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Apple CEO Tim Cook's Corporate Tax Idea Would Increase Offshoring of Jobs
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2013 CommentEileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
A "territorial" tax system – in which overseas profits of U.S. corporations would be lightly taxed in the U.S. or not taxed at all – is likely to be the top tax reform proposal advocated by Apple CEO Tim Cook when he testifies before the Senate on Tuesday.
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The Federal Reserve Ignores Its Own Role in the Financial Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2013 CommentSteven Horwitz is a Mercatus Center Affiliated Senior Scholar and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Economics and department chair at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY.
Since the financial meltdown in 2008, the Federal Reserve's range of powers have expanded, as have the kinds of financial institutions it monitors and regulates. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is now saying that the Fed's oversight has expanded beyond strictly financial institutions to wide swaths of the economy that might, in his words, provide evidence of "emerging vulnerabilities."
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The Problems With the Senate's Newest Farm Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook May 20, 2013 CommentPete Sepp is Executive Vice President for the 362,000-member National Taxpayers Union (ntu.org), a nonpartisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and limited government at all levels.
Sooey! That old-fashioned farmer's call, meant to summon hogs to the trough, is also an appropriate warning signal for taxpayers and consumers, as Washington returns with a vengeance to its fiscally woeful work on a Farm Bill. This legislation, formally called the "Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act of 2013" in the U.S. Senate, is actually about much more than farming. In addition to traditional crop-related policies, incarnations of the bill have also contained a mishmash of subsidies for agribusinesses' advertising, payouts for nutrition programs and even costly alternative energy schemes.
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U.S. Trade Agreements Threaten Public Health and Freedom
Tweet Share on Facebook May 17, 2013 CommentDavid Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
Let's face it: trade agreements bore most people.
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Facts Show Little SNAP Food Stamp Fraud or Abuse
Tweet Share on Facebook May 16, 2013 CommentChad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The House and Senate agriculture committees are holding hearings this week on reauthorizing SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as Food Stamps). We'll hear claims from some quarters that "waste, fraud, and abuse" and "explosive" growth in enrollment and benefit costs have produced a program bloated well beyond what's needed to serve the truly needy.
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Reducing Unemployment Is More Important Than Reducing the Budget Deficit
Tweet Share on Facebook May 16, 2013 CommentKenneth P. Thomas is professor of Political Science and fellow in the Center for International Studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. He is the author of "Competing for Capital: Europe and North America in a Global Era" and "Investment Incentives and the Global Competition for Capital." He blogs at Middle Class Political Economist.
On May 14, the Congressional Budget Office revised its deficit projection for fiscal year 2013 (which ends September 30) downward by $200 billion from its February estimate. Instead of an $845 billion shortfall, the new estimate is for only a $642 billion deficit, down from $1.1 trillion in 2012 and only 4 percent of gross domestic product.
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How to Fix the Research and Development Tax Credit
Tweet Share on Facebook May 16, 2013 CommentNirupama Rao is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at New York University's Wagner School. Stan Veuger is an economist at the American Enterprise Institute.
Oh, the wonders of duct tape! Isn’t it a practically ideal solution for solving minor leakages, temporarily? If that's the only thing you do, using duct tape all the time would be utterly justified.
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China, Gas Prices and Weak American Growth
Tweet Share on Facebook May 15, 2013 CommentGross Domestic Product in the United States expanded by 2.5 percent in the first quarter of 2013 over the previous quarter. In a case of apparent cheerleading, when the Bureau of Economic Analysis reported the latest number, the Wall St. Journal said it was an indication that the U.S. economy "perked up" in the first quarter.
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Lindsey Graham Advocates Wasteful MOX Spending in South Carolina
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2013 CommentRyan Alexander is the president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Ever wonder why the federal budget is so hard to tame? Sure, there are philosophical differences, with conservatives pushing for reductions in spending and progressives pushing for more revenues. But ideological lines often get blurred when specific programs and policies come under review, and our policymakers end up working harder to protect spending in their own backyards than on solving national budget troubles.
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Student Loan Debt Horror Stories and the Economic Recovery
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2013 CommentJim Lardner is the communications director at Americans for Financial Reform, a coalition of more than 250 civil rights, consumer, labor, business, investor and other groups working for a strong, stable and ethical financial system.
In the anything-goes financial world of the early 21st century, student lenders, like mortgage lenders, convinced millions of Americans to take on heavier and costlier debt than they could handle or understand. Now the scary consequences are coming back to haunt us as an economy and a society.
