Economist's View

Paul Krugman: Republicans Despise the Working Class

"Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can’t contain it":

Republicans Despise the Working Class, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: You can always count on Republicans to do two things: try to cut taxes for the rich and try to weaken the safety net for the poor and the middle class. ...

But ... something has been added to the mix. ...Republicans ... don’t treat all Americans with a given income the same. Instead, their bill ... hugely privileges owners, whether of businesses or of financial assets, over those who simply work for a living. ...

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has evaluated the Senate bill, which the final bill is expected to resemble. It finds that the bill would reduce taxes on business owners, on average, about three times as much as it would reduce taxes on those whose primary source of income is wages or salaries. For highly paid workers, the gap would be even wider, as much as 10 to one. ...

If this sounds like bad policy, that’s because it is. More than that, it opens the doors to an orgy of tax avoidance. ... We’re pitting hastily devised legislation, drafted without hearings over the course of just a few days, against the cleverest lawyers and accountants money can buy. Which side do you think will win?

As a result, it’s a good guess that the bill will increase the budget deficit far more than currently projected. ...

So why are they doing this? After all, the tax bill appears to be terrible politics as well as terrible policy. ... The ... public overwhelmingly disapproves of the current Republican plan.

But Republicans don’t seem able to help themselves: Their disdain for ordinary working Americans as opposed to investors, heirs, and business owners runs so deep that they can’t contain it.

When I realized the extent to which G.O.P. tax plans were going to favor business owners over ordinary workers, I found myself remembering what happened in 2012, when Eric Cantor — then the House majority leader — tried to celebrate Labor Day. He put out a tweet for the occasion that somehow failed to mention workers at all, instead praising those who have “built a business and earned their own success.” ...

Cantor, a creature of the G.O.P. establishment if ever there was one, had so little respect for working Americans that he forgot to include them in a Labor Day message.

And now that disdain has been translated into legislation, in the form of a bill that treats anyone who works for someone else — that is, the vast majority of Americans — as a second-class citizen.

Paul Krugman: The Republican War on Children

CHIP ahoy:

The Republican War on Children, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, is basically a piece of Medicaid targeted on young Americans. It was introduced in 1997, with bipartisan support. Last year it covered 8.9 million kids. But its funding expired more than two months ago. Republicans keep saying they’ll restore the money, but they keep finding reasons not to do it; state governments, which administer the program, will soon have to start cutting children off.

What’s the problem? The other day Senator Orrin Hatch, asked about the program..., declared, “The reason CHIP’s having trouble is that we don’t have money anymore.” Then he voted for an immense tax cut.

And one piece of that immense tax cut is a big giveaway to inheritors of large estates. Under current law, a married couple’s estate pays no tax unless it’s worth more than $11 million, so that only a handful of estates — around 5,500, or less than 0.2 percent of the total number of deaths a year — owe any tax at all. The number of taxable estates is also, by the way, well under one one-thousandth of the number of children covered by CHIP.

But Republicans still consider this tax an unacceptable burden on the rich...

So ... let’s talk dollars. CHIP covers a lot of children, but children’s health care is relatively cheap compared with care for older Americans. In fiscal 2016 the program cost only $15 billion, a tiny share of the federal budget. Meanwhile, under current law the estate tax is expected to bring in about $20 billion, more than enough to pay for CHIP. ...

By their actions, Republicans are showing that they consider it more important to give extra millions to one already wealthy heir than to provide health care to a thousand children. ..., it’s still hard to believe that a whole political party would balk at doing the decent thing for millions of kids while rushing to further enrich a few thousand wealthy heirs.

That is, however, exactly what’s happening. And it’s as bad, in its own way, as that same party’s embrace of a child molester because they expect him to vote for tax cuts.

Paul Krugman: Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits

"offsetting those deficits will require going after the true big-ticket programs, namely Medicare and Social Security":

Republicans Are Coming for Your Benefits, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...During the Senate debate over the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Senator Orrin Hatch was challenged over support for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million U.S. children — but whose funding lapsed two months ago... Hatch ... insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore” — just before voting for a trillion-and-a-half-dollar tax cut that will deliver the bulk of its benefits to the richest few percent....

He then went on to say, “I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”

So who, exactly, was he talking about...?

Was he talking about food stamps, most of whose beneficiaries are children, elderly or disabled? ... Was he talking about the earned-income tax credit, which rewards only those who work? Was he talking about Medicaid, which again mainly benefits children, the elderly and the disabled, plus people who work hard but whose jobs don’t provide health benefits?

We can go on down the list. The simple fact is that big spending on people who “won’t lift a finger” doesn’t actually happen in America — only in Hatch’s meanspirited imagination.

Now, to be fair..., some people ... get lots of money they didn’t lift a finger to earn — namely, inheritors of large estates. ...Republican legislation would give these people ... billions and billions of dollars... How can this be justified if it’s supposedly hard to find money for children’s health care?

Well, Senator Chuck Grassley explained it all last week: “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.” ...

The important thing to realize, however, is that the hypocrisy and contempt for the public we’ve seen ... is just the beginning..., budget deficits are going to soar... And offsetting those deficits will require going after the true big-ticket programs, namely Medicare and Social Security.

Oh, they’ll find euphemisms to describe what they’re doing, talking solemnly about the need for “entitlement reform” as an act of fiscal responsibility — while their huge budget-busting tax cut for the rich gets shoved down the memory hole. But whatever words they use to cloak the reality of the situation, Republicans have given their donors what they wanted — and now they’re coming for your benefits.

Dear Colleagues, Please Explain Your Letter to Steven Mnuchin

Jason Furman and Larry Summers:

Dear colleagues, please explain your letter to Steven Mnuchin: Dear Colleagues:

You recently wrote an open letter to Treasury Secretary Steven  Mnuchin quantifying the economic impact of tax reform. We are interested in and surprised by your analysis.  We share your commitment to the idea that well-designed tax reform can make the economy stronger and that careful economic analysis is essential. And we know that you all share our belief that such careful analysis is well served by discussion and debate of these issues that is at least as frank and vigorous as what we are all accustomed to in the average economics seminar. To that end, we think it would be useful to lay out some of the questions we have about your analysis...

Paul Krugman: The Biggest Tax Scam in History

"will they manage to pull off this giant con job?":

The Biggest Tax Scam in History, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...The bill Republican leaders are trying to ram through this week ... is the biggest tax scam in history. It’s such a big scam that it’s not even clear who’s being scammed — middle-class taxpayers, people who care about budget deficits, or both.

One thing is clear, however: One way or another, the bill would hurt most Americans. The only big winners would be the wealthy — especially those who mainly collect income from their assets rather than working for a living...

The core of the bill is a huge redistribution of income from lower- and middle-income families to corporations and business owners. ...

Meanwhile, the bill would partially repeal Obamacare, in a way that would sharply reduce aid to lower-income families and raise the cost of insurance for many in the middle class.

You might wonder how such a thing could possibly pass the Senate. But that’s where the scamming comes in.

While the underlying structure of the bill involves raising taxes on the middle class, the bill also includes a number of temporary tax breaks..., in the first few years most middle-class families would see modest tax cuts.

But the operative word here is “temporary.” All of these tax breaks either dwindle over time or are scheduled to expire at some point; by 2027 the bill is ... a tax increase on the middle class used to pay for tax cuts that mainly benefit the wealthy. ...

So it’s a giant scam. And while the exact nature of the scam may be unclear, ordinary American families would end up being the victims either way.

For suppose those temporary tax breaks did end up becoming permanent, so that the budget deficit soared on a long-term basis. Then what? You know the answer: Republicans would suddenly revert to the pretense that they’re deficit hawks, and demand “entitlement reform” — that is, cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security... In fact, they’re already talking about those cuts...

So will they manage to pull off this giant con job? The reason they’re rushing this to the Senate floor without a single hearing, without a full assessment from Congress’s own official scorekeepers, is their hope that they can pass the thing before people figure out what they’re up to.

And the question is whether there are enough Republican senators with principles, who believe that policies should not be sold with lies, to stop this bum’s rush.

Saez and Zucman on the Republican Tax Plan

Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman:

Republican tax plan slams workers and job creators in favor of the rich and inherited wealth, by Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman: The tax plan released by Republicans in Congress and praised by President Donald Trump is a remarkable document in many ways, but most notably in that it achieves the opposite of its stated goal. Presented as a tax cut for workers and job-creating entrepreneurs, it is instead a giant tax cut for the rich and inherited wealth.

First,...

Paul Krugman: Everybody Hates the Trump Tax Plan

"The only significant winners would be those making more than $1 million a year.":

Everybody Hates the Trump Tax Plan, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Looking at the reactions to Republican tax plans, I found myself remembering what people used to say about former Senator Phil Gramm...: “Even his friends don’t like him.”...

The general public strongly disapproves — by a 2-1 majority, according to Quinnipiac, although the majority would be even bigger if people really understood what’s going on. But surely at least C.E.O.s like the plan, right?

Actually, not so much. A few days ago Gary Cohn, Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser, met with a group of top executives. They were asked to raise their hands if lower taxes would lead them to raise capital expenditures; only a handful did. “Why aren’t the other hands up?” asked Cohn, plaintively.

The answer is that C.E.O.s ... know that tax rates aren’t that important a factor in investment decisions. ...Most serious economic analyses agree..: Corporate tax cuts wouldn’t actually do much to raise investment. They would, however, explode the budget deficit.

So in an attempt to limit that deficit blowout, Senate Republicans are proposing significant tax increases on working families..., taxes would rise on average for every group with incomes under $75,000 a year... The only significant winners would be those making more than $1 million a year. Populism!

Oh, and this doesn’t even take account of the health care sabotage... By repealing the mandate ... the plan would ... cause 13 million to lose coverage; that loss of coverage, and the associated government subsidies, is why mandate repeal saves money that can be given to corporations. But the move would also drive up premiums... So that’s an additional, hidden indirect tax on the middle class.

