Enslaved to an Individualist View of Social Change I note with some interest the debate over whether it is ethically necessary to refer to slaveholders as “enslavers” in order to convey our disapproval over their actions. The obsessive use of the enslaving terminology in The Half Has Never Been Told (Baptist) bothered me at the […]
They are monsters The President and his GOP majorities in Congress are monsters. As one commentator on NPR put it yesterday afternoon, the President’s default mode is to toss an armed hand grenade into a room in order to create chaos. He can then pick out the most vulnerable, and use that leverage to enter […]
By Steve Roth (originally published at Evonomics) How Amazon’s Accounting Makes Rich People’s Income Invisible Image you’re Jeff Bezos, circa 1998. You’re building a company (Amazon) that stands to make you and your compatriots vastly rich. But looking forward, you see a problem: if your company makes profits, it will have to pay taxes on […]
IMF Fiscal Monitor: Progressive Taxation Need Not Deter Growth The latest from the IMF is a must read for progressives even if it runs contrary to the nonsense coming out of the White House: At the global level, inequality has declined substantially over the past three decades, but within national boundaries, the picture is mixed: […]
Does Kevin Hassett Understand Transfer Pricing? Howard Gleckman does: It is true that bringing US corporate rates in line with our trading partners may reduce incentives for improper transfer pricing. But there is a flaw in Hassett’s argument: While these practices are aimed at reducing tax lability, they do not represent real economic activity. And […]
The Times Handles the Trump Tax Cut Framework with Kid Gloves There’s been a good bit written about the Trump tax cut framework released just over a week ago. Most of it points out, as I have here and here, the absurdity of the claims by Trump and GOP spokespeople that this isn’t a tax […]
The Tax-Cut Framework Won’t Create Jobs and Digs the Inequality Ditch even Deeper Marcus Ryu, a self-described Silicon Valley entrepreneur who created, with others, a company now worth $5 billion on the New York Stock Exchange, argues in today’s Op-Ed section of the New York Times that “Tax Cuts Won’t Create Jobs“, NY Times (Oct. […]
Part of Patriotism is Paying Taxes As Americans, we pay taxes to allow our government to support important activities that we as individuals or individual businesses either can’t do at all or can’t do as successfully. Both individuals and businesses benefit from government, so that paying taxes is a wonderful exercise in patriotism. For individuals, […]
Right Wing Propaganda Tank IPI Likes the Trump Tax-Cuts-for-the-Rich “framework” There’s no surprise here. The Institute for Policy Innovation (IPI) is a right-wing “think” (i.e., propaganda) tank that has consistently argued for tax policies that favor multinational corporations and the wealthy. So IPI has a posting on Sept 29 that is supportive of the so-called “tax reform […]
by ProGrowthLiberal (originally published at Econospeak) Trump’s Inadequate Response to Hurricane Maria and the Posse Comitatus Act Credit to Matthew Yglesias for his discussion of the incompetence of Donald Trump as well as the excuses for it from his defenders including: Officials have also cited the Posse Comitatus Act as a complicating factor that helps explain why […]