From: Rakesh Bhandari (rakeshb@STANFORD.EDU)
Date: Wed May 19 2004 - 13:34:06 EDT
Anders wrote: > >It is a problem for the left of the situation that the right-wing populist >party gets a lot of votes among the core of industrial and/or unionized >workers for their opposition to the *complicated* tax system. In the US it's important to determine whether tax cuts are applied to income rather than payroll taxes. The former kind of tax cut tends to aggravate inequality. On regressiveness in US, see Subject: (OPE-L) Who pays for the "welfare" in the welfare state? A multicountry study. Anwar Shaikh. To: OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU Social Research, Summer 2003 v70 i2 p531(21) Who pays for the "welfare" in the welfare state? A multicountry study. Anwar Shaikh. In the US it's inappropriate to study fiscal policy without due attention to the role of foreign capital flows in the financing of government debt. The piece on the Dumenil and Levy website on importance of capital inflow to maintainence of US debt happy ways seems very important. Fiscal policy would be another case where self enclosed national study may be misleading. At least for the US. I think the same applies to national time series on the profit rate. It tends to occlude the impact of exchange rate fluctuations on the profit rate. Whatever differences one has with Brenner, he was surely right to focus attention on currency volatility. It does seem that there was jostling of losses between esp the US and Japan through currency manipulation from the Plaza Accord on. Moreover, the effects of declining terms of trade, unequal exchange in the Bauer-Grossmann sense, the import of human capital gratis, etc. tend to be ignored through nationalist focus. Which is not to say these international factors have the decisive effect on a national profit rate. There is the other question of the concentration of capital, so explosive in the last fifteen years of the 20th century (see Frederick Pryor The Future of US Capitalism). This may have two effects: a maintainence of the rate of profit through slow down in the rate of accumulation and an explosion in real unemployment (which should include below poverty wage work) and more domination of the state by capital. The latter would block progressive tax reform. Sorry for the ramble. Back to grading. Rakesh. ps. isnt it the same Adolph Wagner whom Marx critiqued in those late Notes considered the father of public finance theory? Then there's the old debate between Schumpeter and Rudolf Goldschied. Richard A Musgrave is considered the American dean of public finance. > Although the >full digitalization has made the actual filling out of the forms very easy >for most of us. The rich still uses a tax-lawyer to find the loop-holes. >The only tax they really pay today is the VAT (often not even that since >they have part of their private consumption through their firms!) - and the >fees (water, garbage etc.). > >Is there any radical literature on tax-systems? > >Anders Ekeland
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