Nor does it take account of what would inevitably come next: tax-cut-induced deficits would, by law, trigger cuts in Medicare, and this would just be the start of a G.O.P. assault on programs like disability insurance...

All of which raises the question, why are Republicans even trying to do this? It’s bad policy and bad politics, and the politics will get worse as voters learn more about the facts. Well, last week one G.O.P. congressman, Chris Collins of New York, gave the game away: “My donors are basically saying get it done or don’t ever call me again.”

So we’re talking about government of the people, not by the people, but by wealthy donors, for wealthy donors. Everyone else hates this plan — and they should.

Paul Krugman: Republican Class Warfare: The Next Generation

"This isn’t just ordinary class warfare; it’s class warfare aimed at perpetuating inequality into the next generation.":

Republican Class Warfare: The Next Generation, by Paul Krugman: The other day, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, admitted to The New York Times that he “misspoke” when he declared that his party’s tax plan wouldn’t raise taxes on any middle-class families. But he misspoke when he said “misspoke”: The proper term is “lied.” ...

We’re still waiting for detailed analysis of the Senate bill, but the House bill doesn’t just raise taxes on many middle-class families: It selectively raises taxes on families with children. In fact, half — half! — of families with children will see a tax hike once the bill is fully phased in.

Suppose that a child from a working-class family decides ... to attend college, probably taking out a loan to help pay tuition. Well, guess what: Under the House bill, that interest would no longer be deductible, substantially raising the cost of college.

What if you’re working your way through school and your employer contributes toward your education expenses? The House bill would make that contribution taxable income.

What if your parent is a university employee, and you get reduced tuition as a result? That tuition break becomes taxable income. So would tuition breaks for graduate students who work as teaching or research assistants.

So what we’re looking at here are a variety of measures that will close off opportunities for children who weren’t clever enough to choose wealthy parents.

Meanwhile, funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers more than eight million children, expired a month and a half ago — and so far, Republicans have made no serious effort to restore it. This is surely the shape of things to come: If tax cuts pass, and the deficit explodes, the G.O.P. will suddenly decide that deficits matter again and will demand cuts in social programs, many of which benefit lower-income children.

So this isn’t just ordinary class warfare; it’s class warfare aimed at perpetuating inequality into the next generation. Taken together, the elements of both the House and the Senate bills amount to a more or less systematic attempt to lavish benefits on the children of the ultra-wealthy while making it harder for less fortunate young people to achieve upward social mobility.

Or to put it differently, the tax legislation Republicans are trying to ram through Congress with indecent haste, without hearings or time for any kind of serious study, looks an awful lot like an attempt not simply to reinforce plutocracy, but to entrench a hereditary plutocracy.

Paul Krugman: Trump and Ryan Versus the Little People

"The end result of this tax bill would be to leave most working Americans, even those who wouldn’t face direct tax increases, worse off, all for the benefit of a tiny minority":

Trump and Ryan Versus the Little People, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: According to news reports, Donald Trump wanted the House Republican tax “reform” bill to be called the Cut Cut Cut Act. Alas, he didn’t get his wish, and it was instead given a boring name nobody can remember. But there’s still time to change it! So let me propose, as one reader suggested, that it be renamed the Leona Helmsley Act, after the New York hotelier convicted of tax evasion, who famously declared that “only the little people pay taxes.”

That, after all, is the main thrust of the bill. It hugely favors the wealthy over the middle class, which is pretty much always true of Republican proposals. But it’s not just about favoring high incomes: It also systematically favors people who live off their assets, especially inherited wealth, over the little people — that is, poor shlubs who actually have to work for a living. ...

So when Gary Cohn, Trump’s top economic adviser, says that the bill’s goal is “to deliver middle-class tax cuts to the hard-working families in this country,” he’s claiming that up is down and black is white. This bill does little or nothing for the middle class, and even among the affluent it’s biased against those who work hard in favor of the idle rich.

Also let’s not forget that tax increases on working Americans are only part of the story. This bill would also, according to the Congressional Budget Office, add $1.7 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. You know what that means: If this bill or anything like it passes, Republicans will immediately revert to their previous pretense of being deficit hawks and start demanding spending cuts.

And since federal spending is dominated by programs — Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — that benefit the middle and working classes, the end result of this tax bill would be to leave most working Americans, even those who wouldn’t face direct tax increases, worse off, all for the benefit of a tiny minority, especially those who haven’t even worked for their wealth.

You might wonder how Republicans imagine that they can get away with this. But anyone who has paid attention to U.S. politics knows the answer. First, they will lie, unashamedly, about what their bill actually does. Second, they will try to distract working-class voters by stoking racial animosity. That didn’t work too well in Tuesday’s elections, but they’ll keep on trying.

Paul Krugman: Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Con Man Caucus

"The big question should be, why do any of this?":

Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Con Man Caucus, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: ...On Thursday, House Republicans unveiled a tax “reform” bill with the same good order and careful deliberation with which they unveiled their various attempts to repeal Obamacare. That is, after having had years to prepare, the G.O.P. waited until the last minute to throw something together, without any hearings or serious analysis.

Budget wonks are frantically going through the legislative language, trying to figure out what it means and what it would do — but they can take some comfort in the fact that the bill’s authors are almost equally in the dark.

O.K., some things are clear: The bill would give huge tax breaks to corporations and the wealthy, especially wealthy heirs, while opening vast new opportunities for tax avoidance. You won’t go far wrong if you think of the big tax cuts in the law as having been custom designed to benefit the Trump family.

But these big tax cuts would blow a multitrillion-dollar hole in the budget, so Republicans have been scrambling to find “pay-fors” that limit the addition to the deficit. ...

Since the point of these measures is to offset tax cuts for the rich, they will, more or less by definition, end up raising taxes on large numbers of middle-class families. ...

The big question should be, why do any of this? Ryan used to claim that his plans were about reducing the budget deficit, but he has now given up that pretense.

And why should tax cuts even be on the table? We have budget deficits, not surpluses, and lots of unmet needs for future spending. U.S. taxes are low, not high, compared with other wealthy countries. Predictions that tax cuts will lead to rapid economic growth have been wrong time and again. And by large margins, voters want taxes on corporations and the wealthy to go up, not down.

The ruling theory among Republicans seems to be that going into the midterm elections they need a “win”... I guess this might be right, although it’s a theory that reveals extraordinary contempt for voters, who are supposed to be impressed by the G.O.P.’s ability to ram through policies that only benefit a tiny elite.

How ever the politics turn out, this is remarkably terrible policy, devised via a remarkably terrible process. Most Americans realize that Donald Trump is a very bad president; they need to realize that his party’s congressional leadership is pretty awful, too.

Paul Krugman: Trump Won’t Bring Joy to Moolaville

"The party’s willingness to turn a blind eye to corruption with a hint of treason would be horrifying whatever the motivation":

Trump Won’t Bring Joy to Moolaville, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Over the weekend Donald Trump raged against the Russia “witch hunt,” which he claimed was an effort to distract from his push for “historic Tax Cuts & Reform.” And there actually is a relationship — but it goes in the other direction. If Trump survives this crisis — which may mean that American democracy doesn’t — tax cuts will have a lot to do with it.

For Republicans in Congress know perfectly well that Trump is utterly unfit for office and has been abusing his position for personal gain. Many of them surely suspected, long before Monday’s indictments, that members of his inner circle, and perhaps he himself, have colluded with a hostile foreign power.

If they nonetheless circle the wagons around Trump — in particular, if they allow him to fire Robert Mueller... — there will be one main reason: Trump offers their big opportunity to cut taxes for the very wealthy. Indeed..., almost 80 percent of the Trump tax cut would go to people with incomes over $1 million; these people would get an average cut of around $230,000 a year.

But here’s what gets me: The wealthy donors for whom the G.O.P. will apparently do anything, up to and including covering up for possible treason, will get no joy from their tax cuts.

I don’t mean that history will judge them harshly, although it will. I don’t even mean that plutocrats as well as plebeians will eventually suffer if America becomes a lawless, authoritarian regime. I mean that a few hundred thousand dollars extra will do little if anything to make the already wealthy more satisfied with their lives. ...

Again, arguably none of this matters very much. The G.O.P. policy agenda of rewarding the wealthy at the expense of the poor and working class would be vile even if tax cuts would make the rich ecstatic. The party’s willingness to turn a blind eye to corruption with a hint of treason would be horrifying whatever the motivation. Still, there seems to me to be an extra dimension of awfulness to the whole situation once you realize that all this betrayal serves no real purpose, not even a bad one.

And maybe, just maybe, members of the G.O.P. donor class will take this moment of national crisis to ask themselves what really matters. For what shall it profit a man, if he gain a $230,000 tax cut, and his formerly democratic nation lose its soul?

Paul Krugman: The G.O.P. Is No Party for Honest Men

"A strategy based entirely on lies":

The G.O.P. Is No Party for Honest Men, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: According to a new CBS News poll, almost 60 percent of the American public believes that the current Republican tax plan favors the wealthy. Some people see this number as a sign that the plan is in trouble; I see it as a sign that Republican lies are working far better than they deserve to.

For the plan does indeed favor the wealthy — overwhelmingly.... It’s shocking that as many as 40 percent of Americans don’t realize this. ...

So the question about this plan isn’t whether it favors the wealthy — it does, to an outrageous extent. The questions we should be asking instead are why Republicans are pushing this so hard, and how they can hope to get away with it. ...

So what’s behind this priority? Follow the money. Big donors are furious at missing out on the $700 billion in tax cuts that were supposed to come out of Obamacare repeal. If they don’t get big bucks out of tax “reform,” they might close their pocketbooks for the 2018 midterm elections.

Beyond that, modern conservatism is a sort of ecosystem of media outlets, think tanks, lobbying outfits and more that offers many lucrative niches — so-called wingnut welfare — for the ideologically reliable. And that means being reliable to the interests of the wealthy.

