Plain Sense Economics

Congress has been deadlocked on the issue of restoring or changing the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003. Those original cuts had a sunset provision – the cuts end on December 31, 2010. If Congress does nothing, income tax rates, including capital gains and estate taxes, return to their 2000 levels.  Democrats want to [...]

James Surowiecki writes in The New Yorker that a combination of thoughtful, but less visible stimulus decisions and some less effective decisions made it hard for the American people to believe the 2009 fiscal stimulus worked.
[The] Washington stimulus has become the policy that dare not speak its name. This wouldn’t be surprising if we [...]

Arthur Laffer is credited with the eponymous theory that a decrease in tax rates can lead to an increase in tax revenues. Even if the original theory may have been scribbled on a napkin, it still holds sway with the supply side contingent. The simplified explanation is that by reducing tax rates, income earning individuals [...]

At about the 6th or 7th week of my Principles of Macroeconomics class we have a kind of broad (though not deep) understanding of how the economy works, how we measure it, and some of the things government does to influence it. We’ve learned about fiscal policy and monetary policy; we have a rough idea [...]

As a followup to my earlier note on Oregon’s Measures 66 & 67, we need to take a quick look at some of the theories and rationale behind government taxes. This isn’t and can’t be an exhaustive discussion, but hopefully it is a start for our considerations. For SOU students I commend to you my [...]

In my University Seminar class we are looking at the arguments, pro and con, on Oregon Measures 66 & 67. For out of state readers these measures raise taxes slightly – for higher end income earners (families with incomes over $250,000 and individuals with incomes over $125,000) and corporations (raising the minimum corporate income tax [...]