Thought Pieces

I found the following articles worth reading and thinking about. I don’t necessarily agree with them, but I continue to think about the questions they raise.

Why We Should Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax by Megan McArdle, The Atlantic, October 28, 2010. “The corporate income tax is an extraordinarily clumsy vehicle for the social purposes it is supposed to serve—it doesn’t raise that much revenue, and it doesn’t necessarily fall most heavily on the rich. There are better ways to serve its progressive goals, at least as I see them—to reallocate income from capital to labor, and from rich to poor.”

The Least We Can Do by Michael Kinsley, The Atlantic, October 2010. “But if a couple dies leaving assets worth half a million dollars, the risk they were insuring against—poverty in old age—evidently didn’t materialize. The money they received from Social Security, aimed at covering that risk, is instead passed along to their Boomer children. That, surely, was never the idea. Why shouldn’t they give it back? Or some part of it? Social Security sent out checks worth $682 billion last year, so there is real money here.”

An Investment Manager’s View on the Top 1% “Those in the 99th to 99.5th percentile lack access to power. … Unlike those in the lower half of the top 1%, those in the top half and, particularly, top 0.1%, can often borrow for almost nothing, keep profits and production overseas, hold personal assets in tax havens, ride out down markets and economies, and influence legislation in the U.S. They have access to the very best in accounting firms, tax and other attorneys, numerous consultants, private wealth managers, a network of other wealthy and powerful friends, lucrative business opportunities, and many other benefits.”

Why Are We In This Debt Fix? It’s the Elderly, Stupid by Robert J. Samuelson, Washington Post, July 28, 2011. “By now, it’s obvious that we need to rewrite the social contract that, over the past half-century, has transformed the federal government’s main task into transferring income from workers to retirees. … We need to recognize that federal retiree programs often represent middle-class welfare. Past taxes were never “saved” to pay future benefits. We need to ask the hard questions: Who deserves help and who doesn’t?”

Stop Codding the Super-Rich by Warren Buffett, New York Times, August 14, 2011. “I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.”

Back to Our Country’s Finances

Or other topics that might be of interest …

The Federal Budget : Where does the money go?

Where Government More Than Pays for Itself : Which programs are especially cost-effective?

Health Care Inflation : The crux of the problem

Social Security : Not the problem, not the solution, but needs tweaking

Military Spending : How do we make it best serve our country’s interests?

Economic & Environmental Sustainability : The economic implications of environmental changes

Our Current Tax System : Where we are now

Raise Our Taxes! : Testimony before the Massachusetts’ Legislature’s Joint Committee on Revenue

Bibliography : Books worth knowing about

Organizations : Where to get more information and/or move into action