Let's assume we lived in a world that understood we don't need "pay for's".
Then,
Do we need to tax corporations at all, if we
1) greatly increase individual taxes for the wealthy corporate shareholders, executives, and all other super rich people to reduce their political power and the income inequality gap,
2) make lobbying illegal
3) make corporate donations to political parties and individual politicians illegal
4) eliminate individual influence on public policies by making it illegal to donate more than 20 bucks to political parties and politicians,
5) limit corporate executive pay to x% of the lowest paid employee (not sure what that % would be, but we can figure it out)
6) make it illegal to allow politicians who exit office to land cushy jobs or get freelance consulting gigs for corporations
7) require corporations to include an x precent of labor representative on their boards
8) enforce the above
Note that "corporations" should include any business entity including shell companies, proprietorships, non-profits, etc.
I got most of these ideas from reading a great book called "The Deficit Myth".
Ps. I didn't include regulations to enforce corporate behavior for society benefits since that would stretch the scope of the taxing corporations topic even more.
What passed the Senate is a very good start on climate. There is a lot of emphasis on renewable energy, which is good. But zero-carbon electricity production will never happen without a sizeable nuclear energy component. Look what's now happening in Germany to see how you handicap efforts to produce clean power by closing nuclear power plants--which a majority of Germans now do NOT want closed. Germany is especially vulnerable because of their foolish reliance on natural gas from Russia, but no matter where you get your natural gas from, you will always need a lot of it as a backup to intermittent electric energy sources. I take that back--Denmark is doing well with wind power, but only because they get hydro from Norway as backup when the weather does not cooperate--better than natural gas but there's only so much of that too. Storage of the magnitude required to back up wind and solar is expensive and environmentally costly. Nuclear should get subsidies of the same order of magnitude that wind and solar are getting. Other than that, the Senate bill is about as strong on climate as you can get in view of the Manchin Factor.
“Well, they did it. For the second time in two years the Democrats failed miserably to fullfill any of their (& Biden’s) election promises but have cobbled together something that *just* about lets them claim to have done something without actually doing anything meaningful which would make people’s lives substantively better and/or easier.”
“Record climate investment”.... Lmao Yeah, from a very, VERY low starting point. One cast iron way of assessing whether the climate stuff will in any way slow or stop the Fossil Fuel cartels from burning the planet to a crisp is to observe how the CEO’s react to it. Needless to say they are very happy indeed. Why might that be do you think?
I'm glad we are making these investments in clean energy and health. Its not everything, but it is a progressive political victory. It is more impressive a victory as it happens in the shadow of notable inflation. The "pay backs" make it politically possible. Its what the public (voters) understand. A politician too far ahead of his constituency won't stay in office long. Until we spread the ideas of MMT more broadly in the public it will remain as such.
I'm also glad as a share holder in the $ economy that my ability to purchase won't be diminished by too many (green) dollars entering the market with the Federal spending. It's quite possible for congress to screw this up. I wonder if they still have good MMT economists advising them? I found the ideas presented by Nathan Tankus in the paper 'New Monetary Policy' referenced in the last Lens email to be intriguing. The rub seems to be finding politicians and voters who favor cooperative effort and long term investment over immediate profit
The tax increases will nevertheless allow more spending on what matters that can be authorised in future bills. As we all know the deficit and the debt are of no real consequence and hopefully one day a proper Job Guarantee will be implemented which will ensure the full fiscal capacity available to the Federal Government will be available to serve the public interest. Thanks Stephanie for your decisive involvement which will help so many and is also a powerful precedent for the whole world.
Don't worry, they will quickly fritter away any budget gains on the military/industrial complex which has become the laboratory experiment for MMT. It's funny that no one ever asks "How will we pay for it?" when they give the defense industry unlimited funding.
