Comments on: Tax Cuts and the Deficit

By: jberg

jberg — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:40:17 +0000

I just found a great article making the same argument in more depth, and with more evidence: “A World Upside Down? Deficit Fantasies in the Great Recession,” by Thomas Ferguson and Robert Johnson, published by the Roosevelt Institute, online at http://www.newdeal20.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/a-world-upside-down.

By: jberg

jberg — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:40:20 +0000

OK, I have to admit I was thinking mostly about the rhetoric involved in forcing a vote on a tax that hit only the super-rich. I agree that capital flight is possible — and probably the old solutions, e.g. currency controls, won’t work any more. I think there probably are some partial solutions, such as taxing income where it’s earned, including unearned income – e.g., if you make it on the New York Stock Exchange, you’ve got to pay US taxes on it — but the technicalities are beyond me.

I like the concept of earned unearned income, though!

By: Ken Cosgrove

Ken Cosgrove — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 17:58:40 +0000

A lot to like here. The problem with the 95% tax rate on ten million that we had in the 50′s is that it missed the whole globalization process and the impact that technology has had facilitating the movement of capital around the world. At that rate, all that will get produced is capital outflow from high to low tax jurisdictions much as has happened in the USA during the last several decades. I have no solution to this, I just see people making this argument without raising the modern context at all and that seems like a huge mistake to me.