As a once-sensible economist I supported a “revenue neutral carbon tax” as one major prong of global warming strategy. The simple idea is that such a program would qualify as “No Regrets.” If CO2 turns out to be really bad, then the tax assures that we’ve properly considered those damages in our day to day […]
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Posted in Taxation on May 22nd, 2015
From Last Call: By 1910 the federal government was drawing more than $200 million per year from the bottle and the keg — 71 percent of all internal revenue and more than 30 percent of federal revenue overall. Only external revenue — the tariff – provided a larger share of the federal budget The federal government […]
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My former professor from graduate school is coming to U of R tomorrow: Speaker to Address Carbon Emission Reduction “Robert Frank, the H.J. Louis Professor of Management and professor of economics at Cornell, will present “Reducing Carbon Emissions Will Be Easier Than Many People Think” at 5 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Morey Hall, Room […]
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Posted in Central Planning, Taxation on Feb 17th, 2015
Just finished doing my taxes. Yay, that’s both enjoyable and an incredibly valuable use of my time. I spent only about three hours so far this year getting my paperwork together, shopping for low-priced software, asking for advice, filling out my taxes, making a couple of phone calls and adjusting my withholdings for next year […]
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Posted in Standards of Living, Taxation on Feb 16th, 2015
You might think the answer is easy, “Tax the owners of capital!” Of course, capital is highly mobile today, it will only be moreso in the future as better ways to identify and locate off-shore (or off-planet) will surely be discovered. You might say, “Tax the robots when they come in?” Remember your basic tax […]
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Posted in incentives, Taxation on Nov 24th, 2014
Since 2006, as my real income has fallen by 25%: I have paid about $45,000 in property taxes to our local communities and school districts I have paid over $50,000 in state income taxes I have paid over $110,000 in federal income taxes I have paid over (via not just my share, but the real incidence) $200,000 […]
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Posted in Politics, Taxation on Nov 20th, 2014
I have read dozens of times, and have even espoused the view myself, that the American electorate gets ill at the idea of the government directly taxing THEM. Sure, when taxes are proposed on “other people” like “the rich” the electorate does not seem to have a problem with it, but when we are talking […]
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Posted in Taxation on Oct 29th, 2014
We read in the news recently that the Crimson Tide Foundation has paid off the rest of head football coach Nick Saban’s $3.1 million home. If there is ever “evidence” that the entire notion of an entity deserving “non-profit” status has gone off the rails, this is it. Presumably organizations are granted non-profit status because they […]
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Posted in Methodology, Taxation on Sep 2nd, 2014
This research paper hit my desk this morning: Positive Long Run Capital Taxation: Chamley-Judd Revisitedby Ludwig Straub, Ivan Werning – #20441 (EFG PE)Abstract:According to the Chamley-Judd result, capital should not be taxed inthe long run. In this paper, we overturn this conclusion, showingthat it does not follow from the very models used to derive them.For […]
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The world emits about 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide each year (this is from a warmist site). The US “contribution” to this amount is about 6 billion(this is a high end estimate). US emissions have been flat for two decades. The highly reliable IPCC estimate is that a ton of CO2 does about $30 […]
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