After hinting at it for months, I can finally post the abstract of and a link to “Top Marginal Taxation and Economic Growth” by my student Santo Milasi The paper explores the relationship between statutory top marginal tax rates on personal income and long-run economic growth. While theoretical models of endogenous growth explicitly allow for […]

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? It began yesterday morning, with a Politico article by Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, and an accompanying video by Allen, suggesting improper actions of the IRS resulting from its inability to adequately handle the tsunami of exempt-organizations applications, coupled with the DOJ’s overly aggressive use of its subpoena powers […]

Everyone “knows” that the corporate income tax is a mess. Ask any company. They pay too much in corporate income tax, face rates higher than in any other OECD country, and are just following the law when they use tax havens to keep profits eternally deferred from taxation and to perform general sleight-of-hand.   Don’t […]

by Linda Beale Moving in the right direction: US, UK, Aussies to share tax info One of the (many) ways by which rich, sophisticated taxpayers who are also ultra-greedy have managed to avoid paying their fair share of taxes is to move money offshore through trusts and “companies” set up in various no-tax/lo-tax, hi-sun jurisdictions […]

by Linda Beale Orrin Hatch on tax reform at the ABA–a predictable right-wing rant Orrin Hatch was the keynote speaker for the ABA Tax Section luncheon today in DC. Having never heard the man in person, I was surprised at the bumbling nature of his speech. He came across as an old man reciting a […]

Rjs sends a link filled note on the ongoing federal financial merry go round: It’s been a pretty slow week, with neither major monthly economic reports nor widespread kerfuffles in the blogosphere…as we figured, all the budget proposals floated earlier this year have gone nowhere, and it now appears that the republicans wont negotiate on […]

Via Holly, I learned of this cool site called: Sidewalk Bubblegum.   The subtitle is: Cartoons about War, Racism, Sexism, Capitalism, Worker Rights, Human Rights, the Environment and Consumerism. I really thought this one gets it so perfect.  From 1996 no less!  

by Linda Beale Kevin Brady’s misleading Wall St. Journal op-ed Today’s Wall Street Journal (May 6) features an op-ed by Kevin Brady, right-wing Texas Republican who chairs the notorious “Joint Economic Committee” that has been a notorious producer of anti-tax propaganda-driven studies over the years of Republican hegemony in the House. See “Tax Reform Needs […]

Well, we AB types–readers and writers, alike–are familiar with John Maynard Keynes’s famous line that “In the long run, we are all dead.”  By which he either meant that economists, if they are to be useful, must try to predict and recommend short-term government policies that avoid or help end current, severe economic downturns, rather than […]

[T]he myth of the welfare state fostering a lazy citizenry just doesn’t hold water. A group of small nations (combined population: about 25 million) that came up with Linux, Skype, Ikea, H&M, and Lego — to say nothing of well-written television shows and mystery novels, innovative designers and brilliant architects from Alvar Aalto to Bjarke […]