Ron Wyden, Democratic Senator from Oregon who serves on the Senate Finance Committee and the Energy Committee, is generally considered a liberal, though with a mixed bag of positions that hardly qualify on all grounds. He is against the estate tax and favors lowering rates of capital gains taxes, neither of which makes sense, from […]

Yes, I’m still distracted (and under deadlines), but this is too good to pass up. Greg Mankiw sends us to “Wisdom from Michael Kinsley.” Which turns out to be this: There is no need to encourage risk-taking entrepreneurship with special tax breaks. Risk takers will take risks, and if the risks work out they shouldn’t […]

In the grand tradition of “pulled from comments,” I’m pulling this one—from Brad DeLong’s blog, in response to this post: …Manzi does not seem to have a consistent view of the concavity of instantaneous indirect utility functions. He argues that it would be absurd to consume the proceeds of the IPO of a successful startup […]

Will post-autistic economics review (who have, sadly imnvho, renamed themselves “real-world economic review) or The Economists’ [sic] Voice be the first to publish Robert Waldmann’s paper (a readable version of this blog post, which now also links to the paper)? Only Brad DeLong may know for certain. But you should read it now.

We keep hearing from the conservatives-libertarian that we need lower taxes on capital gains and dividends to encourage capital spending or investments. But when I look at the record of the impact of lower taxes on capital on investment I am hard pressed to see the benefits such lower taxes are suppose to deliver. The […]