But how can an administration that pretends to be populist, to stand up for ordinary (white) working people, sell such elitist policies?

The answer is a strategy based entirely on lies. ...

Nor do I mean that there are just one or two big lies. There are many — so many I literally don’t have space to ... list them... In a long blog post ... I came up with 10 major Republican lies about tax cuts, and I’m sure I missed a few.

So, politically, can they really get away with this? A lot depends on how the news media handles it. ...

One thing we know for sure, however, is that a great majority of Republican politicians know perfectly well that their party is lying about its tax plan — and every even halfway competent economist aligned with the party definitely understands what’s going on.

What this means is that everyone who goes along with this plan, or even remains silent in the face of the campaign of mass dissimulation, is complicit — is in effect an accomplice to the most dishonest political selling job in American history.

Suppression of the Wealth Tax: An Historical Error

Thomas Piketty:

Suppression of the wealth tax: an historical error, by Thomas Piketty: Let it be said at once: the suppression of the wealth tax (Impôt sur la Fortune or ISF) constitutes a serious moral, economic and historical mistake. This decision reveals a profound misunderstanding of the challenges to inequality posed by globalization.

Let’s go back for a moment. During the first globalization period between 1870 and 1914, a strong international movement gradually took shape which sought to promote a new type of redistribution and taxation. Based on a progressive taxation system on income, wealth and inheritance, this new model was aimed at a better distribution of productivity gains and the structural reduction of the concentration of property and economic power. It was successfully implemented in the period 1920 to 1970, partly as a result of the pressure of dramatic historical events, but equally thanks to a lengthy intellectual and political process.

We may perhaps today be witnessing the premises of a similar movement. Confronted with the rise in inequality, awareness is gaining momentum. ...

Paul Krugman: Republicans, Trapped by Their Flimflam

"In broad outlines, the tax story is a lot like health care":

Republicans, Trapped by Their Flimflam, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Last week the Trump administration and its congressional allies working on tax reform achieved something remarkable. They released a tax plan — or, actually, a vague sketch of a plan — that manages both to add trillions to the deficit and to raise taxes on a large fraction of the population. That takes talent.

...On taxes, as with health, leading Republicans have been lying for years. And now the fraud has caught up with the fraudsters.

The road to this tax-cut turkey began in 2010, when Paul Ryan ... unveiled the first of a series of much-hyped budget plans, all purporting to offer a blueprint for eliminating the U.S. budget deficit.

In fact, they did no such thing. They proposed major tax cuts — primarily benefiting the rich, of course — then simply asserted that no revenue would be lost ...

And what was the Ryan plan if you took out those mysterious revenue raisers and spending cuts? A plan to drastically cut taxes on the rich, savagely cut benefits for the poor and the middle class, and increase the overall deficit.

In other words, it was all a con. ...

And the con went on for years. ...

But then Republicans regained the White House, meaning that they had to come up with actual tax legislation. And this has put the con under terrible strain. ...

So they came up with what probably seemed like a clever idea: eliminate the deductibility of state and local taxes. Hey, that would mainly punish people in tax-and-spend blue states, right? Not their problem.

But this turns out to be a much bigger deal than they seemed to realize. ... According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, their plan would give huge tax cuts to the top 1 percent, who would receive 79.7 percent of the benefits. But eliminating deductions would make many Americans, especially in the upper reaches of the middle class, directly worse off: ...

And this would happen even though the plan would add several trillion dollars to the deficit. Did I mention that many of those facing tax hikes vote Republican? ...

In broad outlines, the tax story is a lot like health care. In both cases, Republicans have spent years getting away with big promises backed by lies. Now, with real policy to be made, the lies won’t work anymore. And they can’t handle the truth.

Paul Krugman: Politicians, Promises, and Getting Real

Paul Krugman:

Politicians, Promises, and Getting Real, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: On Wednesday Donald Trump demanded that Congress move quickly to enact his tax reform plan. But so far he has not, in fact, offered any such plan...

Meanwhile, 17 Senate Democrats ... have signed on to Bernie Sanders’s call for expanding Medicare to cover the whole population. So far, however, Sanders hasn’t produced either an estimate of how much that would cost or a specific proposal about how to pay for it.

I don’t mean to suggest that these cases are comparable: The distinctive Trumpian mix of ignorance and fraudulence has no counterpart among Democrats. Still, both stories raise the question of how much ... policy clarity matters for politicians’ ability to win elections and ... govern.

About elections: The fact that Trump is in the White House suggests that politicians can get away with telling voters just about anything that sounds good. ...

On the other hand, the ignominious failure of Trumpcare shows that reality sometimes does matter. ... Once the public realized that tens of millions would lose coverage..., there was a huge backlash...

The story of tax reform ... is starting to look a bit similar. ...

In fact, Trump himself seems to be experiencing cognitive dissonance. “The rich will not be gaining at all with this plan,” he declared Wednesday. ... Is he oblivious, lying, or both? ...

The contrast between what he’s claiming and anything Republicans in Congress will be willing to support is so great as to practically invite ridicule and another popular backlash. ...

But is the push for single-payer health care taking Democrats down a similar path?

Unlike just about everything Trump and company are proposing, Medicare for all is a substantively good idea. Yet actually making it happen would probably mean ... a serious political backlash. For one..., it would require a substantial increase in taxes. For another, it would mean telling scores of millions of Americans who get health coverage though their employers, and are generally satisfied..., that they need to give it up and accept something different. ...

Democrats could eventually find themselves facing a Trumpcare-type debacle, unable either to implement their unrealistic vision or to let it go.

The point is that while unrealistic promises may not hurt you in elections, they can become a big problem when you try to govern. Having a vision for the future is good, but being real about the difficulties is also good. Democrats, take heed.

Monopoly Rents and Corporate Taxation

Paul Krugman:

Monopoly Rents and Corporate Taxation (Wonkish): At one level it’s hard to take the Trump administration’s tax “reform” push seriously. A guy gets elected as a populist and his first two big proposals are (a) taking away health insurance from millions (b) cutting corporate taxes. Wow.

Furthermore, Trump is invincibly ignorant on taxes (and everything else) — he keeps declaring that America is the highest taxed nation in the world, which is nearly the opposite of the truth among advanced countries. And his allies in Congress aren’t ignorant, but they’re liars: Paul Ryan is the master of mystery meat, of promising to raise and save trillions in unspecified ways.

But there is an actual interesting question here, even if we shouldn’t give any credence to Republican answers. Who does, in fact, pay the corporate profit tax? Does it fall on corporations, and hence eventually on their shareholders? Or is the ultimate incidence mainly on wages, as the administration claims?

Skipping forward to the punchline:

...much corporate taxation probably doesn’t fall on returns to physical capital, but rather on monopoly rents. ... As long as the local source of profit is some kind of monopoly rent, corporate tax incidence is going to fall on shareholders, not workers. ...

And there’s a lot of reason to believe that market power is an increasingly big deal. ...

This changes the narrative, doesn’t it? Instead of focusing on rising capital mobility as a reason profits taxes might fall on workers, maybe we should focus on rising market power as a reason why profits taxes fall on capitalists.

The point for now is that when someone tells you that changes in the world have made old-style corporate taxes obsolete, be skeptical. Some changes in the world may have made profit taxation a better idea than ever.

The Heartless Tradeoffs in the Trump Budget

I have a new column:

The Heartless Tradeoffs in the Trump Budget: As the bombshells continue to drop on the Trump administration, behind the scenes Trump’s first detailed budget proposal is being developed, and it has a few bombshells of its own, particularly for the poor. The budget proposal is not yet finalized, so the details could change, but according to what has leaked so far, the budget is a combination of tax cuts for the wealthy, reduced spending on social programs that serve the needy, and wishful thinking about tax cuts and economic growth. ...

Trump Tax Plan Would Give 400 Highest-Income Americans More Than $15 Million a Year in Tax Cuts

Brandon DeBot at the CBPP:

Trump Tax Plan Would Give 400 Highest-Income Americans More Than $15 Million a Year in Tax Cuts: President Trump’s tax plan contains specific, costly tax cuts for the wealthy and profitable corporations but only vague promises for working families.[1] Even accounting for his proposal to restrict most itemized deductions, the top 1 percent would still receive annual tax cuts averaging at least $250,000 per household. But the tax cuts at the very top would be far larger. Their annual tax cuts would be more than five times the typical college graduate’s lifetime earnings.The 400 highest-income taxpayers — whose incomes average more than $300 million a year — would get average tax cuts of at least $15 million a year each, we estimate from IRS data.  Their annual tax cuts would be more than five times the typical college graduate’s lifetime earnings.[2]..  The total tax cut for these 400 households would be at least $6 billion annually.

The Trump plan prioritizes these tax cuts for the highest-income Americans over many worthy programs that need more resources. For example, $6 billion is more than the federal government spends on grants for major job training programs to assist people struggling in today’s economy. An additional annual investment of $6 billion could enable roughly 1.5 million adults each year to train for a new career.[3]

Also, $6 billion is roughly the cost of providing 600,000 low-income families with housing vouchers that would help them afford decent, stable housing. ...

Yet, far from investing in these areas, President Trump has proposed to sharply cut the budget area (non-defense discretionary programs) that funds job training and housing vouchers, even as his tax plan delivers massive tax cuts to the top.[5] ...

While the Trump tax plan would clearly shower windfall tax cuts on those at the very top, it provides little detail on whether or how it would help working families. Indeed, the plan wouldn’t provide any tax benefits to at least 17 million working families and individuals because they don’t earn enough to owe federal income taxes (though most pay significant payroll and other taxes). Those families would very likely be worse off under the plan because policymakers eventually would likely pay for the large tax cuts for the very wealthy at least in part by cutting programs on which they and millions of other low- and middle-income families rely.[9]

Top Taxes & Growth

Chris Dillow:

Top taxes & growth: Rich people don’t like paying taxes. This is pretty much the only thing we’ve learned from some of the hysterical reaction in the papers to Labour’s plan to raise taxes on the rich.

Let’s remember the historical facts here. Low tax rates aren’t associated with faster growth – if anything the opposite. ...

For me, the non-hysterical arguments against Labour’s tax plans lie elsewhere. You could argue that – with tax morale low partly as a result of the rise of individualism – they’ll decrease social solidarity. People will regard them not as the price for living in a civilized society but as a burden which subsidizes “scroungers”. Or you could argue that the revenue raised by taxes will fuel wasteful public spending. Or you might argue that redistributive taxation isn’t enough: we need to reduce inequalities of power as well as income. Or you might argue that the tax base should be shifted from incomes to land and inheritances...

What you shouldn’t do, though, is argue that higher top taxes will wreck the economy. Other things might do that, but it’s unlikely that top taxes will.

Paul Krugman: The Priming of Mr. Donald Trump

"a delusion of truly Trumpian proportions":

The Priming of Mr. Donald Trump, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Donald Trump has said many strange things in recent interviews. ... Over here in Econoland, however, the buzz was all about Trump’s expressed willingness, in an interview with the Economist magazine, to pursue tax cuts even if they increase deficits, because “we have to prime the pump” — an expression he claimed to have invented. “I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good.”

Actually, the expression goes back generations...

But why should anyone besides pedants care?

First, a mind is a terrible thing to lose..., that Economist interview was basically one long senior moment...

Second, we’re talking about some really bad economics here. ...

America may not be all the way back to full employment — there’s a lively debate among economists over that issue. But the economic engine no longer needs a fiscal jump-start. This is exactly the wrong time to be talking about the desirability of bigger budget deficits. ...

Which brings me to my third point: Trump’s fiscal delusions are arguably no worse than those of many, perhaps most professional observers of the Washington political scene.

If you’re a heavy news consumer, think about how many articles you’ve seen in the past few weeks with headlines along the lines of “Trump’s budget may create conflict with G.O.P. fiscal conservatives.” The premise ... is that there is a powerful faction among Republican members of Congress who worry deeply about budget deficits...

But there is no such faction, and never was.

There were and are poseurs like Paul Ryan, who claim to be big deficit hawks. But there’s a simple way to test such people’s sincerity:... when you see a politician claim that deficit concerns require that we slash Medicaid, privatize Medicare, and/or raise the retirement age — but somehow never require raising taxes on the wealthy, which in fact they propose to cut — you know that it’s just an act.

Yet somehow much of the news media keeps believing, or pretending to believe, that those imaginary deficit hawks are real, which is a delusion of truly Trumpian proportions.

So I’m worried. Trump may be not just ignorant but deeply out of it, and his economic proposals are terrible and irresponsible, but they may get implemented all the same.

But maybe I worry too much; maybe the only thing to fear is fear itself. Do you like that line? I just came up with it the other day.

Paul Krugman: Zombies of Voodoo Economics

 "Because it offers a rationale for lower taxes on the wealthy":

Zombies of Voodoo Economics, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: According to many reports, Donald Trump is getting frantic as his administration nears the 100-day mark. It’s an arbitrary line in the sand, but one he himself touted in many pre-inauguration boasts. And it will be an occasion for numerous articles detailing how little of substance he has actually accomplished. ...

Mr. Trump sold himself to voters as unorthodox as well as effective. He was going to be a different kind of president, a consummate deal-maker who would transcend the usual ideological divide. His supporters should therefore be dismayed, not just by his failure to actually close any deals, but by the fact that he evidently has no new ideas to offer, just the same old snake oil the right has been peddling for decades.

We saw that on Trumpcare... And now we’re seeing it on taxes. ... Whatever the details, Trumptax will be a big exercise in fantasy economics.

How do we know this? Last week Stephen Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, told a financial industry audience that “the plan will pay for itself with growth.” And we all know what that means..., history offers not a shred of support for faith in the pro-growth effects of tax cuts..., supply-side economics is a classic example of a zombie doctrine: a view that should have been killed by the evidence long ago... Why, then, does it persist? Because it offers a rationale for lower taxes on the wealthy...

Still, Donald Trump was supposed to be different. Guess what: he isn’t.

To be fair, it’s not clear whether Mr. Trump really believes in right-wing economic orthodoxy. He may just be looking for something, anything, he can call a win — and it’s a lot easier to come up with a tax reform plan if you don’t try to make things add up, if you just assume that extra growth and the revenue it brings will materialize out of thin air.

We might also note that a man who insists that he won the popular vote he lost, who insists that crime is at a record high when it’s at a record low, doesn’t need a fancy doctrine to claim that his budget adds up when it doesn’t.

Still, the fact is that the Trump agenda so far is absolutely indistinguishable from what one might have expected from, say, Ted Cruz. It’s just voodoo with extra bad math. Was that what his supporters expected?

Supply-side, trickle-down nonsense on the NYT oped page

Jared Bernstein:

Supply-side, trickle-down nonsense on the NYT oped page: There’s a robust debate to be had as to why the NYT published this op-ed on the alleged economic benefits of trickle-down tax cuts, as virtually every paragraph touts an alternative fact. It is the opinion page, I guess, and the authors advise (or at least advised) the president, so I can see why it’s there. But it does require debunking, so thanks NYT, for some make work.

Here’s much of the article’s text, followed by my comments in italics:

A few of the comments:

... Here we have the first in a series of trickle-down claims. The alleged sequencing is: cut taxes of business and the wealthy, they invest more, that raises profits and productivity, and the benefits trickle down to the middle class. Every link in that chain is broken: tax cuts, even on investment income, do not correlate with greater investment, and they certainly are uncorrelated with faster productivity growth. Businesses already receive very favorable tax treatment on their investments; in fact, their tax burden on debt-financed investments can be negative. No question, tax cuts raise after-tax profitability, but absent much more worker bargaining power, those profits stay in the pockets of those at the top of the income scale. ...

Here we have the “money” ‘graf: the straight-up claim that trickle down tax cuts will boost the earnings of the working class, which will help offset their cost—the Laffer curve in action. I guess I should give the authors credit for adding “if we are right,” though I’ll give you very long odds that the editors insisted on this addition. Because there’s no reason to ask if they’re right. They’re not, with the latest exhibit being the state of Kansas, an “experiment” derived by some of these very authors.

BTW, I’ve endorsed my friend Kevin Hassett for his new job as a voice of economic reason in this administration. But I’ve been careful to note this flaw in his work and his thinking. In fact, the study they reference here has been thoroughly debunked in various places. ...

Again with the urgency, and “trust us, folks, it’s not the zillionaires for whom our hearts bleed—it’s ‘jobs and the economy.’” Not to mention the stock market, which is getting “jittery” over the possibility that Trump won’t deliver a tax plan like the one these guys wrote, which delivers fully half of its goodies to the top 1 percent (or even better, the Ryan plan, which, once fully phased in, delivers 99 percent of its cuts to the top 1 percent).

Puh-lease. How stupid do these people think we are (rhetorical question!)? Their simple scheme—Trump wins, the rich get big tax cut—has turned out to be harder to pull off than they’d hoped. That’s a feature, not a bug, of our current political moment, even if it means we have to read a WSJ oped in the NYT.

Tax Reforms and Top Incomes

Enrico Rubolino and Daniel Waldenström at VoxEU:

Tax reforms and top incomes: The link between tax progressivity and the income distribution is the subject of intense debate. This column presents new evidence from tax reforms during the 1980s and 1990s to examine how reduced progressivity affects top income shares. Reduced progressivity boosted top incomes, particularly for those in the top 0.1% of earners. Income tax changes are a plausible candidate for explaining the recent surge in income inequality. ...

Tax reforms did not increase the size of the cake

Tax progressivity was reduced in the 1980s on the argument that there would be a positive impact on economic activity and efficiency (Auerbach and Slemrod 1997, Gale and Samswick 2014). Therefore it could be that the estimated boost in top shares reflects new resources created in top groups, rather than a redistribution of incomes away from the bottom and middle. We evaluate this hypothesis..., this analysis does not show large real income responses to reductions in progressivity. ...

Taxation and inequality

Our findings suggest that tax progressivity changes influence pre-tax income inequality. Focusing on large, progressivity-reducing tax reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, we show that they had a positive, increasing effect on top income shares in all the countries we studied. ...

The Fed, the Reality of Tax Cuts Reality, and Donald Trump

I have a new column:

The Fed, the Reality of Tax Cuts Reality, and Donald Trump: For many years, Republicans argued that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves. Cutting taxes on the wealthy, according to Republicans, allows them to keep a larger share of anything new they create and this leads to new economic activity and new innovation – so much that the resulting increase in economic growth and tax revenue fully offsets the budgetary effects of the tax cuts. Everyone is better off as income “trickled down” from the top.

What actually happened is that the tax cuts had very little, if any, impact on economic growth. Deficits went up, and somehow income never trickled down – if anything, it trickled up. Today, Republicans are less likely to argue that tax cuts pay for themselves, though you still hear it, but they still insist tax cuts for the wealthy magically increase economic growth and offset much of the revenue loss.

But even in the very unlikely case that Trump’s proposed tax cuts are successful (beyond increasing the income of the wealthy which many argue is the true goal), the economic growth rates Trump has promised are unlikely to be attained. ...

The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms

This is from Chloe Cho of the CBPP:

The Myth That the Estate Tax Threatens Small Farms: Ahead of tomorrow’s House Agriculture Committee hearing on tax reform, a group of agricultural trade associations have called for repealing the estate tax on inherited wealth, arguing that “all too often at the time of death, farming and ranching families are forced to sell off land, farm equipment, parts of the operation or take out loans” due to the tax. Their arguments miss the mark.  Only 50 small farm and small business estates in the entire country will pay any estate tax in 2017 (see chart), and they’ll owe less than 6 percent of their value in tax, on average, the Tax Policy Center estimates. 

