Jerry Bowyer still has no clue as to the concept of real wealth per capita: According to the Federal Reserve’s “Flow of Funds” report, released last month, the net worth of the American household (measured as assets minus liabilities) stands at a robust $51 trillion – yes, that’s trillion with a “T.” This isn’t just […]

From the Washington Post: Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist at the center of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation, pleaded guilty yesterday to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials in a deal that requires him to provide evidence about members of Congress. In a companion analysis, two Post reporters (Birnbaum and Balz) do […]

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to actually say a few nice things about op-eds from NRO Financial – when warranted. And lo and behold John Tamny tries to make this easy for me. He starts off with: A recent article in USA Today lamented the lack of investor returns in 2005 outside of […]

I’d like to start the New Year with a prediction related to the following parlor game. Which will occur first: (a) our Social Security Trust Fund reserve will reach its peak; or (b) China will become the world’s largest economy? My prediction is (b). I call this a parlor game because discussions of which nation […]

Menzie Chinn provides a link to an interesting analysis from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in his post entitled Properties of Some Labor Market Indicators. Dr. Chinn’s post is an interesting read in itself but take a peek at chart 1 of the BLS paper, which compares the payroll survey and the “adjusted household survey”. […]

While macroeconomists spend a lot of effort trying to understand the volatility of output, we spend less time worrying about whether output should be measured by real GDP or real GNP. As we discussed here, the difference between GNP and GDP (known as net income from abroad) is quite modest for the U.S. If we […]

As the GOP argues that Congress is cutting spending to reduce the deficit, Robert Greenstein, Joel Friedman, and Aviva Aron-Dine present evidence that demonstrate: (1) their actions will actually increase the deficit and (2) their actions are just another example of reverse Robin Hood-ism: Sometime early next year, the House of Representatives is expected to […]

Kash treats us to a recent analysis of corporate taxation from the CBO with page 9 addressing transfer pricing: Internal transfer pricing provides another means for shifting profits out of high-tax countries. Multinational corporations engage in a substantial amount of international trade between affiliated companies located in different countries. A multinational firm may try to […]

PGL’s insightful post about corporate taxation and Ireland’s economic growth reminded me of something I read recently from the CBO. In November they published a very interesting report entitled “Corporate Income Tax Rates: International Comparisons.” A few weeks ago I noted the surprising fact that Ireland actually taxes capital income at a much higher rate […]

A couple of weeks ago Kash challenged a claim that Ireland’s growth was due to low taxation of capital income: Ireland has indeed been the fastest growing economy in the OECD (that’s the club of the world’s richest countries). But it has HIGH taxes on capital, not low ones. Since I’m Irish, I have been […]