As long since noted by Krugman, for the monetary authority to be able to stimulate demand when the safe short term interest rate is almost exactly zero,  it has to be able to credibly pre-commit to causing high inflation, by keeping that interest rate extremely low in the future when  the economy has recovered  and […]

The quick and dirty rule of thumb is that the relationship between bond yields and the S&P 500 PE is one-to-one. That is, 100 basis point change in bond yields should cause about a 100 basis point change in the PE. Since WWII, the long term trend for earnings growth has been some 7%, or […]

For me, Profits Without Production equates to Profits sans Direct Labor Input. In most manufacture in the US today, Direct Labor Input is an extremely small ~10% of the Cost of Manufacturing which will vary up and down dependent upon the industry. (For the accountants and the purists, this does not include customary or legislative […]

by Linda Beale The importance of redistribution I have dedicated ataxingmatter to a concept I call “democratic egalitarianism”–the idea that individuals flourish best in a free society that allows them to choose democratically the rules that govern their lives, with the understanding that the institutions must be sustainable and must allow all individuals to flourish, […]

Are the most difficult to bear in life. I would be lost. http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2013/06/the-saddest-news.html

by Linda Beale The Tax Code Ain’t Nearly So Big as Often Claimed I can’t resist pointing readers to tax professor Jim Maule’s excellent post chastising everybody–from those obviously slanted propaganda-tank tax gurus Chris Edwards (you all know him as the purported tax expert from the right-wing pseudo-libertarian Cato Institute, whose other associate, Dan Mitchell, […]

I’m getting to this a little late due to extensive travel (in South Africa now), but David Cay Johnston has a nice writeup of a recent paper on inequality based on the World Top Incomes Database. The paper, by Facundo Alvaredo et al., is important because it largely refutes the idea that technological change is […]

by Linda Beale Going Dark–not just an SEC issue, when companies keep their tax classification secret Today’s Times includes an interesting piece by Floyd Norris about the problem of companies that are neither private nor public but have (or claim to have) few enough public investors that the SEC allows them to “go dark”–quit reporting […]