...Moreover, most farmers and business owners with estates large enough to owe the tax have sufficient liquid assets ... to pay the tax without having to touch other assets or liquidate their farm and business, a 2005 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study found. Today’s estate tax rules are even more generous than those CBO assumed. ...

While doing next to nothing for family farms, repeal would provide a windfall to the wealthiest 0.2 percent of estates — the only ones large enough to pay the tax.  A repeal proposal recently reintroduced in the Senate would provide the 0.2 percent of wealthiest estates with an average tax cut of more than $3 million in 2017.  Roughly 330 estates worth more than $50 million would get more than $20 million apiece in tax cuts, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates.  The proposal would also cost $269 billion over the decade, expanding deficits and adding to pressure for cuts in federal programs.

Tax Cuts Can’t be Financed by Reducing Government Waste

I have a new column (my title was "Some of These Markets are Not Like the Others"):

It’s a Ruse: Tax Cuts Can’t be Financed by Reducing Government Waste: The Republicans suffered a humiliating defeat on their proposal to cut taxes for the wealthy disguised as healthcare reform. But as the Trump administration has made clear, they are not about to give up on their tax cut plans.

But how will those tax cuts be financed? The Republican’s health care reform plan would have delivered $600 billion in tax cuts, but with that option gone where will the money come from? ...

The World's Easiest Chart to Make

In case you were wondering (any your probably weren't), from Kevin Drum:

Well, This Was the World's Easiest Chart to Make: CBPP has calculated how much tax money you'll save if Obamacare is repealed. Behold:

You know what really gets me? Even among the millionaires, repeal will only net them about $50,000. That's like finding spare change in the sofa cushions for this crowd. Is clawing back a few nickels and dimes really worth immiserating 20 million people?

Public Capital, Private Capital

Thomas Piketty:

Public capital, private capital: The present economic debate is over-determined by two realities which, moreover, are connected as we sometimes tend to forget. On one hand we have the steady rise in public debt and, on the other, the prosperity of privately owned wealth. The figures for the level of public debt are well known; almost everywhere the level approaches or exceeds 100% of national income ... as compared with barely 30% in the 1970s. ...

During the post-war boom (the Trente Glorieuses) public assets were very considerable (approximately 100-150% of national income, as a result of a very large public sector, a consequence of post-war nationalisations), and significantly higher than public debt...

The most recent data available for 2015-2016 shows that net public capital has become negative in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom. In all these countries, the sale of the total public assets would not be sufficient to repay the debt. In France and in Germany net public capital is only just positive.

But this does not mean that rich countries have become poor: it is their governments which have become poor, which is very different. ... The fact remains that private capital grew much faster than the decline in public capital, and that rich countries themselves hold even a little more...

Why be so pessimistic in the face of such prosperity? Simply because the ideological and political balance of power is such that public authorities are not able to make the main beneficiaries of globalisation contribute their fair share. The perception of this impossibility of a fair tax sustains the flight towards the debt. ...

Historically, major changes in the structure of property ownership often come together with profound political changes. We see this with the French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Euro-World Wars in the 20th century and the Libération in France. The nationalist forces at work today could lead to a return to national currencies and inflation, which would promote a chaotic redistribution of resources, at the expense of severe social stress and an ethnicisation of political conflicts. In the face of this fatal risk to which the present status quo could lead, there is only one solution. We must chart a democratic pathway out of the impasse and organise the necessary redistribution of resources within the framework of the rule of law.

Paul Krugman: A Party Not Ready to Govern

"They have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation

A Party Not Ready to Govern, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: According to Politico, a Trump confidante says that the man in the Oval Office — or more often at Mar-a-Lago — is “tired of everyone thinking his presidency is screwed up.” Pro tip: The best way to combat perceptions that you’re screwing up is, you know, to stop screwing up.

But he can’t, of course. And it’s not just a personal problem.

It goes without saying that Donald Trump is the least qualified individual, temperamentally or intellectually, ever installed in the White House. ... Thanks, Comey.

But the broader Republican quagmire — the party’s failure so far to make significant progress toward any of its policy promises — isn’t just about Mr. Trump’s inadequacies. The whole party, it turns out, has been faking it for years. Its leaders’ rhetoric was empty; they have no idea how to turn their slogans into actual legislation, because they’ve never bothered to understand how anything important works.

Take the two lead items in the congressional G.O.P.’s agenda: undoing the Affordable Care Act and reforming corporate taxes. In each case Republicans seem utterly shocked to find themselves facing reality.

The story of Obamacare repeal would be funny if the health care — and, in many cases, the lives — of millions of Americans weren’t at stake. ...

Then there’s corporate tax reform — an issue where the plan being advanced by Paul Ryan ... is actually not too bad, at least in principle. ...

But Mr. Ryan has failed spectacularly to make his case either to colleagues or to powerful interest groups. Why? As best I can tell, it’s because he himself doesn’t understand the point of the reform. ...

At this point, then, major Republican initiatives are bogged down for reasons that have nothing to do with the personality flaws of the tweeter in chief, and everything to do with the broader, more fundamental fecklessness of his party.

Does this mean that nothing substantive will happen on the policy front? Not necessarily. Republicans may decide to ram through a health plan that causes mass suffering, and hope to blame it on Mr. Obama. They may give up on anything resembling a principled tax reform, and just throw a few trillion dollars at rich people instead.

But whatever the eventual outcome, what we’re witnessing is what happens when a party that gave up hard thinking in favor of empty sloganeering ends up in charge of actual policy. And it’s not a pretty sight.

Paul Krugman: Death and Tax Cuts

"So why do Republicans hate Obamacare so much?":

Death and Tax Cuts, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Across the country, Republicans have been facing crowds demanding to know how they will protect the 20 million Americans who gained health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act... And after all that inveighing against the evils of Obamacare, it turns out that they’ve got nothing. ...

After years to prepare, Mr. Ryan finally unveiled what was supposedly the outline of a health care plan. It was basically a sick joke: flat tax credits, unrelated to income, that could be applied to the purchase of insurance.

These credits would be obviously inadequate for the lower- and even middle-income families..., so it would cause a huge surge in the number of uninsured. Meanwhile, the affluent would receive a nice windfall. Funny how that seems to happen in every plan Mr. Ryan proposes.

That was last week. This week, perhaps realizing how flat his effort fell, he began tweeting about freedom, which he defined as “the ability to buy what you want to fit what you need.” Give me consumer sovereignty or give me death! And Obamacare, he declared, is bad because it deprives Americans of that freedom by doing things like establishing minimum standards for insurance policies.

I very much doubt that this is going to fly, now that ordinary Americans are starting to realize just how devastating loss of coverage would be. But for the record, let me remind everyone what we’ve been saying for years: Any plan that makes essential care available to everyone has to involve some restriction of choice. ...

So yes, Obamacare somewhat restricts choice — not because meddling bureaucrats want to run your life, but because some restrictions are necessary as part of a package that in many ways sets Americans free.

For health reform has been a hugely liberating experience for millions. ...

So why do Republicans hate Obamacare so much? It’s not because they have better ideas; as we’ve seen..., they’re coming up empty-handed on the “replace” part of “repeal and replace.” It’s not, I’m sorry to say, because they are deeply committed to Americans’ right to buy the insurance policy of their choice.

No, mainly they hate Obamacare for two reasons: It demonstrates that the government can make people’s lives better, and it’s paid for in large part with taxes on the wealthy. Their overriding goal is to make those taxes go away. And if getting those taxes cut means that quite a few people end up dying, remember: freedom!

What Type of Tax Changes Boost Economic Growth?

Me, at MoneyWatch:

Not just any kind of tax cut can boost economic growth: President Donald Trump promised last week he would unveil a “phenomenal” tax reform package in the next few weeks. Although no details were offered, Mr. Trump’s past statements suggest that his proposal will adhere to fairly standard supply-side principles.

The idea behind supply-side policy is to encourage more investment, more labor effort and technological innovation through changes in the tax code and regulatory structure.

Have these policies been successful in the past? Are some types of policies better than others at spurring economic growth? To answer those questions, it’s useful to put supply-side policies into broad categories...

The U.S. Tax Code Actually Doesn’t 'Soak the Rich'

Nick Buffie at the CEPR:

The U.S. Tax Code Actually Doesn’t “Soak the Rich” : In 2012, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney famously commented that 47 percent of Americans were “dependent on government” because they didn’t pay any federal income taxes. He went on to explain that his job was “not to worry about those people.”

Journalists and other public figures often claim that only the rich pay taxes, supporting this with the argument that the rich pay the vast majority of federal income taxes. However, federal income taxes are just one part of the broader tax code. When we consider other types of federal taxes as well as state and local taxes, it becomes clear that the overall tax code isn’t extremely progressive – in other words, it doesn’t “soak the rich,” and it certainly doesn’t let the poor off the hook. ...

A Conservative Case for Climate Action

Feldstein, Halstead, and Mankiw :

A Conservative Case for Climate Action: Crazy as it may sound, this is the perfect time to enact a sensible policy to address the dangerous threat of climate change. Before you call us nuts, hear us out.

During his eight years in office, President Obama regularly warned of the very real dangers of global warming, but he did not sign any meaningful domestic legislation to address the problem, largely because he and Congress did not see eye to eye. Instead, Mr. Obama left us with a grab bag of regulations aimed at reducing carbon emissions, often established by executive order. ... As Democrats are learning the hard way, it is all too easy for a new administration to reverse the executive orders of its predecessors.

On-again-off-again regulation is a poor way to protect the environment. ...

Our own analysis finds that a carbon dividends program starting at $40 per ton would achieve nearly twice the emissions reductions of all Obama-era climate regulations combined. ...

The idea of using taxes to correct a problem like pollution is an old one with wide support among economists. ...

