Not too surprisingly, people aren’t well-informed about the gas tax. Americans of different income and political affiliation believe the gas tax is raised annually or at least every few years, but it actually was last raised in 1993.
Here’s the Infrastructurist blog explaining the results of a recent poll from Building America’s Future:
The survey was done from June 30 through July 2, 2009, and involved 800 adults, with a +3.46% margin of error. And a whopping 60% of the respondents — Republican and Democrat alike — believe the federal gas tax is raised annually. Geographic location didn’t make much of a difference — 61% believed this incorrect statement in the Northeast, 58% in the South, 54% in the Midwest, and 67% in the West.
The truth, of course, is that the federal gas tax has been unchanged at 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. And, in a colossal error of judgment, the government neglected to index it for inflation. So it’s worth even less now than it was then.
Continued…
Posted in Important Charts.
Tagged with fuel tax, government, Infrastructurist, Margin of error, Politics, Republican, tax, Texas Transportation Institute, United States, vehicles mile traveled, VMT.
It’s a point most people (
myself included) have been making lately, but Republicans’ votes pretty much say they don’t care about balancing the budget. Here’s Matt Yglesias also
making this point:
I’ve been trying to make this point for a while, but the main impediment to forming a consensus on a plan to reduce the deficit is that most conservatives don’t actually want to reduce the deficit. What they want is lower taxes. That’s why Ronald Reagan and George W Bush both increased the deficit and it’s why conservatives tell pollsters they don’t care about the deficit: “Fifty percent (50%) of conservatives are comfortable with a budget deficit if taxes are cut versus 63% of liberals who favor a balanced budget with higher taxes.”
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with Balanced budget, Barack Obama, deficit, George W Bush, History, Presidents, Ronald Reagan, United States.
Three days ago, I talked about how responsive consumers are to a slight change in incentives, in this case a
5 cent tax on plastic bags in Washington D.C. My friend Alan Perlman, who runs
the9to5alternative.com and travels a lot, pointed out that some other countries are way ahead of Washington D.C..
In 2002, Ireland imposed a 15 cent tax per plastic bag and saw similar positive results. Bag consumption plunged 90%, from an annual 1.2 billion bag to less than 100 million in the initial year. Going one step further, China, in 2008, banned thin plastic bags and taxed heavier ones. The ban prevents the production of 40 billion plastic bags, equivalent to 37 million barrels of oil, annually and has decreased other plastic bag use by 66%.
Rwanda, Eritrea, Hong Kong, and South Africa have either banned or taxed plastic bags. Anyone have information on other countries, states, or cities?
Posted in Taxes in Other Places.
Tagged with bag fee, bag tax, Barrel, Business, China, Ireland, Plastic bag, plastic bag tax, plastic bags, Plastic shopping bag, tax, Washington D.C..
It’s common to simplify the decline of empires by saying their eyes were bigger than their stomach, their military became too strong, they went into debt, cracked at the edges first, and then declined in the process of tackling the debt problem. That hypothesis is a basic version of
Paul Kennedy’s 1980s bestselling book,
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. That hypothesis is also the tone animating
David Sanger’s analysis yesterday in the
New York Times.
Continued…
Posted in Politics and Taxes.
Tagged with Congress, Federal government of the United States, Lawrence H. Summers, Lawrence Summers, New York Times, Obama, Paul Kennedy, Republicans, revenue increase, tax, tax increases, tax raises, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, United States.
The cool, discrete way right now to say that government can have a beneficial impact on society is to talk about
nudging. It’s a simple way of saying that regulations and simple government programs can have significant, positive impacts on society, so we shouldn’t always oppose government in everything it does.
An example of that process in actual life is happening at D.C. grocery stores right now. Washington D.C. just enacted a 5-cent tax on each plastic bag used at grocery stores, and the dramatic decrease in plastic bag consumption has surprised everyone. Plastic bag consumption has decreased by 50%, and shoppers are going to extreme lengths to not pay 5 cents per bag. It’s amazing how responsive we are to the littlest economic change and how that response aligns with a larger goal of environmentally-conscious politics.
Continued…
Posted in Politics and Taxes, Rhetoric and Ideology, Tax News.
Tagged with Anacostia River, bag fee, bag tax, Cass Susstein, D.C., Environment, Environmentalism, Grocery store, health care, moderate politics, nudge, nudging, Pigovian, Plastic bag, plastic bag tax, progressive, Progressivism, Richard Thaler, Seattle, third way, Washington DC, Washington Post.
Some people say that excess leverage caused our financial crisis. Others suggest that the
Federal Reserve’s
monetary policy was too loose. Other people argue that reckless compensation policies at
investment banks put an emphasis on short-term gains over long-term stability. No matter one’s preferred narrative, it’s clear that commercial and investment banks played a central role in endangering our economy, and they will continue to do so unless corrective action is taken. In other words, there are a lot of disagreements about the particulars, but there is broad agreement – yes, even Republicans
admit that financial reform is necessary – that the financial industry needs to change.
President Obama’s Financial Crisis Responsbility Fee is one initial step along the path to resuscitating our economy, but it’s important that we don’t let the banks off with such a lite slap on the wrist. The financial sector obviously has a net negative effect (it’s rent-seeking) in the form it has taken over the previous 30 years, so it needs to become a lot smaller than it currently is. To that end, Mike Derham over at Progressive Fix lists several different taxes that should be considered in addition to the FCRF. The whole post is worth a read, though here are the taxes he mentions: bonus tax, transaction tax, excess profits tax, a tax on assets, and an excess leverage tax. Any other ideas?
Posted in Politics and Taxes.
Tagged with bank tax, Barack Obama, economy, Federal Reserve, Federal Reserve System, financial crisis, financial crisis responsibility fee, Financial services, Monetary policy, Progressive Fix, Republican Party, Too Big to Fail.
This week, voters in Oregon showed that they understand that budget deficits are unsolvable through tax and spending cuts. About
54% of voters supported raising the income tax on individuals earning more than $125,000 per year as well as an increase in the minimum corporate tax and
new taxation on corporations’ gross revenue. Facing a $4 billion budget hole, voters decided that taxing the rich is better than losing teachers and firemen.
Continued…
Posted in Politics and Taxes, Tax News.
Tagged with Bruce Bartlett, Heritage Foundation, income tax, Megan McArdle, Oregon, rich tax, soak the wealthy, tax the wealthy, VAT, VMT, Wall Street Journal.
Standard-bearer Republicans must look crazy.
Brooks is about as close to the old line WASP/New England conservative as we have;
Susan Collins and
Olympia Snowe aren’t actually moderate, or we’d have universal health care already.
Continued…
Posted in Politics and Taxes.
Tagged with Congress, David Brooks, Democratic, New York Times, Olympia Snowe, political framing, Progressivism, pundits, Republican, Republicans, Right-wing politics, Susan Collins, United States Congress, universal health care.
Ezra Klein
points out that President Obama just signed a defense appropriation bill that spends approximately 7x in one year than healthcare reform will spend per year. It is published as a smaller number, however, because it is reported over one year and not ten whereas healthcare’s cost is presented as the ten year figure. Mike Koczal at
Rortybomb follows that up by pointing out that people bemoan taxes when they see their paycheck but they also like defense spending; maybe federal taxes should be broken out to show what portion of our income goes to defense spending.
According to him, here is what a $60,000 salary paid biweekly would look like:
What are checks should look like
Posted in Rhetoric and Ideology.
One aspect of this economic crisis that does not receive the attention it deserves is the skewness of our country’s policies in favor of home owners. Disparate sections of America – our transportation policy (low gas taxes, abundant roads, low automobile taxes), political rhetoric (
America is a homeowner society), and
popular culture – glamorize home ownership. This reverence of home ownership is
codified in our tax law, which allows a homeowner to deduct the interest on the loan (up to a $1,000,000 secured mortgage) from their annual income when taxes are calculated. This deduction effectively lowers the cost of home ownership, expanding the potential pool of buyers. A larger pool of buyers means a larger demand for mortgages, which means a larger demand to securitize the mortgages. Attracted by the returns and apparent safety of
mortgage-backed securities, investors started to ask for more of the same, and supply eventually begat its own demand. Voila the subprime crisis (and exurbs).
Continued…
Posted in Politics and Taxes.
Tagged with 401(k), Brookings Institution, Capital gain, debt, home ownership, income tax, Individual Retirement Account, mortgage interest, mortgage interest tax deduction, ownership society, Real estate, tax, Tax Policy Center, Tax Vox, taxation, Urban Institute.
Well, it at least was until the Supreme Court showed
how interpretivist it actually is. Now, who knows.
I’ll outsource my explanation to Felix Salmon:
John Carney has a post up today saying that the bank tax is unconstitutional; it’s incredibly unconvincing, not least because he ignores the fact that the tax is required by law. Far from being an ex post facto appropriation, it was entirely foreseeable — and necessary — from the day the TARP bill was passed.
His other criteria for the tax being unconstitutional don’t pass much muster either. It’s severe, he says, just on the grounds that it’s a tax which raises revenues. Well yes, that’s the whole point. But it’s not confiscatory: if the banks are paying $145 billion in bonuses this year, they can pretty obviously afford a tax designed to raise $90 billion over ten years.
Is it targeted with punitive intent? Maybe — but no more than any other Pigovian tax which seeks to tax what you want less of. Are taxes on cigarettes targeted and punitive? Does that make them unconstitutional?
And no, the tax is not unavoidable: if the banks decided to fund themselves entirely through deposits and equity, as many smaller banks have done through the ages, then they would have to pay no tax. It’s only when they lever up with wholesale funds that the tax becomes payable.
The tax will not, in and of itself, solve the problem of banks being too big to fail. For that reason, some have attacked it as being inadequate. But it’s a key step in the right direction, and not only constitutional but a very good idea.
Update: Carney responds, at very great length.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=12408736-8665-4724-930a-d1f6787ed6fd)
Posted in Tax News.
Tagged with Bank, Felix Salmon, law, Supreme Court, Supreme Court of the United States, tax, Too Big to Fail, Troubled Asset Relief Program.
Though the proposed FCRF will recover the remaining costs of the fat cat bailout package, there is a strong case to be made that it should raise even more revenue. The TARP bill only says that it has to be repaid but never that revenue above and beyond the cost of the rescue cannot be raised. And as our country heads deeper into fiscal insolvency because of our genuflection to the lords of finance and temple of Reagan, we need to obtain as much revenue as possible.
Continued…
Posted in Tax News.
Tagged with bailout, bank tax, Congres, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, FCRF, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Financial Crisis Responsbility Fee, Financial services, Republicans, Scott Garrett, tax, Tier 1 capital, Too Big to Fail, Troubled Asset Relief Program, Wall Street.
Greg Mankiw is one of the most prominent economists in the country and perhaps the most famous to have not taken a freakonomics-esque path to prominence. An observant conservative, he and I usually disagree on most issues. So I found myself quite heartened to read
this from him today, “Nonetheless, on the economic merits, there may be a case for the bank tax.”
Continued…
Posted in Tax News.
Tagged with bank tax, Economic efficiency, financial crisis, Financial Crisis Responsiblity Fee, Financial services, Greg Mankiw, law, Subsidy, tax, Tax law, TBTF, too big too fail.
Global warming is a generational issue, and most people around the world realize that humans have caused it. A significant group of people which doesn’t, however, is the Republican Party in the United States of America. Because of that group’s pivotal ignorance, Americans oft think of preserving the Earth as a “carbon tax” and so we have legislative anathema.
But it turns out that Americans are not hostile to the environment. In fact, we support policies “that would increase the cost of certain carbon-producing activities but would use the proceeds to fund alternative energies or carbon capture and sequestration” according to the Association for Psychological Science. The key to this reasonableness, however, is to call any proposed policies a carbon offset.
Continued…
Posted in Rhetoric and Ideology.
Tagged with Carbon capture and storage, Earth, Environment, Global warming, Independent, Natural environment, Republicans, United States.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=d7b41cb2-d74f-4ca7-81dd-2f3c28e70621)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=7faa5fcc-d09b-430e-81e7-9c66c2752fa8)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=3f854ea6-8fdf-445c-83f5-5b74d362bba1)
