The Biden Tax Plan

Posted on 30 July 2020 by eehines

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden thinks American businesses don’t pay enough taxes into Government’s coffers.

“Vice President Biden has been clear that it’s absolutely unacceptable for some of the biggest companies in America, like Amazon, to pay next to nothing in taxes,” Michael Gwin, a campaign spokesman, said.

This is a carefully misleading claim that Biden is making through his spokesman. Some of the biggest companies in America actually pay billions of dollars in taxes for all that each of those companies pay a net amount of close to zero. That, though, is an outcome of our byzantine tax code that lets companies—big and small; although it’s the biggest that are able to make the most of it—balance a tax bite here with a subsidy, write-off, credit, or what-have-you there in order to achieve low/zero overall liability while paying those individual billions.

This is a preview of The Biden Tax Plan. Read the full post (452 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery

Posted on 29 July 2020 by eehines

Progressive-Democrats don’t seem to care about economic recovery, only about using the current Wuhan Virus situation and the economic dislocation the virus has spurred for their own political power gain.

This is made plain by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) in an interview she gave to CBS News‘ Face the Nation Sunday.

…what we will not support is the following. What they’re saying to essential workers, you have to go to work because you’re essential. We’ve place no responsibility on your employer to make that workplace safe and if you get sick, you have no recourse because we’ve given your employer protection.

This is a preview of Progressive-Democrats and Economic Recovery. Read the full post (515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

Government and Student Debt

Posted on 29 July 2020 by eehines

In an article on the possibility of the Federal government extending its current moratorium on student debt repayment, The Wall Street Journal posed a question to its readers.

How should Congress address the backlog of student-loan payments borrowers will owe after Sept 30?

I say, mostly by leaving it alone. The loans are strictly business arrangements between the borrower and the lender.

In a free market economy, government has no role here, other than to allow student debt to be discharged through bankruptcy like most other debt. Such bankruptcies then must flow with all the ramifications they entail for both the lenders and the borrowers.

This is a preview of Government and Student Debt. Read the full post (202 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

Internet Security

Posted on 27 July 2020 by eehines

There is a move afoot—and it’s making significant progress—to develop and deploy a quantum computing Internet.

A group led by the US Department of Energy and the University of Chicago plans to develop a nationwide quantum internet that could be functional in about a decade and with the potential to securely transmit sensitive information related to national security and financial services.
“What we’re moving forward on is building out quantum networks [to] someday…turn into a full second internet, a parallel internet to the digital internet,” said Paul Dabbar, the Energy Department’s Under Secretary for Science.

This is a preview of Internet Security. Read the full post (496 words, estimated 1:59 mins reading time)

The Biden Fed

Posted on 24 July 2020 by eehines

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden has a plan for the Federal Reserve system of banks. This bit jumped out at me in the article at the link that describes his plan.

[T]he policy blueprint Team Biden cooked up with Bernie Sanders’s economic advisers argues, “the Black unemployment rate is persistently higher than the national average, which is why Democrats support making racial equity part of the mandate of the Federal Reserve.”

Because blacks are fundamentally incapable of competing in America without special treatment. This is the soft bigotry of low expectations.

This is a preview of The Biden Fed. Read the full post (156 words, estimated 37 secs reading time)

Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought

Posted on 23 July 2020 by eehines

California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) has ordered all schools—private and public—not to open until his Omnipotent State declares it safe to do so. This seems at the behest of California’s teachers unions, which fear competition from private schools—and which are losing that competition, as they’ve been doing for some years.

Catholic school tuition, for instance, costs $1,000-$4,000 per student less than the union public schools, and they provide better education—academic, discipline, moral values. And they’re ready, willing, and anxious to open on schedule.

This is a preview of Opening Schools—Two Schools of Thought. Read the full post (440 words, estimated 1:46 mins reading time)

Tax Misallocation

Posted on 23 July 2020 by eehines

The misallocation, this time, is not in the way our tax monies are being spent.

It’s in what our money is not being spent on in lieu of paying those taxes in the first place.

According to a 2018 Bureau of Labor Statistics survey—before the 2017 tax reform bill had been able to percolate into our economy in any serious way—we Americans spent more on the taxes Government exacts from us than we did on food, clothing, and health care combined.

This is a preview of Tax Misallocation. Read the full post (372 words, estimated 1:29 mins reading time)

Byzantine Taxing

Posted on 22 July 2020 by eehines

Many companies, sitting on billions of dollars of tax credits, want to be able to cash them in promptly.

For example:

Duke has been unable to use all the corporate-research and renewable-energy credits it accumulated because it has been using accelerated tax deductions for capital investments to lower its taxable income, said Dwight Jacobs, the company’s chief accounting officer. That bumped it up against tax-code rules that limit tax credits, leaving $1.8 billion in unused credits on Duke’s books. Under the proposal, the company could get that within months instead of years.
The proposal “would give us more cash today and that would cause us to avoid borrowing money that we would otherwise have to borrow,” said Mr Jacobs.

This is a preview of Byzantine Taxing. Read the full post (384 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

A Taxing Case

Posted on 17 July 2020 by eehines

Apple won its appeal of a European Commission ruling that it owed €13 billion ($15 billion) in back taxes because Ireland had illegally subsidized the company.

The General Court agreed with Ireland’s argument that the matter wasn’t an illegal subsidy because the nation cut similar tax deals with all comers.

The EU, of course, is not happy. It’s Tax Justice Coordinator (no irony in that title), Tove Maria Ryding, said,

If we had a proper corporate tax system, we wouldn’t need long court cases to find out whether it is legal for multinational corporations to pay less than 1% in taxes.

This is a preview of A Taxing Case. Read the full post (273 words, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

Market Performance

Posted on 17 July 2020 by eehines

Great Britain has decided to bar the People’s Republic of China’s telecom company, Huawei, from participating in the British build-out of their 5G network.

The PRC isn’t happy. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian:

Whether the UK will provide an open, fair and non-discriminatory environment for Chinese businesses offers a telling clue to how the post-Brexit British market will perform and how secure China’s investment will be in that country. So, we will be closely following the situation.

I certainly hope it’s a telling clue, given that PRC companies are extensions of that government’s intelligence gathering facility.

This is a preview of Market Performance. Read the full post (166 words, estimated 40 secs reading time)

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Category Archives: Economics