On Jan 21 2010 our High Court shocked Americans by ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission that a corporation may contribute unlimited funds advertising its views for and against political candidates of its choice – in practice, the choice of its CEO or Directors. . . . → Read More: Corporations, Democracy, and the US Supreme Court
|
|||||
|
Some cities have grown in notable spurts. Some of these cities were new; others have revived after decaying. Cities’ cells, like ours, metabolize and can refresh themselves constantly. Cities need not die like us. They can continue this cycle of renewal forever, when people remodel buildings and clear and renew sites. This can happen even after periods of sickness . . . → Read More: New Life in Old Cities There is a strong movement afoot to tax just consumption rather than all income. The “good reason” for this is to promote saving and investment, and thus enhance domestic capital formation, said to be the main force for economic growth, poorly defined but assumed to be a good thing. A battery of well-financed pols, . . . → Read More: Tax Reforms to “Promote” Saving would Backfire Commercial-capitalist civilization has progressed in step with people’s success in fending off sales taxes in their various guises. We might begin with The Enlightenment, late 18th Century, with its epicenter in Versailles. At the core were the philosophes; at their core were les économistes, or Physiocrats; and at their core was the physician from . . . → Read More: The Sales Tax: History of a Dumb Idea This paper deals with an anomaly one meets when seeking to teach and apply the ideas promoted by Henry George. How does one forward the interests of labor by untaxing capital? George left some unanswered questions, and later writers and activists have not met them. Mason Gaffney, 2004, in Lindy Davies (ed.), The . . . → Read More: The Danger of Favoring Capital over Labor THE TREATMENT of rent as public revenue is part and parcel of an organic theory of the State. The question I am assigned is whether the taxable capacity of land without buildings is up to the job of financing cities, counties, and schools. Will the revenue be enough? The answer is “yes.” 1993. In Patricia Salkin (ed.), Land Value Taxation, Papers from a Conference sponsored by The Government Law Center of Albany Law School, The Senate Environmental . . . → Read More: The Taxable Capacity of Land In the sections that follow, I first document the rise of inequality in the distribution of farmland that followed a sharp drop in farm property tax rates after 1930. Then I show, by cross-sectional analysis, a positive relationship between higher property tax rates and more intensive use of farmland, which in turn is associated with more equal distribution of farmland. Conversely, . . . → Read More: Rising Inequality and Falling Property Tax Rates The Harvard Registrar reports the most popular undergraduate courses now are “Justice,” “Principles of Economics,” “The Concept of the Hero,” and “Literature of Social Reflection.” The “Me Generation” is passing; Justice, Heroism and Social Thought are “In.” Are economists ready for this future? I think not: changes must be made. So called “capital gains” are actually unearned income, economic rent. Expanding tax favors for capital gains worsens inequality and impairs . . . → Read More: Capital Gains and the Future of Free Enterprise |
|||||
|
Copyright © 2012 Mason's Blog - All Rights Reserved |
|||||
