Four of one today, and one of the other.
- “In their new book, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman challenge seemingly every fundamental element of conventional tax policy analysis. Given the attention the book has generated, it is worth stepping back and considering their sweeping critique of conventional wisdom. Spoiler: My goal here is to present these issues, not resolve them.”
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William G. Gale on the public economics topic du jour, tax policy as per Saez and Zucman.
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.. - “I find this episode appalling, and I hope The New York Times is properly upset at having been “had.”#TheGreatForgetting”
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Strong language from Prof. Cowen is an underrated signal by definition. He is less than happy about this article.
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.. - A Twitter thread that only econ nerds should read – but econ nerds really should read it.
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.. - And finally, another post about it from MR.
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“”This is quite remarkable. If the sensible way of defining tax rates involves excluding transfers from the denominator (as they claim), the fact that it leads to very high rates by construction at the bottom should be because this is a sensible summary of reality. Yet, in their own words, it’s a problem. Rather than switching method, they drop the people at the very bottom which conveniently covers up the problem (but leaves a less severe version of the problem in their remaining lower income sample). Of course, they could have just used the standard definition which includes transfers in the denominator, but doing this destroys the entire headline result.”
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.. - And because we can all have more than our fair share of public economics and taxes, here’s Gulzar Natarajan wondering aloud, as he puts it, about the Indian economy.
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“”Therefore public spending has to be tailored to maximise the boost to consumption and investment. In other words, it should seek to target instruments with the highest fiscal multipliers and target population or consumption groups with the highest marginal propensity to consume.”
EconForEverybody 