So Sanders and Clinton are arguing about soda taxes — Clinton for, as a way to raise money for good stuff while discouraging self-destructive behavior, Sanders against, because regressive. I have no illusions that rational argument will make much difference in the short run; we’re in that stage where anything Clinton supports is ipso facto […]
by Linda Beale Another Right Wing Propaganda Tank Piles On Tax Complexity Bandwagon As noted in my last post, part of the fanaticism that is surging in the current obstructionist Congress relates to taxes (quel surprise…). The JEC ran a hearing on Wednesday targeting “complexity” in the tax code as a source of humongous problems. […]
by Linda Beale Should simplicity be a primary goal of tax reform? I was at a housewarming party last Saturday and talked to quite a few people I didn’t know. One was an economics professor at a regional school. Naturally, economists and tax professors gravitate towards talk about the economy and tax policies, so it […]
by Kenneth Thomas Breakthrough in Kansas-Missouri Border War Via @goodjobsfirst, we learned Friday that Kansas Governor Sam Brownback had made a major response to Missouri’s proposed jobs truce in the Kansas City region. As regular readers may recall, studies have shown that more than $200 million has been spent moving jobs back and forth across […]
Linda is returning to blogging again. Welcome back. Dan by Linda Beale Finance Committee acts/doesn’t act on important Tax Court, Social Security, and HHS Appointments As the Senate Finance Committee continued work on its markup yesterday, it approved several important nominees for positions in the Social Security Administration and in the Tax Court, but […]
As for Clinton herself, her bandwagon-jumping nature is a big reason why so many people dislike her. But in this instance there was the additional element of dishonesty: she knew that Sanders rather than the editorial board members had it right about what Dodd-Frank provides. She had said so publicly, recently, in a statement in […]
By law the Annual Social Security Report is due by April 1. But as in every year for the last decade this deadline was missed and of course without explanation or excuse, leaving Social Security hobbyists like me whimpering. Luckily there are not a lot of SocSec fanboys and fangirls. It might be a club […]
Obviously, he would propose cutting his taxes if he were elected. Also there would be a Republican majority so they would be cut. But why did his campaign announce a huge tax cut proposal ? Trump is trying to present himself as a populist. The utter absurdity of this effort is at least doubled by […]
Which brings us to Snoopy, who has, for reasons I don’t fully understand, long been the emblem of the insurance giant MetLife. “At the end of 2014 the regulators designated MetLife, whose business extends far beyond individual life insurance, a systemically important financial institution. Other firms faced with this designation have tried to get out […]
It’s by Zachary Karabell, who heads a hedge fund and has authored a book. The article’s title is somewhat misleading, describing the less important of the two topics the piece discusses. ____ CORRECTION: This is from the comments thread: Kevin Meyer April 8, 2016 12:33 pm FWIW, Karabell does NOT ‘head’ or otherwise run a […]