Republicans are in charge of both Congress and the White House. If they do nothing other than reverse regulations from the Obama administration, they will squander the opportunity to show the full power of the conservative canon, and its core principles of free markets, limited government and stewardship. ...

One suggested edit to the last paragraph: If the Republicans do more than reverse regulations from the Obama administration and impose a carbon tax, they will squander the opportunity to show the full power of the conservative canon, and its core principle of rewarding wealthy supporters in the business community.

The Case Against Cutting Top Marginal Tax Rates

Adam Ozimek:

The Case Against Cutting Top Marginal Tax Rates: For some people, cutting income tax rates is an evergreen strategy for expanding the economy. If you cut income taxes, the argument goes, people will work more. Under this logic, cutting the top marginal tax rates is good for everyone because these households work more, which increases the size of the economy. There’s one simple problem with this argument: High-income workers already work a lot. ...

 Workers with higher family incomes tend to put in the longest hours already...

It seems unlikely that there is much room to improve here, which suggests a limited upside to cutting top marginal income tax rates. In contrast, employment rates and hours worked for the lowest income has much more room to improve. This suggests that cutting taxes and even subsidizing employment would be better focused on low-income workers.

Even if there was room to work more, it's not at all clear that tax cuts would motivate more effort. And on the demand side, the tax cuts would not impact aggregate demand as much as they would for lower income households.

Narrative Economics and the Laffer Curve

Tim Taylor:

Narrative Economics and the Laffer Curve: Robert Shiller delivered the Presidential Address for the American Economic Association on the subject of "Narrative Economics" in Chicago on January 7, 2017. A preliminary version of the underlying paper, together with slides from the presentation, is available here.

Shiller's broad point was that the key distinguishing trait of human beings may be that we  organize what we know in the form of stories.  He argues:

"Some have suggested that it is stories that most distinguish us from animals, and even that our species be called Homo narrans (Fisher 1984) or Homo narrator (Gould 1994) or Homo narrativus (Ferrand and Weil 2001) depending on whose Latin we use.  Might this be a more accurate description than Homo sapiens, i.e., wise man? Or might we say "narrative is intelligence" (Lo, 2007), with all of its limitations? It is more flattering to think of ourselves as Homo sapiens, but not necessarily more accurate."

Shiller goes on to make a case that narratives play a role in economic activity: for example, the way people act during the steep recession of 1920-21 and the Great Depression, as well as in the Great Recession and the most recent election. To me, one of his themes is that economist should seek to bring the narratives of these times that economic actors were telling themselves into their actual analysis by applying epidemiology models to examine actual spread of narratives, rather than bewailing narratives as a sort of unfair complication for the purity of our economic models.

Near the start, Shiller offers the Laffer Curve as an example of a narrative that had some lasting force. For those not familiar with the story, here's how Shiller tells it (footnotes omitted):

Let us consider as an example the narrative epidemic associated with the Laffer curve, a diagram created by economist Arthur Laffer ... The story of the Laffer curve did not go viral in 1974, the reputed date when Laffer first introduced it. Its contagion is explained by a literary innovation that was first published in a 1978 article in National Affairs by Jude Wanniski, an editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal. Wanniski wrote the colorful story about Laffer sharing a steak dinner at the Two Continents [restaurant] in Washington D.C. in 1974 with top White House powers Dick Cheney [at the time, a Deputy Assistant to President Ford, later to be Vice President] and Donald Rumsfeld (at the time Chief of Staff to President Ford, later to be Secretary of Defense]. Laffer drew his curve on a napkin at the restaurant table.  When news about the "curve drawn on a napkin" came out, with Wanniski's help, the story surprisingly went viral, so much that it is now commemorated. A napkin with the Laffer curve can be seen at the National Museum of American History ... 

Why did this story go viral? Laffer himself said after the Wanniski story exploded that he himself could not remember the event, which had taken place four years earlier. But Wanniski was a journalist who sensed that he had the elements of a good story. The key idea as Wanniski presented it is, indeed, punchy: At a zero-percent tax rate, the government collects no revenue. At a 100% tax rate the government would also collect no revenue, because people will not work if all the income is taken. Between the two extremes, the curve, relating tax revenue to tax rate, must have an inverted U shape. ...

Here is a notion of economic efficiency easy enough for anyone to understand. Wanniski suggested, without any data, that we are on the inefficient side of the Laffer curve. Laffer's genius was in narratives, not data collection. The drawing of the Laffer curve seems to suggest that cutting tax rates would produce a huge windfall in national  income. To most quantitatively-inclined people unfamiliar with economics, this explanation of economic inefficiency was a striking concept, contagious enough to go viral, even though economists, even though economists protested that we are not actually on the inefficient side of the Laffer Curve (Mirowski 1982). It is apparently impossible to capture why it is doubtful that we are on the inefficient side of the Laffer curve in so punch a manner that it has the ability to stifle the epidemic. Years later Laffer did refer broadly to the apparent effects of historic tax cuts (Laffer 2004); but in 1978 the narrative dominated. To tell the story really well one must set the scene at the fancy restaurant, with powerful Washington people and the napkin.

Here an image of what must be one of history's best-known napkins from the National Museum of American History, which reports that the exhibit was "made" on September 14, 1974, and measures 38.1 cm x 38.1 cm x .3175 cm, and was a gift from Patricia Koyce Wanniski:

Did Laffer really pull out a pen and start writing on a cloth napkin at a fancy restaurant, so that Jude Wanniski could take the napkin away with him? The website of the Laffer Center at the Pacific Research Institute describes it this way:

"As to Wanniski’s recollection of the story, Dr. Laffer has said that he cannot remember the details, but he does recall that the restaurant where they ate used cloth napkins and his mother had taught him not to desecrate nice things. He notes, however, that it could well be true because he used the so-called Laffer Curve all the time in classroom lectures and to anyone else who would listen." 

In the mid-1980s, when I was working as an editorial writer for the San Jose Mercury News in California, I interviewed Laffer when he was running for a US Senate seat.  He was energy personified and talked a blue streak, and I can easily imagine him writing on cloth napkins in a restaurant. When remembering the event 40 years later in 2014, Dick Cheney said:

It was late afternoon, sort of the-end-of-the-day kind of thing. As I recall, it was a round table. I remember a white tablecloth and white linen napkins because that’s what [Laffer] drew the curve on. It was just one of those events that stuck in my mind, because it’s not every day you see somebody whip out a Sharpie and mark up the cloth napkin at the dinner table. I remember it well, because I can’t recall anybody else drawing on a cloth napkin.

The point of Shiller's talk is that while a homo sapiens discussion of the empirical evidence behind the Laffer curve can be interesting in its own way, understanding the political and cultural impulse behind tax-cutting from the late 1970s up to the present requires genuine intellectual opennees to a homo narrativus explanation--that is, an understanding of what narratives have force at certain times, how such narratives come into being, why the narratives are powerful, and how the narratives affect various forms of economic behavior.

My own sense is that homo sapiens can be a slippery character in drawing conclusions. Homo sapiens likes to protest that all conclusions come from a dispassionate consideration of the evidence. But again and again, you will observe that when a certain homo sapiens agrees with the main thrust of a certain narrative, the supposedly dispassionate consideration of evidence involves compiling every factoid and theory in support, as well as denigrating those who believe otherwise as liars and fools; conversely, when a different homo sapiens disagrees with the main thrust of certain narrative, the supposedly dispassionate consideration of the evidence involves compiling every factoid and theory in opposition, and again denigrating those who believe otherwise as liars and fools. Homo sapiens often brandishes facts and theories as a nearly transparent cover for the homo narrativus within.

Paul Krugman: Deficits Matter Again

Republicans are planning to "blow up the deficit mainly by cutting taxes on the wealthy":

Deficits Matter Again, by Paul Krugman, NY Times: Not long ago prominent Republicans like Paul Ryan ... liked to warn in apocalyptic terms about the dangers of budget deficits, declaring that a Greek-style crisis was just around the corner. But ... tax cuts ... would, according to their own estimates, add $9 trillion in debt over the next decade. Hey, no problem. ...

All that posturing about the deficit was obvious flimflam, whose purpose was to hobble a Democratic president... But running big deficits is no longer harmless, let alone desirable.

The way it was: Eight years ago, with the economy in free fall, I wrote that we had entered an era of “depression economics,” in which the usual rules of economic policy no longer applied... In particular, deficit spending was essential to support the economy, and attempts to balance the budget would be destructive.

This diagnosis ... was ... always conditional, applying only to an economy far from full employment. That was the kind of economy President Obama inherited; but the Trump-Putin administration will, instead, come into power at a time when full employment has been more or less restored. ...

What changes once we’re close to full employment? Basically, government borrowing once again competes with the private sector for a limited amount of money. This means that deficit spending no longer provides much if any economic boost, because it drives up interest rates and “crowds out” private investment.

Now, government borrowing can still be justified if it serves an important purpose..., infrastructure is still a very good idea... But while candidate Trump talked about increasing public investment, there’s no sign at all that congressional Republicans are going to make such investment a priority.

No, they’re going to blow up the deficit mainly by cutting taxes on the wealthy. And that won’t do anything significant to boost the economy or create jobs. In fact, by crowding out investment it will somewhat reduce long-term economic growth. Meanwhile, it will make the rich richer, even as cuts in social spending make the poor poorer and undermine security for the middle class. But that, of course, is the intention. ...

But back to deficits: the crucial point is not that Republicans were hypocritical. It is, instead, that their hypocrisy made us poorer. They screamed about the evils of debt at a time when bigger deficits would have done a lot of good, and are about to blow up deficits at a time when they will do harm.

Team Trump’s New Pledge on Tax Cuts

David Leonhardt:

Team Trump’s New Pledge on Tax Cuts: ...Last week..., Steven Mnuchin said something unexpected on CNBC in his first interview after becoming Donald Trump’s choice for Treasury secretary. A friendly host invited Mnuchin to respond to the liberal charge that Trump’s tax cut was a sop to the rich. Mnuchin, a financier and former Goldman Sachs partner, refused — and made news instead.

