There’s broad agreement among the political left in most developed states that we should raise taxes on high earners, if not now then after the economy recovers. The justifications vary somewhat, depending on how one comes at one’s leftism, but in most cases it can be boiled down to the principle of diminishing returns, which holds that the more money you have, the less utility additional money buys you. A homeless person almost always benefits more from a dollar than does a rich person, and if we are seeking to maximize welfare, it is reasonable to redistribute wealth from the rich person to the homeless person. Even some right wingers agree to this, in theory. The trouble is that there is much disagreement as to the extent to which we ought to redistribute empirically. That’s the question I’m going after today.
Tag: Tax
The IRS Tea Party Muddle
If you just read the news headlines today, you’d think that the IRS was the second coming of COINTELPRO. The IRS is targeting the Tea Party and other conservative, right-wing political organisations, they say. For the average citizens, this reads as though your average citizen’s political views were somehow known to the IRS, as if the IRS was going after registered republicans or members of right wing political groups individually. This is not the case. As Ezra Klein (who is really on his game lately, by the way) points out, what actually happened is quite a bit more mundane than all that.
Fight Climate Change with Tax Cuts
A few days ago, I wrote a rather depressing post about climate change. There was, I concluded, very little that can be done to reduce emissions short of a comprehensive international treaty (which the signatories actually abide by) or the creation of a superstate to enforce strict emission regulations. Then yesterday, I had this idea. We can actually help business and fight climate change simultaneously. Here’s how.
Inequality: Krugman vs. Stiglitz
There’s an interesting debate going on within Keynesianism at the moment about whether or not the present economic malaise in much of the western world can be accredited to the persistent rise in inequality that has transpired over the last thirty years or so. Arguing in favour of the inequality connection is Joseph Stiglitz; arguing against is Paul Krugman. I’d like to examine what both economists have to say on the topic and deduce as best I can my own view on the subject.
Aaron Swartz and Copyright Law
Recently, Aaron Swartz, a talented programmer involved in the creation RSS feeds and Reddit, committed suicide. Apparently this was in response to his being hounded by a federal prosecutor for the crime of violating copyright protections and sharing a large cache of academic articles access to which was controlled by JSTOR, an online academic library club of sorts. In the aftermath of the Swartz suicide, activists are demanding a significant curtailment of copyright law. Is this a reasonable policy? That’s my question for today.
Benjamin Studebaker 