Bob Lord

Posted by Bob Lord

I told my friend Thucky I'd address his arguments about tax rates and "welfare," their impact on the employment rate, and their connection to inequality in America. As you'll see, there are a lot of topics that feed in to this discussion, so sorry about the length.

Thucky's central point is that unemployment in America has been driven by high tax rates and welfare policies that are "too comfortable." Address this problem and he believes inequality will take care of itself. Thucky relies on studies by Edward Prescott and others to support his belief that higher tax rates and comfortable welfare policies increase unemployment. Although I think Thucky allows himself to be too easily seduced by the credentials of those who write the papers upon which he relies, his reading of the studies is basically sound. Hopefully, he thought a bit more critically when reading the Reinhart and Rogoff study and their conclusion. 

I actually don't differ with Thucky regarding the relationship of tax rates, welfare and employment. It's when Thucky uses that relationship to explain away inequality in America that I think his logic breaks down. 

Posted by Bob Lord

We sitll haven't seen the outcome here of our great experiment: How much income and how much wealth can we cram into the top 1% before the bottom 90% explodes? 

But they're seeing some results in Brazil. Brazil actually has worse inequality than the US. And you've read about the outbreak of mass civil disobedience there. At first it was supposedly attributable to transit fares and the use of tax money to prepare stadiums for the World Cup and the Olympics rather than to provide social services. But make no mistake. The protests in Brazil are inequality driven. 

Ironically, although Brazil's inequality is worse than ours, the trend there, albeit slow-moving, actually is towards equality, whereas the trend here is in the other direction. We're still in the process of fleecing poor people and stuffing the loot into the pockets of the Walton familiy. But inequality in Brazil is more visible. The wealthy there travel in armored vehicles. The tax system there is rigged in favor of the wealthy even worse than ours. And living conditions for the many are worse there than here. Considering those factors together, it makes sense that Brazil reached its tipping point before we reached ours.

But we may not be far behind.

Posted by Bob Lord A few weeks ago, in Success At Last, Sort Of, I engaged in a bit of self-promotion after having my op-ed piece on Apple's tax shenanigans published in a few small dailies. Well, this post is Success At Last, For Real, because, well, this time it's shameless self-promotion and it's not a … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord The fourth and last piece in my four part series on wealth that produces income not subject to current tax, America's Ever-Expanding Tax-Exempt Pool, is up at inequality.org. When you count it all up, our giant tax-exempt pool is well into the tens of trillions, and growing. I of course would love it … Read more

Posted by Bob Lord

There's a bunch of stuff out today on inequality, but the most eye-opening piece I've seen in awhile is Nick Turse's piece, Blowback Central, at Tom Dispatch. 

AFRICOM is the Pentagon's most recently established global command. Established just six short years ago, it has imposed our military presence all over Africa, with stunningly depressing results. I was vaguely aware of this situation, but didn't appreciate fully the extent of our imperialistic action. Here are a few of the highlights from Turse: