More Mankiw from MaxSpeaks

Max Sawicky finds two more nuggets in Prof. Mankiw’s books. Apparently, deficits do affect interest rates and the corporate income tax only hurts workers and customers of taxed corpotations, not the owners.

I agree with Mankiw on the former point; we’ll see if he changes his tune as part of his new job. As to the latter point, Mankiw only gets it partly right–when corporate income is taxed, the incidence is shared among all interested parties: shareholders/owners (who get less take home profits), workers (less are hired, wages may be lower), and customers (may pay higher prices and/or have fewer firms to choose from). I say Mankiw is partly right because, while a corporate income tax seems like it would only hurt the owners of a company, it also (but not only, as Mankiw’s quote insinuates) affects workers and customers.

AB