The tax code if @BernieSanders got everything he wanted

Source: Here’s what the tax code would look like if Bernie Sanders got everything he wanted – Vox.

 

How Scandinavian Countries Pay for Their Government Spending

Do the European welfare states free ride off American entrepreneurship and innovation?

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Source: Daron Acemoglu A Scandinavian U.S. Would Be a Problem for the Global Economy – NYTimes.com.

Mises on prosperity and inequality

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The Australian tax – transfer system after 30 years of heartless neoliberalism

https://twitter.com/JohnDaley_/status/646505463710773248/photo/1

The supply-side economics of JFK

Taxes on dividend income across the OECD

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The benefits and costs of the @NZSuperFund since its inception

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund, the sovereign wealth fund part funding New Zealand’s old-age pension from 2029/2030 onwards, has been a bit of a wild ride. Sometimes the earnings of the Fund were well below and sometimes earning well above the long-term bond rate.

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Source: New Zealand Superannuation Fund Annual Report 2014.

Since its inception, the Fund earned an average annual return of 9.78%, which was 5.06% above the long-term bond rate, and 1.03% above its reference portfolio.

No information was given in the annual report of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund on the marginal dead weight cost of the taxes raised to fund the New Zealand Superannuation Fund to see whether there is any net benefit to taxpayers from its establishment and continued operation.

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The New Zealand Government has contributed $14.88 billion to the fund from prior its inception in 2001 to the suspension of contributions in 2009 by the incoming National Party Government.

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Source: New Zealand Treasury.

Over the nine years in which contributions were made, the company tax rate of 28% could have easily been up to 10 percentage points lower.

The New Zealand Treasury estimates that a one percentage point cut in the company tax costs about $220 million in forgone revenue if there are no other changes to the tax system. These are static estimates that do not include any feedback from  greater investment and higher growth.

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund must beat the market every single year to make up for the deadweight cost of its funding, a premium for the investment risk added to the Crown’s portfolio and the cost to New Zealand’s growth rate of higher than otherwise taxes on income, entrepreneurship and investment.

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Source: Abolish the Corporate Income Tax – The New York Times.

What if French and Americans swapped working hours per year

How @equitablegrowth showed inequality helps growth when arguing inequality harms growth

The Washington Centre for Equitable Growth recently tweeted that inequality harms growth in the USA as compared to Sweden, France, Germany and the UK. It was relying on some dodgy OECD research.

The Washington Centre for Equitable Growth did not check their inequality ratios they tweeted against trends in economic growth and economic policy since 1970, which I have reproduced in figure 1. Germany is not included in figure 1 because German data on growth is thrown askew by German unification.

Figure 1: Real GDP per British, French and Swede aged 15-64,  2014 US$ (converted to 2014 price level with updated 2011 PPPs), 1.9 per cent detrended, 1970-2013

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Source: Computed from OECD Stat Extract and The Conference Board. 2015. The Conference Board Total Economy Database™, May 2015, http://www.conference-board.org/data/economydatabase/

Figure 1 shows that France has been in a long-term decline since the late 1970s despite the blessings of a more equal society than the USA as championed by the Washington Centre for Equitable Growth. In figure 1, a flat line is growth in real GDP per working age person, PPP, at the same rate as the USA for the 20th century, which was 1.9% per year. A falling line in figure 1 indicates growth of less than 1.9% while a rising line indicates growth in real GDP per working age person, PPP, in excess of 1.9%. In figure 1, France hardly ever grew at the trend rate of growth for the USA of 1.9% per year and was frequently well below that rate.

Sweden tells a slightly different story in figure 1 because of regime change in the early 1990s when Sweden adopted more liberal economic policies where taxes and government spending were reduced:

The rapid growth of the state in the late 1960s and 1970s led to a large decline in Sweden’s relative economic performance. In 1975, Sweden was the 4th richest industrialised country in terms of GDP per head. By 1993, it had fallen to 14th.

That regime change reversed a long economic decline since 1970 under the egalitarian policies of the Swedish Social Democratic Party. Under the Swedish Social Democratic Party, Sweden was almost always growing at less than the trend rate of growth of the USA, which was 1.9%. That position reversed only when there was a turn away from big government and high taxes.

Figure 1 tells a similar story for the British economy: a long economic decline in the 1970s when Britain was the sick man of Europe. Under Thatchernomics, Europe had a long economic boom for 20 years or more – see figure 1.

In the 1970s, under the high taxes of the Heath, Callaghan and Wilson administrations, as figure 1 shows, Britain was the sick man of Europe. With the election of the Thatcher Government, Britain soon grew at better than the US trend growth rate for nearly 20 years through few exceptions.

Swedosclerosis and Eurosclerosis compared

The taxes paid by the rich, middle-class and the poorer in the USA

The tax rates of the top 1%

Trigger warning for the Twitter Left

Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP, selected OECD member countries

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