Dan Gross wonders about Wal-Mart’s latest clumsy effort to help the Republicans: Wal-Mart’s brass plainly believes—no, know—that a Republican president would be good for Wal-Mart, while a Democrat would be bad. Despite Clinton’s Arkansas roots, most Wal-Mart executives probably opposed Clinton in both his successful campaigns. But during his presidency, Wal-Mart’s stock more than tripled. [...]
I figure I’ve blathered on enough about windfall profits taxes, so how about another proposal in Obama’s energy plan–selling oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve? There are 700 million barrels of oil in the SPR–enough to cover just over a month of current U.S. oil consumption, or two months of oil imports. The original [...]
Continuing on Monday’s windfall-profits-taxes-are-hard theme, here’s Australian economist Andrew Leigh (via Mark Thoma): From an economic standpoint, the strongest argument for a windfall tax is that it has the potential to be non-distortionary. A one-off windfall tax levied on past profits should not change firms’ behaviour, since it does not affect future costs and prices. [...]
