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'The Great American Tax Debate' Misses the Point
Tweet Share on Facebook September 19, 2012 CommentEileen Appelbaum is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
Casting the tax debate as an argument in which liberals want to use the tax system to reduce income inequality after the fact by taxing the wealthy at higher rates than middle and lower income classes, while conservatives favor flat taxes that tax rich and poor at the same rate, misses the main point. Deregulation of the financial system over the last 35 years and tax preferences that benefit corporations and wealthy individuals have done much to increase the before-tax incomes of the top 1 percent. An army of tax accountants, many of them recruited from the IRS, has figured out how to push the envelope on tax avoidance for the big businesses and wealthy individuals that can afford their high-priced services. For these folks, tax accounting has been transformed from a service that makes sure that required taxes are paid to a profit center that manipulates the tax code to generate huge returns at the expense of the tax-paying public. Increasingly what we see in the United States is the growing importance of tax-payer financed capitalism.
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Obama Supporters Subsidize Romney Supporters With Their Taxes
Tweet Share on Facebook September 18, 2012 CommentIn a video posted yesterday, Mitt Romney slammed the people who support President Obama, saying they are most likely "dependent on government." Romney's comments were recorded as he spoke at to an exclusive group of donors at a private meeting. Obama's fans think of themselves as "victims," he said. They believe they are "entitled to healthcare, to food, to housing, to you name it." He added, "My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."
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Eliminate the Marriage Tax Penalty
Tweet Share on Facebook September 18, 2012 CommentJason Fichtner is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Jacob Feldman is a research analyst at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. They are the authors of a new study, "Taxing Marriage: Microeconomic Behavioral Responses to the Marriage Penalty and Reforms for the 21st Century."
Some sociologists claim that marriage improves the lives of couples and their children, yet the number of married adults in the United States has declined by more than 20 percentage points since 1960. While the reasons for this decline vary, for many, the U.S. tax code discourages marriage. Even among households with equal earnings, the tax code penalizes some marriages while others receive a bonus. Bonuses predominantly occur among married single-earner households while marriage penalties mostly occur among two-earner couples. However, marriage penalties are growing as more women are employed. These penalties could be eliminated by allowing people to choose between filing taxes jointly with their spouses or as single-earners. The existence of marriage penalties and bonuses create three socially undesirable consequences.
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Egypt Needs a Budget Fix
Tweet Share on Facebook September 17, 2012 CommentRobert Hahn is director of economics at the Smith School, University of Oxford and chief economist at the Legatum Institute. Peter Passell is a senior fellow at the Milken Institute and the economics editor of the Legatum Institute's Democracy Lab. They are cofounders of Regulation2point0.org, a web portal on regulatory policy.
After an indecisive moment last week, Egypt's new government has chosen to defend its relationship with the West, denouncing anti-American violence rather than basking in the support of the Arab street. But this is not the last time President Mohamed Morsi will be forced to make a tough political call this fall—in particular, he will have to decide where he stands on harsh fixes for the budget mess that has been building since the Arab spring began.
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With U.S., European Monetary Easing Announcements, Is China Next?
Tweet Share on Facebook September 17, 2012 CommentJames Rickards is a hedge fund manager in New York City and the author of Currency Wars: The Making of the Next Global Crisis from Portfolio/Penguin. Follow him on Twitter at @JamesGRickards.
The past three weeks have been the most momentous of the year for financial markets.
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Private Equity Firms Actually Hate Competition
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2012 CommentDavid Brodwin is a cofounder and board member of American Sustainable Business Council. Follow him on Twitter at @davidbrodwin.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks." So wrote William Shakespeare, cautioning us to question those who proclaim their views too stridently. These days, Shakespeare's warning applies to leading private equity firms including Bain Capital, KKR, and Blackstone.
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Congress Must Tackle Regulatory and Tax Reform
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2012 CommentRobert Luddy is the president of CaptiveAire, and a Job Creators Alliance member.
Now that Congress is back in session, there is a renewed focus on the so-called "fiscal cliff" that's quickly approaching at the end of this calendar year. There has been substantial media coverage and attention surrounding the uncertainty that this looming cliff has been causing in the business community. Not knowing for sure whether tax rates will be the same, somewhat higher, or significantly higher has had a paralyzing effect on business investment, growth, and hiring.
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Paul Ryan's Plan Brings Choice to Medicare
Tweet Share on Facebook September 14, 2012 CommentRobert G. Hansen is senior associate dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Medicare reform has again risen to the forefront of policy discussion. Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan has proposed a "premium support" plan for Medicare which, along with other options, deserves serious review. Premium support is similar to defined contribution retirement plans, where an employer contributes a fixed amount to employees who can invest the money in a variety of mutual funds. My employer offers employees the choice of TIAA-CREF, Fidelity, and Calvert. Premium support is also similar to the current Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage, to the way that under-65 individuals will buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, and to voucher plans in education.
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Better Understanding the Monthly Jobs Reports
Tweet Share on Facebook September 13, 2012 CommentChad Stone is chief economist at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
The government's monthly jobs report contains some of the most timely and important indicators of how the economy is doing. When you combine the tepid economic recovery with a presidential election, you can easily understand why last Friday's jobs report received so much attention and why the upcoming October and November reports will get at least as much.
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The Serious Cost of a Slow Economic Recovery
Tweet Share on Facebook September 11, 2012 CommentKeith Hall is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The weakest economic recovery on record seems to be slowing down. Job creation, tepid at best over the past three years, has now fallen back to just 87,000 per month since March. Just 58.3 percent of us have work of any sort, a range we hadn't seen before this recession since the early 1980s, when less than half of women in the United States held a job. The Federal Reserve has been clearly signaling their impatience with the slow recovery and more Fed action may be forthcoming.
