjusted for inflation, increased +0.2%, October sales were revised upward to a nominal +1.1%. On an inflation adjusted basis, that translates to +0.8%. As a result, as of November both real retail sales and real retail sales per capita set new records:...