by Linda Beale Greg Mankiw attempting to justify carried interest Greg Mankiw wrote an op-ed in the Sunday Times Money section: Capital Gains, Ordinary Income and Shades of Gray, New York Times (Mar. 4, 2012). Mankiw notes the historical trend in the US to differentiate between capital gains and ordinary income regarding tax rates (though […]
Jon Hammond from econographia reseached the topic of contraceptive pills on the cost aspects involved with health insurance at my request. Instead of losing real data in the comments sections on previous posts, I am posting his findings here: Here are some of the empirical findings dealing with the insurance costs and cost-savings of coverage […]
Simon Johnson at Baseline Scenario writes in Making the United States More Like Greece: One of the big problems in Greece over the past decade or so is that the government was not honest with its data. Various people assisted in the matter – including Goldman Sachs with respect to some debt issues – but […]
by Rebecca WilderEuropean Daily Catch: Retail Sales Stabilizing? Today’s real retail sales gave the ECB and EU heads of state another reason to keep their fingers crossed for stability of the Euro area economy (.pdf of release). In January, volume adjusted retail sales increased 0.3% in the Euro area (EA) and broke a 4-month trend […]
by Peter Dorman(reposted from Econospeak with author”s permission) Wealth and Antisocial Behavior: Reverse Causality? There is quite a bit of buzz about this just-prepublished article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract: Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. […]
by Linda Beale It’s Almost April so Tax Tips Are Flowering You can tell when it is getting close to the April filing deadline for individual calendar-year taxpayers. All of the major tax firms release their “handy tax tips” to entice new clients for this tax season.The American Institute of CPA’s handy tips (released Mar.1, […]
Health Care Thoughts: Assaults on Nurses – Celebrity Edition by Tom aka Rusty Rustbelt(updated author to clarify) Assaults on nurses are a growing problem, with emergency department nurses in the most danger, followed closely by nurses caring for the mentally ill, substance abusers and elderly patients with dementia problems. It takes a Kennedy though to assault […]
by Linda Beale Comparisons of charitable giving among presidential candidates[Hat Tip to Tax Prof] Len Burman, now a professor at Syracuse but still affiliated with the Tax Policy Center, wrote a blurb for Forbes on Stingy Rich People, Santorum-Gingrich Edition, Forbes (Feb. 20, 2012), which was a followup to Caron’s comparison of presidential contender giving […]
by Linda Beale The Supreme Court’s corporate monsters–if money buys them “free speech” rights, can it help them avoid giving others human rights? The Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that corporations could intevene to influence elections–giving money and aide to their selected candidates. This was an inordinate broadening of corporate “personhood”, claimed to be […]