Brad DeLong asks a crucial Fair Tax question:
[I]t’s a mammoth tax cut for the crowd making more than $200,000 a year and a substantial tax increase for those making between $30,000 and $200,000 a year. Does this make economic sense? It is hard to see how: What makes the $200,000-plus crowd especially deserving of a tax cut?
Arnold …
In answer to some questions about what Danish income tax rates actually are, Jacob Braestrup of the Confederation of Danish Industries offers this explanation:
The Danish top income tax bracket of 15 percent is what takes the top marginal tax to a total of 63 percent (from 49 percent – I know the difference is only 14 percentage points,
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Mike Huckabee’s victory in Iowa Thursday was a big victory also for the “Fair Tax,” the radical revamping of the federal tax code that he endorses. And while Huckabee’s Iowa win may be a one-off, one gets the feeling that the Fair Tax campaign will be with us for a while. The resurgent John McCain is mildly supportive of it as well. And …
I have a new column in the issue of Time with Benazir Bhutto on the cover and online here. It begins:
They’re turning 62 this month, the first of the baby boomers are. Adorable, aren’t they, as they hum along to the Beach Boys on their iPods and dream of Davy Crockett coonskin caps? In February the 100,000 or so of these January 1946
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Marc Fisher’s article in the Sunday Washington Post about the latest development in the Recording Industry Association of America’s campaign to sue every last person in America has taken on an interesting life of its own. Wrote Fisher:
Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court
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Here, from an e-mail I just got from the folks at Russell Investments, are the world’s 10 top-performing stocks of 2007:
Inner Mongolia Yitai Coal Co. Ltd., China, 1017%
Jai Corp. Ltd., India, 877%
Reliance Natural Resources Ltd., India, 823%
Ispat Industries Ltd., India, 742%
Jindal Steel & Power Ltd., India, 664%
Essar Oil Ltd., …
In response to my post on whether high taxes really explain Denmark’s brain drain, Jacob Braestrup, adviser on tax policy to the Confederation of Danish Industries, had this to say:
I’m sorry, but I fail to see your point.
As you yourself point out, “Taxes are the only one of those top four factors that Danish politicians can do much
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The NYT ran an article last week on young workers leaving Denmark to escape high taxes. The main example given was that of Thomas Sorensen, a software engineer who now lives in Frankfurt. The photo caption claimed that he works in Germany “to avoid the 63 percent top tax rate in his homeland.” When you actually read the article, though, …
Following the example of my colleague Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, who announced her pregnancy on her blog Tuesday before telling us at work about it, I’d like to share with Curious Capitalist readers the news that no, I’m still not done with my stinkin’ book manuscript!
There, that feels better. (A tiny bit better.) Now I can go tell my …
Here’s something interesting I just learned from the Social Security Administration’s website: There are 70 women aged 25 or younger in this country who are earning Social Security benefits as the spouses of retired workers. To qualify, they must be married to men 62 or older and have children 16 or younger, or older children who receive …
I feel remiss amiss for not having addressed this important subject before. But I guess I’ll just leave it to Mr. Juggles at Long or Short Capital:
Time and time again, people say we are running out of 2007. These cries began as early as January; by July, some were even claiming that there was less 2007 remaining than the amount of 2007
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LA Times business columnist David Lazarus argues this week that newspapers are crazy to be giving away all that valuable information they produce (via Romenesko):
Newspapers, including this one, give away the store online, all the while wringing their hands about declining revenue and circulation. Everyone says the Net represents the
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