Friday, September 13, 2024
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
Remember last fall when a bunch of Nobel economists assured us that gobs more spending by Joe Biden wouldn't have serious inflationary impacts?
Here's what the ring leader of Tom Nichols' vaunted expert class of economists had to say at the time:
Some, however, have invoked fears of inflation as a reason to not undertake these investments. This view is short-sighted. ... We need safe school buildings and bridges, and affordable child and elder care, whether inflation is 2% or 5%. With the investments being financed by tax increases, the inflationary impacts will be at most negligible ...
The Build Back Better package ... would transform the U.S. economy to be more efficient, equitable, sustainable, and prosperous for the long run, without presenting an inflationary threat.
From Joe Stiglitz' letter last September, here. Robert Shiller of all people signed on to this load of hooey. Carl Schramm unloaded on all this yesterday, here.
Stiglitz wrote that with a straight face when inflation had already soared to 5.3% in July. The orgy of coronavirus spending in 2020-2021 was already stoking the inflation engine, but the experts then simply ignored it, and called for more! more! more!
Now look where we are, even without more.
Government spending in the United States hasn't been financed by tax increases in decades. We wouldn't be $30 trillion in the hole if it were. It's financed by borrowing, and the interest payments on that borrowing progressively accumulate to crowd-out other spending. One day soon interest payments on the debt will become the biggest part of the budget, severely limiting our ability to allocate resources responsibly.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Sunday, July 6, 2014
GDP less interest payments on the debt 2006-2012 is net positive $44.1 billion, that's all
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
American Businesses Have Saved $2.8 Trillion In Last Four Years Due To ZIRP
Friday, April 26, 2013
Big Deal: Debt To GDP Ratio Comes In At 105%
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Interest Payments On The Debt Are Not Counted As GDP
Interest Payments On The Debt Continue To Consume GDP Gains
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Interest On The Debt 2007-2012 Has Completely Swallowed GDP Growth
Friday, July 27, 2012
Q2 2012 Anemic GDP Nearly Swallowed Whole By June's Debt Service Payment
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Sunday, July 15, 2012
HELOC Required Payments Are Set To Explode Between 2012-2018
Saturday, June 23, 2012
Since 2005, Interest Payments On Federal Debt Have Consumed 91% Of GDP Gains
Sunday, November 27, 2011
Interest on Federal Debt Topped $454 Billion in Fiscal 2011
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R.I.P. |
(source)
Monday, November 21, 2011
Michael Barone Joins The Liberal Chorus Attacking Progressive Taxation
Barone and other liberal Republicans like Pat Toomey, Gang of Sixers and Gang of Twelvers do it on the grounds that the deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes help the $100K+ set more.
[T]he big money you can get from eliminating tax preferences comes from three provisions that are widely popular.
The three are the charitable deduction, the home mortgage interest deduction, and the state and local tax deduction. ...
[T]he vast bulk of the "tax expenditures" -- the money the government doesn't receive because taxpayers deduct mortgage interest payments from total income -- goes to high earners . . ..
Well why shouldn't they under a progressive tax system?
There's really no difference between Michael Barone and Republican advocates for "tax reform" and Democrats like Peter Orszag, for example, who makes an argument for similarly flattening deductibility for the rich by limiting their traditional deductions enjoyed by everyone across the income spectrum. What this amounts to is an admission that the progressive deductibility which we have now does NOT go hand in hand with the tax code's progressive taxation.
The current arrangement may not seem fair to flat taxers, but it is internally consistent. If you pay progressively more in taxes, your deductions should justly be progressively worth more to you. And so they are. If you pay progressively less in taxes, your deductions should justly be worth less to you, progressively. And so they are.
Proposals to limit deductions for one class of taxpayers amount to destroying the internal coherence of the progressive tax code itself. It is nothing less than an attack on the idea of progressivity and its fair unfairness, all in the name of extracting even more from the pockets of successful people.
Sheer nincompoopery.