A Gilded Planet

California Forward, a non-partisan front group for sanctimonious centrists who think problems can be solved by anodyne nonsense and half-measures, has polluted the ballot in our state with a truly moronic proposition that would give large businesses the ability to elude environmental regulations by playing county governments against each other. While it purports to move power and authority down to the local level, it would have the effect of giving private business entities the power to rewrite California's laws as long as they can convince already beleaguered local governments to go along with them. I am a strong supporter of the principle of local control of decision-making. Every day, city governments all over the country enact great policies that federal and state governments are too sluggish and cowardly to touch. But often "bringing power back to local government" is code for "corporate privatization of laws and regulations", in the same sense that ...

Continued from  Part IV . Taxing the Lords of Finance  The financial crisis of 2008 has exposed deep-seated problems in our country’s finance sector. Besides the obvious dangers of over-leveraged banks, largely unregulated “shadow” banking operations and housing bubbles, the crisis demonstrated the unmatched political influence wielded by these businesses that were able to extract an enormous bailout over the loud, passionate objections of nearly everyone in the country. Many began to question whether some of these institutions had any redeeming social value whatsoever other than as a government-backed casino of the elites. Most of these problems can only be addressed through public engagement and legislation such as that passed into law earlier this summer. But it is worthwhile to note what role tax policy can play. Any true free market capitalist would be alarmed at the enormous profit margins that the financial industry enjoyed in the 2000s. In a well-functioning ...

Continued from  Part III . The Mechanics of a Carbon Tax Carbon taxes have been successfully implemented in many European countries. However, most of these countries do not rely on their carbon taxes as a primary source of revenue for the government as I am proposing. If the payroll tax were repealed, it would leave a hole in the budget of approximately $1 trillion. In order to raise this amount of revenue from a carbon tax, the U.S. would have to tax carbon at a rate of roughly $175 per metric ton emitted. Most European countries do not have a such a steep tax on carbon. However, Sweden started putting a tax on carbon comparable to what we would need almost two decades ago and has continued to experience stronger than average economic growth ever since. They also have a rate of carbon emissions per capita that is about one fourth of the U.S. average. If the U.S. achieved Swedish rates of carbon emissions, worldwide carbon emissions would drop by 15 percent. Sweden levies ...

Continued from Part II . The Mechanics of a Progressive Consumption Tax Let’s look at how a progressive consumption tax would actually differ from the federal income tax by looking at the prospective tax bills of two fictional American families of very different means. The Smiths, a middle class family of four, earn $50,233 annually. That puts them very near the median income of the U.S. Under the status quo federal income tax, their first $16,700 of earnings is taxed at a 10 percent rate and the rest is taxed at a 15 percent rate. This adds up to a total liability of about $6,700. Without going into too much detail, we can assume that a family at this income level probably does not itemize deductions but is very likely to be eligible for benefits such as the child tax credit so their actual tax bill will be lower. Let’s assume a final liability of around $4,500. Now, let’s recalculate the Smiths’ tax liability under the progressive consumption tax. The Smiths would report $50,2...

Continued from Part I . The problems of the U.S. Tax Code are almost innumerable, but I will describe only the most inimical flaws that this proposed overhaul will address. These can be categorized broadly in three groups: problems of unfairness, problems of inefficiency and problems of complexity. The tax code is unfair when it derives revenue in a needlessly regressive manner as in the case of the funding source for Social Security and Medicare. The FICA Tax that raises revenue for those programs is flat and thus by definition regressive. An individual earning $20,000 annually is in the same income bracket as a person earning $90,000 in the same year as far as the FICA tax is concerned. To make matters worse, only the first $106,800 of wages is subject to Social Security portion of the tax while investment income is not subject to the tax at all. This means that for three fourths of Americans, the FICA tax represents a majority of their tax liability. But for the wealthiest peopl...

The United States tax code needs a complete overhaul. An overhaul is necessary not simply because a wide variety loopholes, exemptions, and carve outs have infested the system with unfairness, complexity and inefficiency. Even more importantly, the United States needs a tax structure that will help it confront the economic and environmental challenges of the 21st century in a sophisticated, effective way. Closing loopholes and eliminating special interest giveaways, while appealing and worthwhile, is just not enough good enough in a world of staggering economic imbalances and looming climate catastrophes. We must pursue a more ambitious approach. We should eliminate the federal income tax and the payroll (or FICA) tax and replace them with more sensible revenue measures to fund the bulk of government expenditure. Basic economic principles indicate that governments should tax activities in order to reduce their incidence. For this reason, governments have so-called ‘sin’ taxes on alco...

Privatize your emotions in the wetware of your braingus. Your mind is a gated community of alchemical magic. Outsource your empathy to the charity of your choice. Tax benefits exist to reward you for your benevolence. Deregulate your sociopathy to let undead unborn demons out. Zombie banks will help you to recoup any losses. Securitize your myopia! You don't want to kill the biosphere... ...just shrink it 'til it's small enough to drown in a bathtub...

"The causes which destroyed the ancient republics were numerous; but in Rome, one principal cause was the vast inequality of fortunes." - Noah Webster Wealth disparity in this country has grown to vast proportions. If we want to save our democracy and secure our investments in the future, we must reverse this alarming trend. We simply can't keep turning our back on education and expect a prosperous tomorrow. Keeping this in mind, I ask anyone who will listen to sign on in support of the Millionaires Tax both because it will bring funding back to California's public schools from kindergarten through higher education and it has the capacity to start translating the agitation of the Occupy movement into public policy that will reshape the conditions of economic power in this country.

Aside from the indispensable Ezra Klein , I don’t usually read the Washington Post because it seems to have adopted a policy of deliberately misleading its readers on its editorial page while its news section…well, the less said , the better . But the other day as I was walking into Moffitt Library, a WaPo headline caught my eye and I had to stop to see if I was hallucinating. The headline read “World's Wealthy Pay a Price In Crisis.” I blinked and rubbed my eyes in disbelief. The richest people in America were richer in 2007 than at any time since the 1920s. Similar statistics showed the same story around the world. Many economists and policy analysts further believed that the rich were the only people seeing real income gains from growth across the entire economy for many years before the recession. Since the recession began, I understand that the rich became slightly poorer than before. Instead of being unimaginably wealthy, they are now only obscenely wealthy. But...