Tag Archives: Taxes/regulation

(Dan here…lifted from an e-mail) I’m not registered with seeking alpha so I cannot read the whole article (I had sent), but what I read looks a lot like what I’ve written over the years.  Here are some statements which, working off memory, I have written posts about and which I think are supported by US macroeconomic data from the last 100 years: 1.  A tax cut generally gooses the economy in the short run (one – two years). That story is a Republican...

Flynn Bails, but Don’t Get Your Hopes Up I haven’t seen anything yet to convince me that the Putin-Trump collaboration was a big deal.  Ugly and unprincipled, sure, but politically consequential, probably not. A contrary view, expressed by Harry Litman in today’s New York Times, is that this is the beginning of the end for the Trumpster.  The evidence is accumulating that, between his election in November of last year and his inauguration on January 20...

[embedded content] Douglas Holz-Eakin balanced with Kimberly A. Clausing in the NYT.   Link in the picture.  To think that looting could be so calmly described with ballance.

I will ease the pain from this early morning (when GOP senate slashed corporate taxes) by escaping into fantasy, I mean theory, but I repeat myself. A key theoretical argument about taxing profits (due to Diamond and Mirrlees I think) is that the tax can be very very high if firms maximize profits, because maximizing 0.5X is just the same problem as maximizing X. This is a tax on pure profits (profits minus capital times the cost of capital) . The...

by Hale Stewart (originally published at Bonddad blog) Where’s Waldo, er, I Mean Inflation? Just a quick note: according to the 3, 6 and 12 month moving average of Y/Y percentage change in total and core PCE price indexes, there is little to no inflation to worry about.

by Biagio Bossone (Biagio BOSSONE is an Italian national,  currently advises the World Bank Group/IMF on financial sector development issues and technical assistance programs in several countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and Northern Africa and the Middle East. He is a consultant to private-sector organizations. He has taught at various universities in Italy.) (Warning…wonkish) Macroeconomic policy and exchange rate regimes  under...

I have been doing my typical reading on healthcare in the US and ran across several articles which seemingly come together at various points in the dialogue and are written by different authors. I decided to tie them together into a much wider and telling story. An interesting point being was made by MedPage Today’s Dr. Milton Packer on his blog, “people suffer and die because Payors (Healthcare Insurance) is cost effective.” He starts his discussion on...

A Race To Suppress Academic Freedom? The race is between the two nations competing for global dominance, the US and China.  This post is triggered by an unnamed editorial in today’s Washington Post (probably authored by Fred Hiatt) criticizing China for imposing ideological limits on Chinese universities.  Since the recent party congress, 40 universities have set up centers for studyiing Xi Jinping Thought.  14 universities have come under attack for...

The more people think about the Republican proposal to cut corporate taxes the worse it looks. Most people dismiss the argument that the benefits will trickle down to workers. Supporters’ argument is that reduced taxes on profits will cause increased investment which causes higher production and wages. There are strong arguments that the tax cut won’t cause firms to invest more. But aside from that, increased investment wouln’t cause (all) of the...

Proposing A Judicial Coup Via A Tax Bill On today’s Washington Post editorial page in a column entitled “Packing the courts like a turducken” (a deboned duck within a deboned chicken within a deboned turkey, or something like that, all for Thanksgiving, thank you), Ronald A. Klain not only reports on the actual push to pack courts with lots of young, incompetent extremists that is going on after Congress sat on judicial nominees by Obama in recent years,...