Tag Archives: economics

An Interesting Move

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Work for welfare is a tried and true means of helping folks who need a hand up and further for helping them get out of the government-dependency cage.  Wisconsin is applying an interesting twist to the thing.

Wisconsin is relying on an unusual argument to tie new work requirements to food stamps: it says it needs the workers.

And

[Wisconsin’s] labor force grew 1.2% in 2017, and the state’s jobs listings website shows nearly 100,000 positions unfilled. Mr Walker believes some of the 925,000 people on the state’s FoodShare program could help.

Governor Scott Walker (R):

We can’t afford to have anybody on the sidelines.  This is as much as anything a workforce issue.

Yewbetcha.

This could work.  The program will, though, in addition to helping Wisconsin’s poor and worker shortage, invite movement into Wisconsin by (oh, say) Illinois citizens.  To the extent that jobs remain available from Wisconsin’s historically low unemployment, this would be good.  A risk, though, is that the program might lead to overshooting the jobs available, leaving the costs of the program expanding while its benefits—employment of welfare recipients—stagnate or fall off.

Better than Nothing

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…and good for the region, although not as good as it could have been with US involvement.

Japan, Canada, Mexico and eight other Pacific nations [Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam] are set to sign a new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, on Thursday.

This is a missed opportunity for the United States and a foreign policy mistake by President Donald Trump.

The goal of the pact is to open borders to more trade in the rapidly growing Asia-Pacific region and to set international standards, which many see as crucial to managing the encroaching dominance of China….

That last illustrates why international trade, in all its forms, is more about foreign policy than it is economics.  The particular, foreign policy, failure has also weakened our ability to influence the People’s Republic of China, on trade, on the South and East China Seas, on northern Korea.

You Didn’t Earn That

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The European Commission has criticized seven member states for “aggressive” tax practices, whereby governments try to undercut others to attract multinational companies.

Pierre Moscovici, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation, and Customs doesn’t like competition; he actually thinks it interferes with the “integrity of the European single market.”

[T]hese practices have “the potential to undermine the fairness and the level playing field in our internal market and they increase the burden on EU taxpayers.”

This, of course, is nonsense on a number of fronts.  The Commission has yet to justify the high taxes of those member nations that are so put upon by the others’ low(er) tax rates.  The Commission has yet to say how competition is disintegrative.  The Commission has yet to explain why the playing field cannot be leveled by those high-tax nations lowering their tax rates and thereby also lowering the burden on those EU taxpayers who are citizens of those high-tax members.  The Commission has yet to demonstrate that tax competition creates, in any way, an uneven playing field—especially since the varying national tax rates are fully within the control of those nations.

Besides, that money belongs to EU Governance, not to the people who earned it or whose enterprises earned it.  And you member nations: your sovereignty belongs to us.

Because, Tax

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In a further demonstration that the Progressive-Democratic Party knows only how to tax and to raise taxes, there’s this.

Senate Democrats on Wednesday proposed repealing major pieces of the just-passed tax law, in a plan that would raise taxes on corporations, estates, and high-income households to pay for $1 trillion in new infrastructure spending.

And the Progressive-Democrats actually are touting this for the mid-term elections this fall.  It’s not your money, after all, it’s Big Governments, and Progressive-Democrats Know Better how your money should be spent.

Can’t possibly pay for the infrastructure by cutting spending somewhere else.  Mm, mm.

That today’s Republican Party can’t figure out how to cut spending somewhere else (House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R, WI) Social Security and Medicare reforms come to mind) just compounds the problem, it in no way excuses the Progressive-Democrats’ failure.

Online Retailers and Taxes

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The Trump administration is looking at forcing online retailers to pay the same taxes that their brick-and-mortar competitors must pay.

The Trump administration on Monday urged the Supreme Court to expand states’ authority to collect sales tax on internet transactions, joining a chorus of state officials seeking to overrule a 1992 precedent exempting many online retailers from having to add taxes to a consumer’s final price.

This is a mistake.

  1. This question is a political matter, not a legal/judicial one. If the administration thinks online retailers should pay the same taxes as brick and mortar retailers, then they should offer a bill to Congress (and State governors to their State legislatures) that fills in any gaps in existing statutes that allow online retailers to not pay. Judges cannot make law, as Art I, Section 1, makes clear—even if this is honored egregiously in the breach.
  2. If governments are worried that online retailers are competing unfairly by not paying the same taxes as their brick-and-mortar competitors, the far better solution is to lower the taxes charged the brick-and-mortar companies so they can compete. After all, that’s what was done with the Federal corporate tax rates, both for domestic consumption and to improve competitiveness with foreign competitors, and it’s working quite well.