Of course most NYT readers are well aware of the fact that the government is projected to spend around $48.5 trillion over the next decade, so they realized that President Obama’s proposal to spend $60 billion more on the Earned Income Tax Credit is no big deal in terms of overall spending. That’s why this NYT article saw no reason to put the number in any context. However for that tiny group of readers who don’t have the total budget in their heads and may have thought this proposal would be a big deal in terms of federal spending, the CEPR Responsible Budget Reporting Calculator would quickly tell you that this spending amounts to 0.14 percent of projected spending.
The piece also includes a quote from Harvard economist Nathaniel Hendren, saying “we’re rightly concerned about budget deficits.” It would have been worth reminding readers that the efforts to lower the budget deficit have cost the country at least $5 trillion (@ $17,000 per person) in lost output over the last six years and kept millions of people from working. Some NYT readers may not realize the costs the country is enduring because some people like smaller budget deficits.
Of course most NYT readers are well aware of the fact that the government is projected to spend around $48.5 trillion over the next decade, so they realized that President Obama’s proposal to spend $60 billion more on the Earned Income Tax Credit is no big deal in terms of overall spending. That’s why this NYT article saw no reason to put the number in any context. However for that tiny group of readers who don’t have the total budget in their heads and may have thought this proposal would be a big deal in terms of federal spending, the CEPR Responsible Budget Reporting Calculator would quickly tell you that this spending amounts to 0.14 percent of projected spending.
The piece also includes a quote from Harvard economist Nathaniel Hendren, saying “we’re rightly concerned about budget deficits.” It would have been worth reminding readers that the efforts to lower the budget deficit have cost the country at least $5 trillion (@ $17,000 per person) in lost output over the last six years and kept millions of people from working. Some NYT readers may not realize the costs the country is enduring because some people like smaller budget deficits.
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In the last three decades the rich have gotten the bulk of the benefits of economic growth, as those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution have seen little improvement in living standards. This naturally leads many people to want to reverse the policies that have led to this upward redistribution, such as high unemployment, a trade policy that protects high end workers, while subjecting the middle and bottom to international competition, government subsidies to too big to fail banks, an ever more intrusive patent policy, an anti-trust policy that greenlights monopolies like Microsoft, and many others that could be added to this list.
Of course the winners of the last three decades don’t want the public to consider policies that might reverse this upward redistribution, so instead they do things like try to promote generational conflict, claiming that the troubles of younger workers are somehow attributable to their parents Social Security and Medicare. Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson is a leader in such efforts, having funded numerous groups for this purpose.
NPR did its part in the promotional of generational war, interviewing Paul Taylor, the executive vice president at Pew Research Center about his new book. Taylor repeatedly complained that younger generations don’t seem angry about their parents’ Social Security and Medicare. He told his interviewer:
“Well, what’s so fascinating is there isn’t any tension at the moment. You have a generation coming in that isn’t wagging its finger with blame at mom or grandma, in fact, they’re living with mom and grandma.”
Later he adds:
“I leave this book thinking we have very serious demographically driven challenges, that we have a political system that at the moment isn’t stepping up to the plate, but we have a population that isn’t spoiling for a fight over these issues.”
In addition to expressing his disappointment that the young don’t share his antagonism to older people over their Social Security and Medicare, Taylor also seriously misrepresents some key points about these programs and the burdens they face. He tells listeners:
“Things are out of balance. Our Social Security and Medicare systems, which, in the public’s mind, have done brilliantly in doing what they set out to do, they were based on the demographics of the 20th century. You had, literally, at the beginning, 150 workers per retiree, by the time all the baby boomers move into taking those programs, we’ll only have two workers per retiree.
“The math of those programs does not work. Everybody who looks at the demographics knows that those systems are going broke with 15 or 20 years and the longer you wait, the more the burden of the solution is going to fall on the millennials.”
Actually, the demographics have long been known to the people who designed these programs and were predicted almost perfectly many decades ago. Furthermore, the projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare can be met with tax increases on the millennials that are considerably smaller than the tax increases faced by the baby boomers.
The key issue is whether we continue to see the upward redistribution of the last three decades or whether the gains from growth are broadly shared. The Social Security Trustees project that average compensation will increase by more than 50 percent over the next three decades. If the wages of typical worker increase in step with the average then it would be difficult to see the generational injustice if their payroll taxes increased by two to three percentage points, especially since this will be needed in order to support their own longer retirements.
It is striking that NPR is willing to focus so much more attention on the threat to the living standards of millennials presented by a 2-3 percentage point increase in payroll taxes than the policies that could lead to much or all of the benefits of productivity growth over the next three decades going to those at the top, as has been the case for the last three decades.
In the last three decades the rich have gotten the bulk of the benefits of economic growth, as those at the middle and bottom of the wage distribution have seen little improvement in living standards. This naturally leads many people to want to reverse the policies that have led to this upward redistribution, such as high unemployment, a trade policy that protects high end workers, while subjecting the middle and bottom to international competition, government subsidies to too big to fail banks, an ever more intrusive patent policy, an anti-trust policy that greenlights monopolies like Microsoft, and many others that could be added to this list.
Of course the winners of the last three decades don’t want the public to consider policies that might reverse this upward redistribution, so instead they do things like try to promote generational conflict, claiming that the troubles of younger workers are somehow attributable to their parents Social Security and Medicare. Wall Street billionaire Peter Peterson is a leader in such efforts, having funded numerous groups for this purpose.
NPR did its part in the promotional of generational war, interviewing Paul Taylor, the executive vice president at Pew Research Center about his new book. Taylor repeatedly complained that younger generations don’t seem angry about their parents’ Social Security and Medicare. He told his interviewer:
“Well, what’s so fascinating is there isn’t any tension at the moment. You have a generation coming in that isn’t wagging its finger with blame at mom or grandma, in fact, they’re living with mom and grandma.”
Later he adds:
“I leave this book thinking we have very serious demographically driven challenges, that we have a political system that at the moment isn’t stepping up to the plate, but we have a population that isn’t spoiling for a fight over these issues.”
In addition to expressing his disappointment that the young don’t share his antagonism to older people over their Social Security and Medicare, Taylor also seriously misrepresents some key points about these programs and the burdens they face. He tells listeners:
“Things are out of balance. Our Social Security and Medicare systems, which, in the public’s mind, have done brilliantly in doing what they set out to do, they were based on the demographics of the 20th century. You had, literally, at the beginning, 150 workers per retiree, by the time all the baby boomers move into taking those programs, we’ll only have two workers per retiree.
“The math of those programs does not work. Everybody who looks at the demographics knows that those systems are going broke with 15 or 20 years and the longer you wait, the more the burden of the solution is going to fall on the millennials.”
Actually, the demographics have long been known to the people who designed these programs and were predicted almost perfectly many decades ago. Furthermore, the projected shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare can be met with tax increases on the millennials that are considerably smaller than the tax increases faced by the baby boomers.
The key issue is whether we continue to see the upward redistribution of the last three decades or whether the gains from growth are broadly shared. The Social Security Trustees project that average compensation will increase by more than 50 percent over the next three decades. If the wages of typical worker increase in step with the average then it would be difficult to see the generational injustice if their payroll taxes increased by two to three percentage points, especially since this will be needed in order to support their own longer retirements.
It is striking that NPR is willing to focus so much more attention on the threat to the living standards of millennials presented by a 2-3 percentage point increase in payroll taxes than the policies that could lead to much or all of the benefits of productivity growth over the next three decades going to those at the top, as has been the case for the last three decades.
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Brooks tells us that people who are unhappy about the enormous upward redistribution of the last three decades are guilty of the sin of envy. Let’s try an alternative hypothesis, large segments of the public are angry because the wealthy are rigging the rules so that an ever larger share of the pie gets redistributed to their pockets.
There are a large number of well-documented ways in which they have engineered this heist. For example, they have too big to fail insurance that transfers tens of billions of dollars each year into the pockets of the CEOs and shareholders of the country’s largest banks. They also managed to secure near tax-free status for the financial industry, which puts tens of billions more into the pockets of the big actors there. And they have constructed a tax code chock-full of shelters that allow pension fund managers like Mitt Romney to get incredibly rich by buying up new companies and teaching them the game.
They have created longer and stronger government-granted patent monopolies that redistribute hundreds of billions annually from the general public to pharmaceutical companies, tech companies, and patent lawyers. They have put in place a corporate governance structure under which CEOs essentially pay off corporate directors to look the other way as they pilfer their companies. And they have maintained protectionist barriers that allow doctors and other highly paid professionals to earn far more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
Many folks think these economic distortions that slow growth while making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else are bad policy. But Brooks wants us to think that efforts to eliminate these distortions are simply envy that must be held in check.
Brooks tells us that people who are unhappy about the enormous upward redistribution of the last three decades are guilty of the sin of envy. Let’s try an alternative hypothesis, large segments of the public are angry because the wealthy are rigging the rules so that an ever larger share of the pie gets redistributed to their pockets.
There are a large number of well-documented ways in which they have engineered this heist. For example, they have too big to fail insurance that transfers tens of billions of dollars each year into the pockets of the CEOs and shareholders of the country’s largest banks. They also managed to secure near tax-free status for the financial industry, which puts tens of billions more into the pockets of the big actors there. And they have constructed a tax code chock-full of shelters that allow pension fund managers like Mitt Romney to get incredibly rich by buying up new companies and teaching them the game.
They have created longer and stronger government-granted patent monopolies that redistribute hundreds of billions annually from the general public to pharmaceutical companies, tech companies, and patent lawyers. They have put in place a corporate governance structure under which CEOs essentially pay off corporate directors to look the other way as they pilfer their companies. And they have maintained protectionist barriers that allow doctors and other highly paid professionals to earn far more than their counterparts in other wealthy countries.
Many folks think these economic distortions that slow growth while making the rich richer at the expense of everyone else are bad policy. But Brooks wants us to think that efforts to eliminate these distortions are simply envy that must be held in check.
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Yes, it’s Monday morning and Robert Samuelson again complains we are being cruel to our children. As in the past, he is not bothered by the likelihood that we will hand them a planet badly damaged by global warming. Nor is he upset that we might hand them a country in which the rules are rigged to give the rich a hugely disproportionate share of national income.
Nope, this is the Washington Post. He is upset that seniors will be getting Social Security checks averaging $1,500-$1,600 a month. And that it will be paying bloated prices for seniors’ health care. In keeping with the Washington Post’s fundamental philosophy that a dollar in the pocket of someone who is not rich is a dollar that could be in the pocket of a rich person, Samuelson is not upset about overpayments to wealthy doctors and drug companies, he’s upset about seniors getting health care.
Those who actually give a damn about the well-being of our children and grandchildren know that on average their pay will be about 40 percent higher in three decades. If they pay two or three percentage points more of their wages in Social Security taxes, to support their own longer retirements, who gives a damn? We pay much higher Social Security and Medicare taxes than our parents and grandparents’ generations.
If most people in our children and grandchildren’s generation do not enjoy substantially higher living standards than we do it will be due to the fact that the Jeff Bezos of the world have managed to appropriate most of the gains from growth. Serious people therefore focus on policies to reverse the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades, however employees of Jeff Bezos, and apparently the Pew Foundation, try to divert people’s attention to get them upset about the $1,300 monthly Social Security checks going to today’s seniors.
Yes, it’s Monday morning and Robert Samuelson again complains we are being cruel to our children. As in the past, he is not bothered by the likelihood that we will hand them a planet badly damaged by global warming. Nor is he upset that we might hand them a country in which the rules are rigged to give the rich a hugely disproportionate share of national income.
Nope, this is the Washington Post. He is upset that seniors will be getting Social Security checks averaging $1,500-$1,600 a month. And that it will be paying bloated prices for seniors’ health care. In keeping with the Washington Post’s fundamental philosophy that a dollar in the pocket of someone who is not rich is a dollar that could be in the pocket of a rich person, Samuelson is not upset about overpayments to wealthy doctors and drug companies, he’s upset about seniors getting health care.
Those who actually give a damn about the well-being of our children and grandchildren know that on average their pay will be about 40 percent higher in three decades. If they pay two or three percentage points more of their wages in Social Security taxes, to support their own longer retirements, who gives a damn? We pay much higher Social Security and Medicare taxes than our parents and grandparents’ generations.
If most people in our children and grandchildren’s generation do not enjoy substantially higher living standards than we do it will be due to the fact that the Jeff Bezos of the world have managed to appropriate most of the gains from growth. Serious people therefore focus on policies to reverse the upward redistribution of income over the last three decades, however employees of Jeff Bezos, and apparently the Pew Foundation, try to divert people’s attention to get them upset about the $1,300 monthly Social Security checks going to today’s seniors.
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The Washington Post is widely known as the newspaper that uses both its opinion and news pages to constantly tell readers that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare spending because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts big deficits 10, 20, or 30 years in the future. That is why it was extraordinary to see an article in the Sunday paper telling readers that CBO is often wrong and that its scores may not always be the best basis for policy decisions.
The central theme of the piece was that the Eisenhower administration was able to commit $25 billion to building the inter-state highway system in 1956 (the equivalent of $1.1 trillion in today’s economy) in part because he didn’t have to get this spending scored by CBO. While this was clearly a large expenditure relative to the size of the economy, the benefits would have been very difficult for a CBO-type agency to quantify.
In pointing out the errors of scoring by CBO, the piece seriously understates the case. In 1996, after all the Clinton era increases and spending cuts had already been put into law, CBO still projected a deficit for 2000 of 2.5 percent of GDP ($420 billion in today’s economy). In fact, in fiscal year 2000 we actually had a surplus of roughly the same size, implying a forecasting error of close to 5 percentage points of GDP.
This was not due to further legislative changes. The tax and spending changes over the intervening four years actually added slightly to the deficit. The problem was that CBO grossly under-estimated economic growth over this four year period and over-estimated the unemployment rate, predicting a 6.0 percent unemployment rate for 2000 when the actual rate was 4.0 percent.
Having underestimated growth in the years 1996-2000, CBO then hugely over-estimated growth and revenue in the next decade, failing to see that the stock bubble would collapse, sending both the economy and revenue plunging. As a result, we never came close to paying off the national debt, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s big fear when he argued in favor of the Bush tax cuts in 2001.
And of course the CBO completely missed the collapse of the housing bubble and the fact that it would tank the economy. As a result, the Washington Post was highlighting concerns about the relatively small deficits of 2006-2007, while completely ignoring the bubble that was about to devastate the country.
More recently CBO has likely been exaggerating deficit concerns by failing to fully incorporate the slowdown in health care cost growth in its projections of future spending. If this slowdown continues, then not only will near-term deficits be relatively modest, but even the longer term deficits highlighted by the Post will also be easily contained.
One issue this article gets wrong is the nature of the data at CBO’s disposal. We have very reliable data on GDP dating back to the early post-World War II years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a reliable source of inflation data for 100 years. CBOs problem in its scoring does not stem from a lack of data.
The Washington Post is widely known as the newspaper that uses both its opinion and news pages to constantly tell readers that we have to cut Social Security and Medicare spending because the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicts big deficits 10, 20, or 30 years in the future. That is why it was extraordinary to see an article in the Sunday paper telling readers that CBO is often wrong and that its scores may not always be the best basis for policy decisions.
The central theme of the piece was that the Eisenhower administration was able to commit $25 billion to building the inter-state highway system in 1956 (the equivalent of $1.1 trillion in today’s economy) in part because he didn’t have to get this spending scored by CBO. While this was clearly a large expenditure relative to the size of the economy, the benefits would have been very difficult for a CBO-type agency to quantify.
In pointing out the errors of scoring by CBO, the piece seriously understates the case. In 1996, after all the Clinton era increases and spending cuts had already been put into law, CBO still projected a deficit for 2000 of 2.5 percent of GDP ($420 billion in today’s economy). In fact, in fiscal year 2000 we actually had a surplus of roughly the same size, implying a forecasting error of close to 5 percentage points of GDP.
This was not due to further legislative changes. The tax and spending changes over the intervening four years actually added slightly to the deficit. The problem was that CBO grossly under-estimated economic growth over this four year period and over-estimated the unemployment rate, predicting a 6.0 percent unemployment rate for 2000 when the actual rate was 4.0 percent.
Having underestimated growth in the years 1996-2000, CBO then hugely over-estimated growth and revenue in the next decade, failing to see that the stock bubble would collapse, sending both the economy and revenue plunging. As a result, we never came close to paying off the national debt, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan’s big fear when he argued in favor of the Bush tax cuts in 2001.
And of course the CBO completely missed the collapse of the housing bubble and the fact that it would tank the economy. As a result, the Washington Post was highlighting concerns about the relatively small deficits of 2006-2007, while completely ignoring the bubble that was about to devastate the country.
More recently CBO has likely been exaggerating deficit concerns by failing to fully incorporate the slowdown in health care cost growth in its projections of future spending. If this slowdown continues, then not only will near-term deficits be relatively modest, but even the longer term deficits highlighted by the Post will also be easily contained.
One issue this article gets wrong is the nature of the data at CBO’s disposal. We have very reliable data on GDP dating back to the early post-World War II years. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a reliable source of inflation data for 100 years. CBOs problem in its scoring does not stem from a lack of data.
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A NYT article discussing class divisions in Venezuela included a chart showing an implicit rate of inflation calculated by the Cato Institute. The chart shows an annual rate of inflation of more than 300 percent, compared to an official rate of around 50 percent.
The basis for the difference is that the Cato rate effectively assumes that items are paid for in dollars. As the black market price of Venezuela’s currency plunges against the dollar, this leads to a very high measure of inflation. This measure is of dubious relevance to the people of Venezuela, since only a tiny portion of their purchases involve payments in dollars.
As a practical matter, because there are shortages of many items the true inflation rate would be higher than the official rate, since many items cannot be purchased at the measured price. However, the dollar conversion methodology used by Cato is not an appropriate way to measure the effect of shortages. In principle, the correct method would assign a price to the items that are subject to shortages based on their black market price and then weigh them in their proportion to consumers’ consumption bundle.
A NYT article discussing class divisions in Venezuela included a chart showing an implicit rate of inflation calculated by the Cato Institute. The chart shows an annual rate of inflation of more than 300 percent, compared to an official rate of around 50 percent.
The basis for the difference is that the Cato rate effectively assumes that items are paid for in dollars. As the black market price of Venezuela’s currency plunges against the dollar, this leads to a very high measure of inflation. This measure is of dubious relevance to the people of Venezuela, since only a tiny portion of their purchases involve payments in dollars.
As a practical matter, because there are shortages of many items the true inflation rate would be higher than the official rate, since many items cannot be purchased at the measured price. However, the dollar conversion methodology used by Cato is not an appropriate way to measure the effect of shortages. In principle, the correct method would assign a price to the items that are subject to shortages based on their black market price and then weigh them in their proportion to consumers’ consumption bundle.
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The elite policy types in the United States are truly extraordinary in their ability to show great concern about completely contradictory possible states of the world. Floyd Norris shows one of the bases for serious hand wringing, higher future budget deficits, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in its latest outlook. Norris points out that the report assumes that the weak economic growth of recent years persists long into the future. (Norris notes CBO has badly erred before by extrapolating from the recent past, noting its projections from 2001 that assumed the stock bubble would persist into the indefinite future — a point some of us noted at the time. However, its biggest error was failing to recognize that the housing bubble’s collapse would tank the economy.)
However more important than CBO’s checkered track record is the fact that CBO’s assumption of slow growth and slow productivity growth is 180 degrees at odds with the robots will take our jobs story. If robots are taking our jobs, then productivity growth will be fast, inflation will be very low (goods and services will be getting cheaper), and presumably interest rates will also be low. While it is possible that CBO’s forecast will be right, if it is then the robot story is wrong and vice versa. That’s the simple logic, but elite policy types are such impressive sorts that they can worry about both fast and slow growth simultaneously being a problem.
The elite policy types in the United States are truly extraordinary in their ability to show great concern about completely contradictory possible states of the world. Floyd Norris shows one of the bases for serious hand wringing, higher future budget deficits, as projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in its latest outlook. Norris points out that the report assumes that the weak economic growth of recent years persists long into the future. (Norris notes CBO has badly erred before by extrapolating from the recent past, noting its projections from 2001 that assumed the stock bubble would persist into the indefinite future — a point some of us noted at the time. However, its biggest error was failing to recognize that the housing bubble’s collapse would tank the economy.)
However more important than CBO’s checkered track record is the fact that CBO’s assumption of slow growth and slow productivity growth is 180 degrees at odds with the robots will take our jobs story. If robots are taking our jobs, then productivity growth will be fast, inflation will be very low (goods and services will be getting cheaper), and presumably interest rates will also be low. While it is possible that CBO’s forecast will be right, if it is then the robot story is wrong and vice versa. That’s the simple logic, but elite policy types are such impressive sorts that they can worry about both fast and slow growth simultaneously being a problem.
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It’s pretty impressive to be able to know something about the future when all the evidence suggests the opposite. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus apparently knows that we will never be able to raise additional revenue to cover Social Security’s projected shortfalls. That is the only way we can explain her assertion (expressed in euphemisms) that we have to cut Social Security benefits now to:
“protect those most in need of generous benefits.”
Of course the evidence shows that the public has been in the past and is now willing to pay higher taxes in order to maintain Social Security benefits. Few, if any, members of Congress lost their seats over the tax increases put in place in the 1980s. Polls have consistently shown substantial support for raising revenue by increasing or eliminating the cap on taxable wages. And, they have even shown a preference for raising the payroll tax to cutting benefits. (In fact, less than one third of the public even noticed the 2.0 percentage point increase in the payroll tax at the start of 2013.)
The payroll tax increase needed to keep the program fully solvent for the rest of the century is less than one tenth of projected real wage growth over the next three decades. Given the popularity of Social Security across the political spectrum we might think that the public would be willing to pay some price to maintain benefits for all workers, not just those most in need of generous benefits. Fortunately we have Ruth Marcus to tell us otherwise.
It’s pretty impressive to be able to know something about the future when all the evidence suggests the opposite. Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus apparently knows that we will never be able to raise additional revenue to cover Social Security’s projected shortfalls. That is the only way we can explain her assertion (expressed in euphemisms) that we have to cut Social Security benefits now to:
“protect those most in need of generous benefits.”
Of course the evidence shows that the public has been in the past and is now willing to pay higher taxes in order to maintain Social Security benefits. Few, if any, members of Congress lost their seats over the tax increases put in place in the 1980s. Polls have consistently shown substantial support for raising revenue by increasing or eliminating the cap on taxable wages. And, they have even shown a preference for raising the payroll tax to cutting benefits. (In fact, less than one third of the public even noticed the 2.0 percentage point increase in the payroll tax at the start of 2013.)
The payroll tax increase needed to keep the program fully solvent for the rest of the century is less than one tenth of projected real wage growth over the next three decades. Given the popularity of Social Security across the political spectrum we might think that the public would be willing to pay some price to maintain benefits for all workers, not just those most in need of generous benefits. Fortunately we have Ruth Marcus to tell us otherwise.
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My friend Jared Bernstein makes many of the right points on the Camp tax reform proposal, but let me add a few.
First, it is good to see the proposal for taxing the large banks. The logic is that these banks are benefiting from implicit government guarantees through too big to fail insurance, which the tax would in part offset. The problem is that the tax is an order of magnitude too small.
The tax is projected to raises $64 billion over a decade. By comparison, Bloomberg News estimated the size of the too big to fail subsidy at $83 billion a year. That estimate is likely too large, but even cutting it in half still implies a subsidy that is more than six times the size of Camp’s tax. Most of us might think it’s reasonable that our tax dollars help low income families buy food or get health care for their kids. It’s a bit harder to make the case for an implicit tax to support the Wall Street fraternity parties at the St. Regis. In other words, Camp’s bill would hardly mitigate the desirability of breaking up the big banks.
It is also worth noting that the financial sector as a whole is hugely under-taxed compared with other sectors, a point that has even been acknowledged by the International Monetary Fund. It recommended a tax of roughly 0.2 percent of GDP (@ $400 billion over the next decade) to redress this imbalance. The financial transactions tax proposed in a bill by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio would pretty much hit this target according to the calculations of the Joint Tax Committee. Anyhow, the point here is that Camp deserves credit for attempting to address some of the special privileges granted to the financial sector, he doesn’t come close to solving it.
A second related point is that his proposal would not address one of the main sources of tax gaming that allows the Mitt Romneys of the private equity industry to get extremely rich. Specifically, it doesn’t limit the deduction for interest paid by corporations. This is important to private equity because one of their standard tricks is leverage up the mid-size companies they purchases in order to increase after-tax profits. This incentive to make firms highly indebted serves no public purpose (it hugely increases the risk of bankruptcy), but it can make private equity partners enormously wealthy. Camp’s plan does nothing about this distortion.
Finally, people should be aware that the proposal to end the tax deduction for state and local income taxes is a direct attack on states like New York and California which have high tax rates on their wealthy residents in order to provide a higher level of services to their citizens. These tax rates will be considerably harder to maintain politically, if they were not deductible against federal income taxes. This is a reason why many opponents of state level social spending want to end this deduction. (Those wondering why the rest of the country should subsidize services in these states might want to consider the fact that these states are still huge net payers of tax — their tax payments exceed their receipt of revenue — to the federal government.)
My friend Jared Bernstein makes many of the right points on the Camp tax reform proposal, but let me add a few.
First, it is good to see the proposal for taxing the large banks. The logic is that these banks are benefiting from implicit government guarantees through too big to fail insurance, which the tax would in part offset. The problem is that the tax is an order of magnitude too small.
The tax is projected to raises $64 billion over a decade. By comparison, Bloomberg News estimated the size of the too big to fail subsidy at $83 billion a year. That estimate is likely too large, but even cutting it in half still implies a subsidy that is more than six times the size of Camp’s tax. Most of us might think it’s reasonable that our tax dollars help low income families buy food or get health care for their kids. It’s a bit harder to make the case for an implicit tax to support the Wall Street fraternity parties at the St. Regis. In other words, Camp’s bill would hardly mitigate the desirability of breaking up the big banks.
It is also worth noting that the financial sector as a whole is hugely under-taxed compared with other sectors, a point that has even been acknowledged by the International Monetary Fund. It recommended a tax of roughly 0.2 percent of GDP (@ $400 billion over the next decade) to redress this imbalance. The financial transactions tax proposed in a bill by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Peter DeFazio would pretty much hit this target according to the calculations of the Joint Tax Committee. Anyhow, the point here is that Camp deserves credit for attempting to address some of the special privileges granted to the financial sector, he doesn’t come close to solving it.
A second related point is that his proposal would not address one of the main sources of tax gaming that allows the Mitt Romneys of the private equity industry to get extremely rich. Specifically, it doesn’t limit the deduction for interest paid by corporations. This is important to private equity because one of their standard tricks is leverage up the mid-size companies they purchases in order to increase after-tax profits. This incentive to make firms highly indebted serves no public purpose (it hugely increases the risk of bankruptcy), but it can make private equity partners enormously wealthy. Camp’s plan does nothing about this distortion.
Finally, people should be aware that the proposal to end the tax deduction for state and local income taxes is a direct attack on states like New York and California which have high tax rates on their wealthy residents in order to provide a higher level of services to their citizens. These tax rates will be considerably harder to maintain politically, if they were not deductible against federal income taxes. This is a reason why many opponents of state level social spending want to end this deduction. (Those wondering why the rest of the country should subsidize services in these states might want to consider the fact that these states are still huge net payers of tax — their tax payments exceed their receipt of revenue — to the federal government.)
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The NYT had an article on Bruce Marks, a housing advocate, and his push to extend credit for home buying to moderate income households who are now being excluded because of bad credit ratings. At one point the piece tells readers;
“He [Marks] says low interest rates and housing prices have created a second chance — an opportunity to help lower-income families buy homes, but this time on terms they can afford.”
Actually, house prices are not low. While they have not returned to bubble peaks, they are well above trend levels. This means that people buying into the current market have a substantial risk of losing money on a home. This risk will be especially high if interest rates rise in the years ahead, as is almost universally predicted.
The NYT had an article on Bruce Marks, a housing advocate, and his push to extend credit for home buying to moderate income households who are now being excluded because of bad credit ratings. At one point the piece tells readers;
“He [Marks] says low interest rates and housing prices have created a second chance — an opportunity to help lower-income families buy homes, but this time on terms they can afford.”
Actually, house prices are not low. While they have not returned to bubble peaks, they are well above trend levels. This means that people buying into the current market have a substantial risk of losing money on a home. This risk will be especially high if interest rates rise in the years ahead, as is almost universally predicted.
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