“It’s not the case at all,” he said. “Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions, so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class. There will be a big tax cut for the middle class, but any tax cuts we have for the upper class will be offset by less deductions that pay for it.” ...

Of course, a single comment from Trump’s orbit — even from the captain of the economic team, who repeated it for emphasis — deserves skepticism. ...

Most Americans oppose a tax cut for the rich, polls indicate. History shows that the economic rationale is nonsense, which means it would not help the working-class voters who elected Trump. And the incoming president’s own Treasury secretary said it would not happen: “There will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.”

It’s a simple, yes-or-no standard. Call it the Mnuchian standard. Any plan that cuts taxes for the rich falls short and deserves to fail.

One Tax Policy Americans Yugely Favor

Gerald E. Scorse:

One tax policy Americans yugely favor, The Hill: Nobody likes taxes, but roughly nine out of 10 Americans want income from investments to be taxed at least as much as other income. Republican leaders, tone-deaf,... close their eyes to a reform enacted under President Ronald Reagan: equal taxes on capital gains, dividends, and ordinary income such as wages. It’s one policy the country would love to have back, yugely. ...

The landslide national preference for at least equal taxes on investments—for tax fairness, not tax breaks—meshes perfectly with the populist belief that the system is rigged in favor of the rich. ... According to an analysis by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of Americans receives over 62 percent of the benefits from lower rates on capital gains, dividends and related tax preferences; for the top 10 percent, the total benefit share is just short of 80 percent.

That’s more than alright with Republicans, whose tax plans will likely drive those percentages even higher—in exactly the opposite direction of the reform ushered in a generation ago by President Reagan. He took Main Street’s side on taxing Wall Street gains, but the GOP likes to pretend it never happened. ...

Donald Trump rode the populist tide all the way to the White House. Let’s see if President Trump listens to the populist yearning—the yuge populist yearning—for equal taxes on income from wealth and income from work.

Taxing the Rich More—Evidence from the 2013 Federal Tax Increase

Emmanuel Saez:

Taxing the rich more—evidence from the 2013 federal tax increase: One of the most contentious aspects of the tax policy debate in the United States today is the proper level of taxation of the rich. In the current presidential election contest, Hillary Clinton proposes to increase taxes on the rich while Donald Trump proposes to cut taxes on the rich. This policy decision is particularly important because the concentration of income at the top is extremely high. ...

Progressive taxation historically is the most powerful tool to reduce income concentration. The classic counter argument is that higher top tax rates might discourage economic activity among the rich. In a recent paper, I analyze the effects of the 2013 federal income tax increase on the behavior of top income earners to cast light on this issue. ...

After President Obama was re-elected in early November 2012, it was virtually certain that top income tax rates would go up in 2013. For the rich, shifting $100 of income from 2013 to 2012 saves $9 in taxes for capital income (and $6 for labor income), which means the rich had strong incentives to accelerate their incomes into 2012 to benefit from the lower 2012 tax rates and avoid the higher 2013 tax rates. ...

This retiming response is large—income earners in the top 1 percent shifted about 10 percent of their income from 2013 into 2012. Lost government tax revenues, however, were modest as income shifted into 2012 still were taxed at the 2012 rates, which were about three-quarters of the 2013 tax rate. ...

I estimate that only about 20 percent of the projected revenue increase from the 2013 tax hike is lost due to the behavioral responses over the medium term. Second, by itself, the 2013 tax increase will not be sufficient to curb the extraordinarily high level of pre-tax income concentration in the United States.

These findings echo the findings of earlier work analyzing the 1993 Clinton era tax increase, which also generated short-term retiming of top incomes into 1992 but did not prevent top income shares from surging in the mid-to-late 1990s. It is also striking that the best growth experience for the bottom 99 percent of income earners over the past 25 years took place in the mid-to-late 1990s and between 2013 and 2015—after tax increases on the rich. This suggests that taxing the rich more does not have detrimental effects on the broader economy; quite the contrary.

The Facts of Economic Growth

One of the many "Facts of Economic Growth" in an 80 page paper from Charles I. Jones:

The Facts of Economic Growth: ... One of the most obvious and readily quantified measures of government involvement in the economy is taxes. It is easy to write down models in which governments that tax heavily reduce the long-run success of their economies. The facts, however, are not so clear.

Figure 33 shows the growth rate of real GDP per person in the United States since 1980 as well as the total government tax revenues (including state and local) as a share of GDP... The stunning fact that emerges from this graph is that taxes have increased enormously, from around 10 percent of GDP in 1929 to more than 30 percent of GDP at their peak in 2000. But as we already noted earlier, growth rates over the 20th century were remarkably stable — if anything, they were higher after 1950 than before.

Figure 34 shows a related fact by looking across the countries of the world: tax revenues as a share of GDP are positively correlated with economic success, not negatively correlated.

Of course, these are just simple correlations, and they have an obvious interpretation. Governments do not simply throw the tax revenue that they collect into the ocean. Instead, this revenue — at least to some extent — is used to fund the good purposes that governments serve: providing a stable rule of law, a judicial system, education, public health, highways, basic research, and so on. ...

Estate Tax a Key Tool for Fighting US Inequality

Caroline Freund at PIIE:

Estate Tax a Key Tool for Fighting US Inequality: This year marks the 100th anniversary of the US estate tax, which affects only the ultra-wealthy. Given the rising focus on American income inequality, the tax should be on solid ground. Not so.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has vowed to eliminate the estate tax, while Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton wants to revive it ...

There are good reasons to support this tax:

As I have pointed out previously, there is no productive activity in inheriting a large sum of money, so it does little to distort the economy.

Estate taxes also raise revenue and redistribute wealth. ...

Historically such taxes have worked well in the United States. ...

The future of the estate tax will depend heavily on the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump would like to see it gone. This is not unthinkable, since in a largely symbolic vote last year the House of Representatives voted to abolish it. ...

Hillary Clinton proposes higher estate tax brackets as wealth increases, reaching 65 percent for a billionaire couple. My guess is that if people really understood the incidence of the tax, 99.8 percent of the population would support her proposal.

Don't Believe Trump’s Tax and Spending Plans

At MoneyWatch, why I think Social Security and Medicare will be in danger of large cuts if Trump is elected:

Don't believe Trump’s tax and spending plans: Donald Trump’s new tax plan will increase the national debt between $4.4 trillion and $5.9 trillion over a decade, and that’s according to estimates from the conservative Tax Foundation. That range of $1.5 trillion is due to uncertainty about how Trump would levy some types of business taxes and how his tax cuts would be paid for.

First, the Republican candidate says, higher economic growth from lower taxes and deregulation will pay for most of the increase in the debt. According to Trump, his plan will boost output substantially, and the higher tax revenue that comes with it will offset most of the lost revenue. 

Second, his “penny plan” would make up the rest of the revenue lost to his tax cuts. This plan would cut spending on nondefense programs funded by annual appropriations by 1 percent each year. 

Since the cuts would affect only a part of the budget (defense and entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security are excluded), the plan would reduce spending on programs such as“veterans’ medical care…, scientific and medical research, border enforcement, education, child care, national parks, air traffic control, housing assistance for low-income families, and maintenance of harbors, dams, and waterways,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The total spending reduction would be approximately 25 percent over 10 years.

You should be skeptical of both claims. ...

Trump Campaign’s “Dynamic Scoring” of Revised Tax Plan Should Be Taken With More Than a Grain of Salt

The Trump campaign endorses a standard Republican tax con. This is from Chad Stone and Chye-Ching Huang at the CBPP:

Trump Campaign’s “Dynamic Scoring” of Revised Tax Plan Should Be Taken With More Than a Grain of Salt: The revised tax plan that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump will release today was reportedly designed at least in part to reduce the cost of his earlier plan,^[1] which would have generated very large revenue losses.^[2] The revised plan now looks similar to the tax plan that House Republican leaders introduced in June, which cost less than Trump’s original plan. Moreover, like the House plan, the Trump plan takes advantage of an aggressive approach to “dynamic scoring” that the Tax Foundation uses to estimate how tax cuts affect the economy and the budget, which sharply lowers the estimated revenue loss from certain tax-cut provisions.^[3] We should, however, view such large dynamic effects derived from Tax Foundation estimates with considerable skepticism. That’s because the Tax Foundation, with its unusually large dynamic estimates, is considerably outside the analytic mainstream.

In particular, the Tax Foundation assumes that certain tax cuts produce far larger increases in business investment than researchers typically find. Consequently, the Tax Foundation estimates that certain tax changes will produce far greater economic activity and a far smaller revenue loss than do Congress’s highly respected official estimating bodies — the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). ...

Analysts continue to debate whether and how to implement dynamic scoring.^[7] It’s new and controversial: the best way to model dynamic effects remains unsettled; and the estimates produced can vary depending on the assumptions used. Mainstream analysts typically find that any additional economic activity generated by tax cuts can offset, at most, a modest portion of their cost. With that in mind, the Tax Foundation’s dynamic scoring estimates — including those that the Trump campaign is relying on for its estimates of its revised tax plan — should be viewed with particular skepticism.

For instance, in 2015, the Tax Foundation estimated that making permanent the bonus-depreciation tax break (which allows businesses to deduct a larger share of the cost of their equipment in the year they purchase it) would generate enough new revenue to pay for more than 75 percent of its costs, while JCT pegged the figure at less than 5 percent. ...

The Tax Foundation produces its dynamic scoring estimates very quickly, while JCT and CBO take much more time to develop theirs. And JCT and CBO don’t analyze tax plans from candidates, so no official analysis of the Trump plan will be available. The nonpartisan Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (TPC) provides estimates of candidates’ tax plans but usually takes some time to provide them. Thus, after Mr. Trump unveils his revised plan today, the estimate based on the Tax Foundation’s model will likely be the most widely cited one for a while.

