Matt Miller says Republicans and Democrats both know that eventually taxes will have to go up. In his new book, “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas,” Miller says once everyone accepts that, government can focus on ways to raise money that are best for the economy like lowering payroll taxes and increasing taxes on dirty energy and consumption.
Allegra Goodman’s new novel tells the story of two sisters navigating love, historic cookbooks And the dot-com boom And bust.
The AMC television show is set in the 1960s, but is the language too?
From Jaws to Indiana Jones, what’s your favorite summer blockbuster? Tell us what you’ll be watching or re-watching this summer.
more »
We want to know what’s on your playlist this summer, but to start us off, we asked Here and Now literary critic and self-confessed, drooling, fanatic rock fan Steve Almond what’s tickling his ears.
more »
Confused by all the financial jargon as Congress investigates Goldman Sachs? Check out this glossary of terms to understand the difference between a CDO and a CDS.
more »
The Pros And Cons Of Renting Vs. Buying, The Downside Of Air Conditioning, Obama Administration Deports Record Number Of Illegal Immigrants, From Hanson To An Afghani-American Voice: Listeners Share Summer Music Picks
more »
The leading developer and supplier of technical computing software in the world.
I can’t see the logic in a consumption tax. Its only constituency is those whose primary concern is that landfills are being filled up.
Rather, what we ought to be taxing is land value. Land, to the classical economists, included not just urban land (very valuable) and suburban land (valuable) and agricultural land ($5 to $10,000 per acre), but also many other things created by nature.
The classical economists may not have known about radios or airplanes, but they would recognize the electromagnetic spectrum and landing rights as LAND, and therefore rightly the common property of the people of each country. We say that the airwaves belong to the American people, but we collect no rent from the squatters there. Mary Peters of the FAA correctly noted that landing rights at LaGuardia and other congested airports belong not to the airlines or the port authority, but to the American people.
These things are not inconsequential sources of potential revenue. See Mason Gaffney’s article “The Taxable Capacity of Land” for some handles on this.
These resources are not created by those who use them, and those who use them owe the rest of us for their privatization of them, year in and year out.
Therein lies the route to sane taxation and a just and sustainable society. (Even the game of Monopoly was based on a game designed to teach these ideas, The Landlord’s Game. Search on Lizzie Magie and Henry George.)
Many wise people have seen the sense in this … Jefferson, Buckley, Friedman, Ricardo, Mill, Vickrey … search on “quotable notables” and you’ll be on your way to knowing more.
Posted by Wyn Achenbaum, on February 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm