Before I begin this blog, I beg the reader’s indulgence for such a long book review. However I considered this book worthy of such a detailed examination, due to its popularity and influence, barely three months after its appearance. I do hope the length will be justified by the service it may provide. I promise […]
Archives
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A Very Long Review of a Very Intellectually Deficient, but Very Big, Book by Thomas Piketty
09 Jun 2014
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Inequality, CEO Compensation and Thomas Piketty
27 May 2014
What do the three phrases in the title of this blog have in common? This is not a trick question, although some may be tricked by the rhetoric that has come from these. OK, you have had enough time to think about it. The answer is: Inequality is the “new” social justice term, median CEO […]
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Let the beating commence until morale improves! Senator Levin says close the tax loopholes!
08 May 2014
Sen Levin has a new target in the war against our large budget deficits–corporations that legally flee the U.S. to avoid paying taxes: It’s become increasingly clear that a loophole in our tax laws allowing these inversions threatens to devastate federal tax receipts. We have to close that loophole,” said Levin in a statement. This […]
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Don’t tax me, Don’t tax thee, Tax the fellow behind the tree! Latest obfuscation on taxes by Krugman within
27 Mar 2014
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman delights in stirring the pot, and he is not only a brilliant economist (legitimately so in the specialized area of international trade), but he is also very clever. He doesn’t out-and-out lie, but he gives tidbits of truth while deliberately ignoring other facts to lead a reader to his own biased […]
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The Tax Man Cometh
07 Mar 2014
The monster that never sleeps—the Internal Revenue Service. I am reminded of the phrase in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, written in 1651, which speaks of government as being “that mortal God.” Its purpose for Hobbes was to “overawe” everyone and bring order. Well, it looks as if we have a different kind of “mortal God,” one […]
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A Threat to the Rule of Law
01 Nov 2013
Well, as many know by now, Lois Lerner has been identified as the high-ranking IRS official who illegally sent information about donors associated with Tea Party-related organizations to the Federal Election Commission. In addition we heard yesterday that someone in the IRS did leak confidential tax information to the liberal Human Rights Campaign, which immediately […]
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Nudge, Nudge
25 Sep 2013
Economics is often thought of as a quasi-hard science; a field where number crunching and rationality yield positive and true results. While Ph.D.s in the field acknowledge that it is often hard to account for all the variables, in the past they would argue that if it were possible to account for all factors, a mathematical […]
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The Perfect Storm
30 May 2013
I hope everyone has been watching the unfolding scandal at the IRS (that’s the Internal Revenue Service for the present). As I see it, this seems like the perfect convergence of several disturbing trends in recent decades. First, we see the increasing use by congress of “big” and “broad” statutes whose language is left (deliberately?) […]
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There is a lot of discussion today and yesterday about Apple’s avoidance of the corporate income tax. As the WSJ reports on Senate Democrats investigation of Apple, Mr. Levin unveiled the results of his months-long investigation into Apple’s corporate taxes and accused the American business success of employing “alchemy” and “gimmickry” to lower its tax […]
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach