Controls in Policy?

Every so often, someone advocates for making the tax bracket indexed on the level of inequality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/business/better-insurance-against-inequality.html?_r=1

Is this the ramblings of an out-of-touch academic?  Maybe.

Debt and Politics

Economist article shaming Republicans.

Senate Democrats present an alternative.

Bill Clinton on the Debt

Obama has been really bad at explaining the debt limit issue and even worse at building a case for just raising it without spending cuts or more taxes. No one articulates the issues about fiscal policy better than Bill Clinton, though! Bring back the triangulation!

Building the Case: Get Rid of Unnecessary Tax Breaks

Executive compensation is back up: it's a lot!

Equilar, an executive compensation data firm has found that median compensation for top executives at 200 big companies increased 23% from 2009 from $9.3 million to $10.8 million. Big executive payers are media companies, oil and commodities, and technology companies. As many people are aware, most workers are not getting raises this year and have not been getting raises for the past few years. Unemployment is still high. Profits are supposedly up, but it must be up for some sectors or maybe for large companies but still low for others. Profits on paper are also not necessarily a good indicator of how well a company is doing financially.

President Obama and the democratic party have thrown down the gauntlet about putting taxes on the table to reduce the deficit and balance the budget. I hope that people start paying attention to how well executives and certain corporations are doing so that we get tax policies that make sense. Not every tax break is good because not everyone needs a tax break. When people who don't need tax breaks get one, there is a hole in the revenues that needs to be filled by someone else's taxes.

Update on Bush Tax Cuts

The situation has gotten very frustrating. Democrats are about to agree to allow all tax cuts to be extended because Republicans refuse to extend unemployment benefits otherwise. Why are the Democrats always getting cornered? And then in the end, Democrats end up most angry at Obama.

Krugman Let's Not Make a Deal

You Fix Budget

NYTimes interactive tool for exploring how to reduce the US deficit.

Marginal Tax - Keep Greed in Check

Interesting analysis from the LAtimes on Disincentivizing Greed

To a surprising degree, economic misfortune has correlated with low top marginal tax rates. The top marginal tax rate at the time of the 1929 crash was 24%. After his election, Roosevelt promptly raised it to 63% and then to 94%, and one could easily make the case that it was this rise, rather than financial regulation, that played the primary — though certainly not the only — role in curbing abuses by attacking greed at its source, without, by the way, damaging the economy. Roosevelt essentially taxed away big money.

Repeal Bush Tax Cuts

Greenspan has come out in support of repealing the Bush tax cuts. Then again, should he still have an credibility left since he was wrong about the 2008 crash? Oh well, maybe he's seen the error in his ways.

In the meantime, the new Republican star Paul Ryanhas a Roadmap for America that Krugman exposes as "flimflam." Maybe people need to use more charts and visuals when discussing things like the budget and tax policy because numbers that don't add up should be easily exposed and thrown out.

Expire Those Tax Cuts!

See, Tim Geithner agrees

The top 2% of households make more than $250k. I wonder what top 2% of individual incomes make.

When top earners pay less taxes, everyone else has to pay way more in order to balance the budget. Plus, when income accumulates when the top earners don't reinvest or donate a substantial proportion of their wealth, then there is less to go around for everyone else, and they are not stimulating the economy. Paying taxes is forcing (or "automating") reinvestment of income. Lower earners do not need to feel sorry for higher earners who may have to pay more taxes. Higher earners are looking out for themselves. Lower earners should learn from them.

Interview with Governor Terminator

he talks about taxes and immigration. i think he's pretty right on about both things.