Consequently, one should approach any forthcoming estimate based on the Tax Foundation model with considerable caution. ...

After an extensive analysis and explanation, they conclude:

The initial Trump tax plan was widely estimated to lose large amounts of revenue and substantially enlarge future deficits and debt. The Trump team says that the revised plan costs substantially less. In addition to including some policy changes that lower the standard cost estimate, the Trump team will cite the estimates they have derived from Tax Foundation work to claim that the plan will produce large “dynamic” effects on economic growth and revenues.

As this analysis documents, the Tax Foundation model generates far larger economic and budgetary effects than the models of the Congressional Budget Office and Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation, and relies on assumptions that are inconsistent with the economic evidence or well outside mainstream economic thinking. All dynamic budget estimates should be approached with caution. That admonition applies with particular force to the highly questionable dynamic estimates that the Tax Foundation model produces.

Drivers of inequality: Trade Shocks Versus Top Marginal Tax Rates

Douglas Campbell and Lester Lusher at VoxEU:

Drivers of inequality: Trade shocks versus top marginal tax rates: Growing wealth inequality has been one of the most pressing political issues since the Great Recession. However, there is a relative lack of consensus on the significant drivers of this trend. This column investigates the contribution of globalization, via international trade, to US wealth inequality. Although trade is found to have had important effects on certain parts of the US labor market in the early 2000s, the growth in US inequality since 1980 can be traced back to Reagan-era tax cuts. ...

The Case for a Financial Transactions Tax

Dean Baker:

The Case for a Financial Transactions Tax, The Century Foundation: There has been considerable interest in financial transactions taxes (FTTs) in the United States and other wealthy countries in the years since the financial crisis. An FTT can be a way to both raise a large amount of revenue and also rein in the financial sector. This report examines the evidence on the potential for raising revenue through an FTT, its impact on the economy, and also the possibility of using the revenue to defray in particular the cost of higher education. The report argues:

• A financial transactions tax could likely raise over $105 billion annually (0.6 percent of GDP) based on 2015 trading volume. This estimate is roughly in the middle of recent estimates that ranged from as high as $580 billion to as low as $30 billion.
• The full amount of this tax would be borne by the financial industry, and not individual holders of stock or pension funds and other institutional investors. Evidence suggests that trading volume is elastic with respect to price, meaning that any drop in trading volume resulting from the tax would reduce costs for end users by a larger amount than the tax would increase them.
• It is reasonable to believe that the industry would be no less effective in serving its productive use (allocating capital) after the tax is in place. This means that one of the primary effects of the tax would be to reduce waste in the financial sector, reducing costs while having little or no effect on its principal purpose: to allocate capital effectively.
• The revenue raised through an FTT would easily be large enough to cover the cost of free college tuition (among other social programs), although if nothing were done to stem the growth rate of college costs, it would eventually prove inadequate.

The report also notes that the financial sector is the main source of income for many of the highest earners in the economy. This means that downsizing the industry through an FTT could play an important role in reducing income inequality. ...

Are Tax Hikes on the Wealthy Bad for Growth?

I have something at MoneyWatch:

Tax hikes on the wealthy: Good or bad for growth?: Conservatives have argued for decades that tax cuts are the key to economic prosperity. And the tax plan presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is pushing would cut taxes for the top 0.1 percent of earners by an average of approximately $1.3 million per year, embracing that conservative point of view.

On the other hand, Democrats such as front-runner Hillary Clinton take another approach. Clinton says she'll reform the U.S. tax code so that the wealthiest pay their fair share. The response from Republicans has been predictable: They argue that such a tax plan will lower growth and harm the economy.

Do the conservative arguments against tax increases have any merit? Or are they, as Democrats claim, a way to serve an ideological goal of smaller government and reward wealthy Republican donors? Let's take a closer look. ...

Study Dispels Myth about Millionaire Migration in the US

From the American Sociological Association

Study dispels myth about millionaire migration in the US., EurekAlert: The view that the rich are highly mobile has gained much political traction in recent years and has become a central argument in debates about whether there should be "millionaire taxes" on top-income earners. But a new study dispels the common myth about the propensity of millionaires in the United States to move from high to low tax states.

"The most striking finding in our study is how little elites seem willing to move to exploit tax advantages across state lines," said Cristobal Young, an assistant professor of sociology at Stanford University and the lead author of the study. ...

In any given year, Young and his fellow researchers found that roughly 500,000 individuals file tax returns reporting incomes of $1 million or more (constant 2005 dollars). From this population, only about 12,000 millionaires change their state each year. The annual millionaire migration rate is 2.4 percent, which is lower than the migration rate of the general population (2.9 percent). The highest rates of migration are seen among low-income tax filers: migration is 4.5 percent among people who earn around $10,000 a year. ...

The study finds that family responsibilities are a key factor that limit migration among top-income earners. "Very affluent people are much more likely to be married and to have school-age children, which makes moving more difficult," Young said. ...

While millionaire migration is extremely limited, there is a grain of truth in the worries about millionaire tax flight, the study finds. "When millionaires do migrate, they are more likely to move to a state with a lower tax rate, and that state is almost always Florida," Young said. ...

"My guess is that if Florida established a 'millionaire tax,' elites would still find Florida appealing because of its climate and geography -- and patterns of elite migration wouldn't really change," Young said. ...

The study also looked at the millionaire population along the borders between states with different tax rates. "In these narrow geographic regions, you would expect millionaires to cluster on the low tax side of the border, but we see very weak evidence of this," Young said.

As for policy implications, Young said "millionaire taxes" result in minimal tax flight among millionaires and help states raise revenue to improve education, infrastructure, and public services, while reducing inequality.

"Our research indicates that 'millionaire taxes' raise a lot of revenue and have very little downside," Young said.

For an Inheritance Tax

Chris Dillow:

For an inheritance tax: The news that David Cameron got £500,000 tax-free from his parents raises the question of how or whether inheritances should be taxed. My view is that they should be, and heavily so.

Certainly, a lot of the defences of inheritance look pathetically weak. For example:

“Because a parent’s income was taxed, taxing inheritances is a form of double taxation.” But the same is true for most incomes. When people buy the Investors Chronicle – thus handing money over to me - they do so out of taxed income. Should I therefore escape income tax?

“People should be able to provide for their kids.” Most recipients of inheritances, however, are middle-aged. And the prospect of a big inheritance can actually damage offspring, by reducing their self-reliance and incentives to work and save. ...

“Inheritance tax punishes aspiration.” In most cases, though, the aspiration is an illusory one. HMRC data show that of the 279,301 estates that were left in 2012-13, a mere 6.4% attracted tax. Even if the IHT threshold were greatly reduced, only a minority would pay it.

This, though, brings me to why I favour inheritance taxes. ... We should think of every penny of inheritance which is not taxed as a penny which has to be raised from income taxes. Low inheritance tax thus means high income tax. From this perspective, those who want tax-free inheritances are exactly like benefit scroungers. They want something for nothing at the expense of hardworking tax-payers. It is, therefore, the lack of a serious inheritance tax – and thus the higher taxes on workers, savers and entrepreneurs – that is truly an attack upon aspirations.

If – as I find plausible – the prospect of getting an inheritance reduces labour supply, then optimal taxation might require big inheritance tax rates; these might be less distortionary than income taxes. ...

Surely, there is something fundamentally unjust about being able to get £500,000 tax-free from not working, when the same sum obtained by work would be heavily taxed.

I suspect opposition to sensible inheritance taxes owes more to the rich’s colossal sense of entitlement than it does to justice or economic efficiency. ...

'Trump, Cruz Tax-Cut Plans Would Force Historically Dramatic Cuts'

From the CBPP:

Trump, Cruz Tax-Cut Plans Would Force Historically Dramatic Cuts: The tax-cut proposals from Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, in conjunction with their calls for balancing the budget, would dictate low levels of government spending not seen since about 1950, as we explain in a new paper.  Programs that receive support across the political spectrum and are important to the well-being of most Americans would dramatically shrink or disappear altogether.  Even if policymakers didn’t achieve budget balance under their tax-cut plans but simply offset the costs of the plans themselves, the consequences to essential programs — and to low- and middle-income Americans — would be severe. 

These conclusions emerge from an analysis of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center’s (TPC) revenue estimates of the Trump and Cruz tax plans — which would reduce revenues by $9.5 trillion and $8.7 trillion over the next ten years, respectively, according to TPC — and CBPP estimates of what such revenue levels imply for government spending.  This analysis examines only the Trump and Cruz plans because TPC has not analyzed John Kasich’s proposals and because the proposals of Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would raise revenues, not reduce them.  The specific findings include...

As dramatic as these figures are, they understate the pressure that the two candidates’ proposals would place on many government programs.  Both have proposed large spending increases in certain areas, including Senator Cruz’s proposal to increase defense spending by $2.7 trillion over the next decade and Mr. Trump’s proposal to increase spending on veterans by $500 billion to $1 trillion over this period.  Offsetting the cost of such increases, as well as the tax cuts, would require even deeper cuts to other programs. ...

The State of American Politics

Paul Ryan, in a speech on the state of American politics, says:

We don’t lock ourselves in an echo chamber, where we take comfort in the dogmas and opinions we already hold.

Followed by:

... in 1981 the Kemp-Roth bill was signed into law, lowering tax rates, spurring growth, and putting millions of Americans back to work.

Bruce Bartlett:

... I was the staff economist for Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) in 1977, and it was my job to draft what came to be the Kemp-Roth tax bill, which Reagan endorsed in 1980 and enacted the following year. ...

Republicans like to say that massive growth followed the Reagan tax cut. But average real GDP growth during Reagan’s eight years in the White House was only slightly above the rate of the previous eight years: 3.4 percent per year vs. 2.9 percent. The average unemployment rate was actually higher under Reagan than it was during the previous eight years: 7.5 percent vs. 6.6 percent. ...