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. […]
Another Right Wing Propaganda Tank Piles On Tax Complexity Bandwagon
Is the Road to Hell Paved with Pareto Improvements?
In a large multiplayer prisoner’s dilemma, any change in any one individual’s strategy doesn’t affect anyone else, so a player can know that defection will be a Pareto improvement. We might say that the problem of social evil is that the road to hell is paved with Pareto improvements. — Ted Poston, “Social Evil,” Oxford […]
New OECD tax agreement improves transparency — but the US doesn’t sign and the US press won’t tell you UPDATED
by Kenneth Thomas New OECD tax agreement improves transparency — but the US doesn’t sign and the US press won’t tell you UPDATED Last week 31 countries signed a new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) agreement providing for country-by-country corporate information reporting and the automatic exchange of tax info between countries under the […]
Should simplicity be a primary goal of tax reform?
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 […]
Consumer Expenditures Survey: incomes rose sharply from June 2014-June 2015
by New Deal democrat Consumer Expenditures Survey: incomes rose sharply from June 2014-June 2015 A major piece of data came out last week that has been totally unreported in the media and econoblogosphere: the Consumer Expenditures Survey (CES) for June 2014- June 2015. This is the first CES report to include the period of rapidly […]
The US suicide rate has increased markedly over the past 8 years
The US suicide rate has increased dramatically (via Kevin Drum whose commentary is excellent as usual) I have two thoughts about possible causes One hand gun ownership. I know the rate of gun ownership has declined (always explained by the alleged decline in hunting). It is rare for people to kill themselves with rifles. I […]
Breakthrough in Kansas-Missouri Border War
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 […]
Pet Peeve: An America that Sees Only Itself
by Peter Dorman (from Econospeak) Pet Peeve: An America that Sees Only Itself This is a small but typical example: the New York Times today ran a story about frictions in the switch to embedded-chip credit cards. The process has been bumpy, and retailers think the banks and payment processors have been exploiting them, while […]
Bear with me, AB readers. No pun intended. (OK, well sort of a pun intended.)
Regular AB readers know that from time to time I post links to web pages concerning animal welfare matters, including special-event donation request links, and so here’s another one, which I received in an email this afternoon. And here’s the sort-0f pun intended.