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21. The Stupendous US Record Gets Suppressed

Author:
Amity Shlaes
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Social and Economic Research - CASE
Abstract:
In recent years, the consensus regarding the American past has slipped leftward, and then leftward again. No longer is American history a story of opportunity, or of military or domestic triumph. America’s has become, rather, a story of wrongs, racial and social. Today, any historical figure who failed at any time to support abolition, or, worse, took the Confederate side in the Civil War, must be expunged from history. Wrongs must be righted, and equality of result enforced. The equality campaign spills over into a less obvious field, one that might otherwise provide a useful check upon the non-empirical claims of the humanities: economics. In a discipline that once showcased the power of markets, an axiom is taking hold: equal incomes lead to general prosperity, and point toward utopia. Teachers, book club presidents, and especially professors withhold any evidence to the contrary. Universities lead the shift, and the population follows. Today, millennials, those born between 1982 and 2000, outnumber baby boomers by the millions, and polls suggest that they support redistribution specifically, and government action generally, more than their predecessors. A 2014 Reason/Rupe poll found 48 percent of millennials agreeing that government should “do more” to solve problems, whereas 37 percent said that government was doing “too many things.” A full 58 percent of the youngest of millennials, those 18-24 when surveyed, held a “positive” view of socialism, in dramatic contrast with their parents: only 23 percent of those aged 55 to 64 viewed socialism positively.
Topic:
Government, Markets, History, Economy, Economic Growth, Tax Systems, Free Trade, and Welfare
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

22. Wealth Concentration, Income Distribution, and Alternatives for the USA

Author:
Lance Taylor, Özlem Ömer, and Armon Rezai
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
US household wealth concentration is not likely to decline in response to fiscal interventions alone. Creation of an independent public wealth fund could lead to greater equality. Similarly, once-off tax/transfer packages or wage increases will not reduce income inequality significantly; on-going wage increases in excess of productivity growth would be needed. These results come from the accounting in a simulation model based on national income and financial data. The theory behind the model borrows from ideas that originated in Cambridge UK (especially from Luigi Pasinetti and Richard Goodwin).
Topic:
Inequality, Income Inequality, Tax Systems, Redistribution, and Wealth
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

23. Wealth Concentration, Income Distribution, and Alternatives for the USA

Author:
Lance Taylor, Özlem Ömer, and Armon Rezai
Publication Date:
09-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
US household wealth concentration is not likely to decline in response to fiscal interventions alone. Creation of an independent public wealth fund could lead to greater equality. Similarly, once-off tax/transfer packages or wage increases will not reduce income inequality significantly; on-going wage increases in excess of productivity growth would be needed. These results come from the accounting in a simulation model based on national income and financial data. The theory behind the model borrows from ideas that originated in Cambridge UK (especially from Luigi Pasinetti and Richard Goodwin).
Topic:
Inequality, Income Inequality, Tax Systems, Redistribution, and Wealth
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

24. The New York Times and American Tax Policy: Representing Citizens or Echoing Elites?

Author:
Daniel Chomsky
Publication Date:
04-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET)
Abstract:
A recent New York Times article observed that Americans want action to address inequality. 2016 presidential candidates from both parties also acknowledge that inequality is a pressing concern. But not one of the candidates has proposed to do anything meaningful about it, sharing wealthy Americans’ (understandable) opposition to any solution (Scheiber 2015). Perhaps nothing has been done because there is nothing to do about it. Some treat inequality as an inevitable or intractable feature of the global economy, or at least impossible to alter at acceptable cost (Cowen 2013). But inequality may be subject to political circumstances, and public policies including progressive taxes might reduce it without adversely affecting economic growth (Diamond and Saez 2011, Piketty 2014). It may be that Americans are just unwilling to support policies that would reduce inequality. Progressive taxation and other policies may reduce inequality. But policy reflects public preferences (Stimson, Mackuen, and Erikson 2002), and the American people just hate taxes. Martin Gilens (2012) effectively demonstrated that policy makers favor the wealthy over the majority when opinions diverge. Yet he accepted that the Bush tax cuts in the early 2000s reflected broad consensus opinion. Public opposition to taxes is seen as so powerful that even observers seeking programs to promote economic equality often abandon progressive taxes as a remedy (Kenworthy 2013).
Topic:
Race, Science and Technology, History, Culture, Ethics, Philosophy, Tax Systems, and Innovation
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

25. The Return on U.S. Direct Investment at Home and Abroad

Author:
Stephanie E. Curcuru and Charles Thomas
Publication Date:
10-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
A longstanding puzzle is that the United States is a net borrower from the rest of the world, yet continues to receive income on its external position. A large difference between the yields on direct investment at home and abroad is responsible and this paper examines potential explanations for this differential. We find that most of the differential disappears after one adjusts for the U.S. taxes owed by the parent on foreign earnings, the sovereign risk and sunk costs associated with investing abroad, and the age of foreign direct investment in the U.S.. Taken together, our results suggest most of the difference in yields should remain as long as there is a difference in tax rates between the United States and the countries in which U.S. firms invest, and U.S. investments are perceived as relatively safe. This has implications for the long-run sustainability of the U.S. current account deficit which will depend, in part, on the long-run behavior of this income.
Topic:
Economics, International Cooperation, Foreign Direct Investment, Tax Systems, and Investment
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

26. Does “Starve the Beast” Work?

Author:
Jerry H. Tempelman
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
Starve-the-beast proponents believe that in order to tame the beast, one needs to starve it, with the beast being an obvious reference to Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan depiction of an out-of-control state apparatus. The idea of tax reductions as a way to enforce discipline in government spending holds regardless of whether the nation is in the midst of an economic expansion or a recession. Following the recurrence of federal budget deficits that coincided with the enactment of federal tax cuts during 2001–2003, the starvethe-beast approach to fiscal policy that once was one of the underpinnings of the Reagan Revolution has become increasingly controversial. It is no longer mainly the political left that criticizes the starve-the-beast approach. Even some Republicans who once participated in the move to a smaller government during the Reagan presidency now criticize starve-the-beast thinking. Recently, William Niskanen (2005) has used statistical evidence to demonstrate that a decrease in taxes in a given year is followed by an increase in spending the next. Bruce Bartlett (2005) has proposed raising taxes, namely by introducing a value-added tax, presumably to prevent having to increase less efficient income taxes later.
Topic:
Budget, Economy, Tax Systems, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

27. Limiting Government: The Failure of “Starve the Beast”

Author:
William A. Niskanen
Publication Date:
10-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
For nearly 30 years, many Republicans have argued that the most effective way to control federal government spending is to “starve the beast” by reducing federal tax revenues. Moreover, two Nobel laureate economists, Milton Friedman and Gary Becker, have endorsed this argument. Friedman (2003) summarized this perspective as follows: How can we ever cut government down to size? I believe there is one and only one way: the way parents control spendthrift children, cutting their allowance. For governments, this means cutting taxes. Resulting deficits will be an effective—I would go so far as to say, the only effective—restraint on the spending propensities of the executive branch and the legislature. The public reaction will make that restraint effective. Becker and his colleagues Ed Lazear and Kevin Murphy (2003) described this effect as “the double benefit of tax cuts.” (Lazear is the recently appointed chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.) This argument has been effective in unifying the Republican Party in favor of reducing federal taxes, but at the cost of undermining the more traditional Republican concern about fiscal responsibility.
Topic:
Government, Economy, Tax Systems, Fiscal Policy, and Public Spending
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America

28. Taxing Business-to-Consumer Interstate Remote Retail Sales: Economics v. Jurisprudence in the Battle Over Tax Jurisdiction

Author:
Jeptha Nafziger
Publication Date:
05-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA), Princeton University
Abstract:
Retail sales and use taxes constitute a major component of state and local tax bases, providing critical funds for many public programs. The continued and increasing significance of nontaxed remote retail sales—interstate sales of goods by firms without sufficient presence in the destination jurisdiction—has put the long-term solvency of these tax bases and the public programs they fund in jeopardy. To a considerable extent, this problem is attributable to the oft-criticized “nexus” standard, a legal concept that limits a jurisdiction’s ability to tax remote transactions based on constitutional and stare decisis grounds. This paper offers a summary of the jurisprudence that has yielded the current nexus interpretation, an economic critique of its underlying principles, and several recommendations that could serve as policy alternatives to the status quo.
Topic:
Economics, Business, Tax Systems, Jurisdiction, Retail, Consumer Behavior, and Jurisprudence
Political Geography:
North America and United States of America