Economy and Business
Not All Taxes Have to Hurt
Taxes are deeply emotional and make for hot political theater. Whenever the T-word is blurted out, our anxiety zooms. And, that’s the whole idea. Millionaires, who rightfully are the target for paying more, want us to think that any changes in the tax code will mean that we’ll all be paying more too.
Lobbying the Supercommittee
Gates Backs the Wall Street Tax at the G20 Summit
The world’s second-richest man and a group of American nurses on the frontlines of the Occupy Wall Street protests came to the G20 summit in Cannes, France this week to advocate for the same thing.
Paulson’s Plaintive Plea
Who’s the most befuddled Wall Streeter of all? The richest guy on the Street.
Half-Full Champagne Flute
Measuring Progress
Tent cities and shacks sprung up on empty lots across the country. Food lines at soup kitchens wrapped around city blocks. Unemployment soared to 25 percent. Farmers watched helplessly as crop prices plummeted, then lost their land. The evidence was clear, yet at the height of the Great Depression, Congress lacked the tools to accurately measure just how the economy as a whole was faring. With no commonly accepted national income data, they had no guideposts upon which to base sound economic policy.
Masters of the Universe, Unite!
Shortchanging Our Paychecks
Back in the “Happy Days” of the 1950s and 1960s, most young American couples graduated from high school or college, got married, and immediately bought the most expensive house they could afford. They bought their houses on credit, their cars on credit, their appliances on credit, their furniture on credit, and even their baby clothes on credit. They didn’t have credit cards, but they sure did have debt.
Job Destroyers Don’t Deserve a Tax Holiday
A coalition of big businesses is waging a campaign for a massive tax holiday on corporate profits stashed overseas. Its lobbyists claim that this windfall would create millions of jobs. If our lawmakers buy that, they’ve got very short memories.
Dr. National and Mr. Transnational
