As a firm supporter of both carbon taxes and a universal basic income (UBI), you would think that I would be thrilled by the new report, The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends, released Wednesday by the Climate Leadership Council (CLC). It puts a price on carbon like a good carbon tax should, and it gives […]
photo: Thomas Hawk Reform of the corporate income tax is shaping up to be one of the big issues facing Congress in 2017. Republicans are pushing for big cuts in the corporate tax rate. Most observers seem to assume that conservatives and progressives will be at swords points over those cuts, but they should not be. […]
As 2017 begins, the US economy is in the middle of a boom, or at least a boomlet. The official unemployment rate is at or below its target level, stock market indicators are hitting all-time highs, and the Fed is starting to get serious about raising interest rates. All this is reflects the expectation of […]
photo: Marc Nozell Hillary Clinton is often said to be a policy wonk, deeply enmeshed in specifics and details, but that may be a mischaracterization. In some ways, her approach seems disturbingly superficial, skipping one perceived problem to another with little attention to their underlying causes. In some cases, Clinton seems to have paid little attention […]
Stabilizing the national economy is one of the federal government’s key responsibilities. Is that too much to ask? OK, then, can we at least ask that the government not make things worse when instability strikes? Not if you’re Marco Rubio. Sooner or later an oil price meltdown, a banking crisis, or a Chinese hard landing […]
The latest polls of US public opinion bring both good news and bad for the success of the COP21 climate talks now underway in Paris. On the positive side, a new New York Times/CBS News poll finds that two-thirds of Americans think their country should join an international treaty requiring it to reduce emissions in […]
The GOP primary has become an orgy of fear mongering, and not just about immigrants and terrorists. The candidates regularly portray the federal debt, too, as a dire threat to America’s future. Some samples: Marco Rubio: “We have a $19 trillion bipartisan debt and it continues to grow as we borrow money from countries that […]
The Greek government has rejected the latest austerity and reform proposals from the EU, the ECB, and the IMF. It has declared a national referendum, scheduled for Sunday, and urges a “No” vote. “”We ask you to reject it with all the might of your soul, with the greatest margin possible,” says Prime Minister Alexis […]
This version, revised June 25, 2014, corrects errors in calculating the value of the personal exemption and the size of the Social Security population that were present in the January original. The first post in this series looked at the economic case for a universal basic income (UBI), by which I mean an unconditional grant, […]
The news that Switzerland will hold a referendum on a proposal to provide every citizen with an unconditional grant of 2,500 Swiss francs a month (about $2,800) has sparked renewed interest in the old idea of a universal basic income (UBI). Under such a program, the government would not just top up the incomes of […]