The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Behavior, Paternalism, Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Nov 27th, 2011
Sort of an ironic title for the plan of Professor Frank, no? I call it the 6-6-6 plan — an across-the-board 6 percent national sales tax (on top of any existing state and local sales taxes) in effect from 6 p.m. on Thanksgiving to 6 a.m. on Black Friday. This plan would leave both stores [...]
Posted in Economic Illiteracy, Taxation on Nov 18th, 2011
Kevin Drum drums up an image that corporate taxes are low in America. Indeed he is right about that. But what he is NOT right about is whether corporate tax rates are high in America. Here he is: But whatever we do, don’t ever fall for the complaint that corporate tax rates in the U.S. [...]
Posted in Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Oct 12th, 2011
Let me accept the premise that when you raise taxes on people, not only do you not discourage work effort, but that you also encourage it. That is the folk view of many people new to economics. I can see why folks might think this – for them, they might have a “target” income in [...]
Posted in Taxation on Oct 11th, 2011
I used to be a dirty, greedy investment banker. Now I quit for all kinds of reasons, and my expected tax payments were not among them. For argument’s sake, let’s assume that my total compensation today would have been $1,000,000 had I remained doing what I was doing. Today, I am involved in the “ennobling” [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Taxation on Oct 7th, 2011
Continuing on with our short miniseries, let me ask a simple question for your reflection. First, recall the meme: the reason the rich should pay more in taxes is that they were only able to earn their income by hiring people that went to (taxpayer funded) public schools, employ people who drove on (taxpayer funded) [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Market Failures, Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Oct 6th, 2011
Let’s return to the original claim: the reason the rich should pay more in taxes is that they were only able to earn their income by hiring people that went to (taxpayer funded) public schools, employ people who drove on (taxpayer funded) public roads and otherwise could not do what they do were it not [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Taxation on Oct 5th, 2011
Continuing our slog through the minefield of the tax the rich meme – let us ask publicly: “dear class warriors, do you believe that the creation of jobs is a public good?” I suspect many will answer yes. Note that I ask this in the economic sense – meaning that when an employer hires a [...]
Posted in Taxation on Oct 2nd, 2011
Fans of taxation like the idea that the “rich” should pay more for the privilege of accessing public goods than the non-rich. Fine, cool, I get it. Then how come fans of progressive taxation don’t also promote laws that require discrimination in all prices according to income? I mean more than saying that the rich [...]
Posted in Classical Liberalism, Taxation, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Sep 30th, 2011
Let’s recall the basic argument we are addressing: the reason the rich should pay more in taxes is that they were only able to earn their income by hiring people that went to (taxpayer funded) public schools, employ people who drove on (taxpayer funded) public roads and otherwise could not do what they do were [...]
Posted in Central Planning, Taxation on Sep 26th, 2011
There’s no point in dancing around it. There is little economic justification for taxing the rich. People are envious of others. People seek ways to lower the status of others and raise the status of themselves (I suppose I do that too, I’m no saint). The reason to tax the rich is because”we” don’t like [...]
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