So, corporate taxes.
How much does it cost to make a car?
No, don't laugh. Seriously. If I am a corporation, I need to pay taxes on my income. That's revenues minus expenses. So I really need to know what my expenses are.
What are they?
I make a car, and tons of materials go into it. I have leather, of course, and aluminum. Barium, Asbestos, Copper, Cobalt. So how do I figure all that out?
Just add them up?
Nope, can't do that, because companies maintain inventories. I got 1000 tons of alu
2021 Estimated Budget, from CBO (figures in percentage of GDP):
Revenues: 20.8%
Mandatory Spending: 14%
Discretionary Spending: 6.7%
Net Interest: 3.3%
Deficit: 3.2% ($763billion)
That's the baseline from CBO. That assumes the Bush tax cuts are eliminated in their entirety, and we don't patch the AMT. That's tax revenue that Bill Clinton reached once at the height of the Internet Bubble. That assumes we basically cut all discretionary spending that isn't the military.
And that's still
Can you tax Warren Buffet? I don't mean Laffer Curve stuff, I mean, basically, when you get right down to it, can you tax Warren Buffet?
The question took chunks of the EconBlogosphere recently. And the answer...not clear.
Yeah, we can certainly tax his money. But that obfuscates the issue, because money is useless. You cannot eat money. You cannot build a house out of money. You cannot cure cancer with money. So who cares how much money Warren Buffet is making? What matters most are the raw r
The United States has 11 aircraft carriers.
Here are where our carriers currently are: 1 underway to the South China sea, 1 deployed in Japan to be ready to respond to North Korea, 1 deployed in Japan to help in relief efforts, 1 deployed in the Red Sea heading to the Suez Canal, and 1 in the Arabian Sea.
We have 1 additional carrier ready to be deployed in case WWIII breaks out tomorrow. The rest (5) are under-repair.
At the start of the Arab protests, the US had no carriers deployed in the
Various links from the economics blogosphere and others
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/03/what-caused-inequality-to-grow/72536/
http://www.scottwinship.com/1/post/2011/03/what-would-it-mean-for-theories-of-us-income-inequality-growth-if-the-us-experience-has-been-similar-to-that-everywhere-else.html
The graphs aren't great, but Megan McArdle and Scott Winship wonder what caused American income inequality to grow. In particular, Winship wonders whether America is really that
Various links from the economics blogosphere and some others. Emphasis today on the Labor Market, to correspond with the somewhat positive jobs report (192,000 jobs added, 8.9% unemployment, 15.9% broad-based unemployment)
http://www.themoneyillusion.com/?p=9174
Sumner takes on the notion of "jobless recoveries." He says that the current recession recovery and the post-2000 recovery are not true jobless recoveries, because there is no actual recovery in GDP growth. We are at best digging sidew
1776:
1861:
Yes, religion is !@#$%^&*. So is America. So is Coca-Cola. So is Catcher in the Rye, and "the spark," and Santa Claus, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
I spend a lot of time talking about stupid cultural norms and the influence they have over our society. Many people take this to mean as me being some sort of orthodox liberal (in the traditional sense of the word) that should also be a political liberal (in the American sense of the word). If rules are stupid, why support t
Economics, like the hard sciences, and many of the soft sciences, is a very confusing subject. And, even when you understand the material, you are prone to making some real, REAL bone-headed moves. For instance, the President of the Minneaplois Fed saying low interest rates cause deflation. The problem is explanations that SOUND good, but, on a more in-depth look, really don’t make much sense.
Today I want to talk about an idea like that. It sounds realllllyyyy good. They teach it as fact in t
Originally, I was thinking about posting something about economic fallacies and "vicious cycle" thinking, but I'll save that for next week. A Christmas present of sorts.
Today, I'm more interested in talking about drop-down cribs, which the government banned this week. Basic backstory: cribs are manufactured to have one of the sides drop down, so parents can more easily reach their child. To see how this can go wrong, take a look at
wonderful youtube video. Or
one.On the surface, looks ok
“Sure, recessions are bad. But the recession will go away. The deficit might ruin the country, and too much money might cause inflation, so we should bite the bullet and let ride the recession out.”
It’s not a popular sentiment, but one I hear sometimes. Recessions heal naturally, right? And unemployment, while bad, isn’t THAT bad, right? But running big deficits…well that’s REALLY bad. Excuse me while I wash out my ears. This mind-set does HUGE damage to the economy, which is already running p
Wow, a full 17 days since my last entry? I'm a terrible blogger. I have something good to say today, though!
Americans observe Thanksgiving tomorrow. We get together with family members, eat a bunch of turkey and pumpkin pie, and watch the Cowboys lose in spectacular fashion. And, something about giving thanks.
I'm an econ guy. What do we really have to give thanks for? Our lives ain't that bad, but they're a lot crappier than they should be. North Korea is attacking our ally, the economy is a
Confession: I peruse the economics subReddit on occasion. Most of the time, the experience leaves me wanting to pull my hair out. But today I ran across something that may be of interest to you.
The topic is what is says on the tin: is the Federal Reserve about to go bankrupt?
I read the article expecting some whack-job nonsense. Bankruptcy is a legal condition where companies unable to pay their debts are either restructured or liquidated. The Federal Reserve probably cannot go bankrupt in th
Money is a very interesting topic in economics. Unlike most other goods, almost every developed nation runs a monopoly on money, even the “free market” ones like America and Britain. And almost no economist (besides a few renegade Austrians) think this is a bad idea. Actually, it’s almost entirely the opposite: most economists think responsible governments SHOULD control the supply of money.
The reason is actually pretty simple: deciding whether or not to print more money isn’t that hard to do
