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  1. Havakasha is offline
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    Joined: Sep 2009 Posts: 5,358
    11-28-2011, 05:30 PM #1

    Things To Tax

    OP-ED COLUMNIST
    Things to Tax
    By PAUL KRUGMAN
    Published: November 27, 2011
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/op...gs-to-tax.html

    The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal.

    And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

    Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

    About those high incomes: In my last column I suggested that the very rich, who have had huge income gains over the last 30 years, should pay more in taxes. I got many responses from readers, with a common theme being that this was silly, that even confiscatory taxes on the wealthy couldn’t possibly raise enough money to matter.

    Folks, you’re living in the past. Once upon a time America was a middle-class nation, in which the super-elite’s income was no big deal. But that was another country.

    The I.R.S. reports that in 2007, that is, before the economic crisis, the top 0.1 percent of taxpayers — roughly speaking, people with annual incomes over $2 million — had a combined income of more than a trillion dollars. That’s a lot of money, and it wouldn’t be hard to devise taxes that would raise a significant amount of revenue from those super-high-income individuals.
    Last edited by Havakasha; 11-28-2011 at 05:32 PM.

  2. Havakasha is offline
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    11-29-2011, 12:00 PM #2
    Bill Keller: "There really is a textbook way to fix our current mess. Short-term stimulus works to help an economy recover from a recession. Some kinds of stimulus pay off more quickly than others. Once the economic heart is pumping again, we need to get our deficits under control... So what's the problem? Why is our system so fundamentally stuck? Partly it's a colossal, bipartisan lack of the political courage required to tell people what they sort of know but don't want to hear... But also, I've come to think something is rotten in the state of economics. The dismal science, as Thomas Carlyle called it, has been ravaged by the same virus that has corrupted the rest of our national discourse."

    "Economists don't live in caves, so there is no reason they should be immune to the centrifugal politics of this noisy world. Thus serious scholars are tempted to sign onto ideas that stretch their own credulity, and lesser economists are thrust forward for their moment of fame as witnesses on behalf of dubious claims. Economists cluster in ideological think tanks that promote political conformity rather than intellectual rigor. Politicians, with no generally accepted consensus to challenge them, can get away with plucking data out of context to bolster assertions that are based more on faith than on reality."

  3. SiriuslyLong is offline
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    Joined: Jan 2009 Location: Ann Arbor, MI Posts: 3,560
    11-30-2011, 05:19 PM #3
    "Economists cluster in ideological think tanks that promote political conformity rather than intellectual rigor."

    Funny how you would post such a thing after a Krugman article. Krugman, the undisputed king of looking at others and judging that the government should tax them more. What a patriot. What a great value to have.

    As someone already said, Mr. Krugman can write a check to the government and put his money where his mouth is - instead of looking around, judging, as if he is of the highest moral authority. It really is a dispicable quality.