Re the 15% minimum tax on corporate profits: I understood this to mean that EVERY corporation would pay at least this amount with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever. Ha! The tax is in place but so are are a host of new loopholes and paybacks that, in some cases, will even give profitable corporations a negative tax rate. In my perhaps limited understanding, this part of the bill appears to be a complete fraud.
And that raises questions about everything else in it. Saying, for instance, that this is the biggest federal investment in combating climate change is saying almost nothing. Especially in light of the added favors for the fossil fuel industry. But good luck reading the mainstream media if you hope to learn anything substantive about the bill. Their superficial coverage appears geared completely to cheering on Biden and the Democrats irrespective of the garbage they churn out.
Finally, let's not be too harsh on Manchin and Sinema. If they didn't exist, the Democratic Party would surely designate one or two more Snidely Whiplashes to sabotage any constructive measures. The Today's Dems have an endlessly deep bunch for such chicanery.
Thanks, Andreas. Very interesting. I'll check out your links when I have some time away from work. I'm a big fan of pumped hydro where it can be placed. There are not many places where facilities can be put near population centers in the U.S. without moving a lot of people and losing a lot of wild habitat. Battery storage is expensive and lithium mining is hard on the environment. Mining a ton of lithium uses 500,000 gallons of water and many of the places it is mined are arid.
Let's assume we lived in a world that understood we don't need "pay for's".
Then,
Do we need to tax corporations at all, if we
1) greatly increase individual taxes for the wealthy corporate shareholders, executives, and all other super rich people to reduce their political power and the income inequality gap,
2) make lobbying illegal
3) make corporate donations to political parties and individual politicians illegal
4) eliminate individual influence on public policies by making it illegal to donate more than 20 bucks to political parties and politicians,
5) limit corporate executive pay to x% of the lowest paid employee (not sure what that % would be, but we can figure it out)
6) make it illegal to allow politicians who exit office to land cushy jobs or get freelance consulting gigs for corporations
7) require corporations to include an x precent of labor representative on their boards
8) enforce the above
Note that "corporations" should include any business entity including shell companies, proprietorships, non-profits, etc.
I got most of these ideas from reading a great book called "The Deficit Myth".
Ps. I didn't include regulations to enforce corporate behavior for society benefits since that would stretch the scope of the taxing corporations topic even more.
What passed the Senate is a very good start on climate. There is a lot of emphasis on renewable energy, which is good. But zero-carbon electricity production will never happen without a sizeable nuclear energy component. Look what's now happening in Germany to see how you handicap efforts to produce clean power by closing nuclear power plants--which a majority of Germans now do NOT want closed. Germany is especially vulnerable because of their foolish reliance on natural gas from Russia, but no matter where you get your natural gas from, you will always need a lot of it as a backup to intermittent electric energy sources. I take that back--Denmark is doing well with wind power, but only because they get hydro from Norway as backup when the weather does not cooperate--better than natural gas but there's only so much of that too. Storage of the magnitude required to back up wind and solar is expensive and environmentally costly. Nuclear should get subsidies of the same order of magnitude that wind and solar are getting. Other than that, the Senate bill is about as strong on climate as you can get in view of the Manchin Factor.
I think the definitions of "it" and "delivered" are in desperate need of revision.
"...there is still a lot to celebrate in this bill."
So we're supposed to congratulate Democrats for bringing 51 water pistols to a 5-alarm fire? Anyone under the age of 40 is totally screwed.
“Well, they did it. For the second time in two years the Democrats failed miserably to fullfill any of their (& Biden’s) election promises but have cobbled together something that *just* about lets them claim to have done something without actually doing anything meaningful which would make people’s lives substantively better and/or easier.”
“Record climate investment”.... Lmao Yeah, from a very, VERY low starting point. One cast iron way of assessing whether the climate stuff will in any way slow or stop the Fossil Fuel cartels from burning the planet to a crisp is to observe how the CEO’s react to it. Needless to say they are very happy indeed. Why might that be do you think?
I'm glad we are making these investments in clean energy and health. Its not everything, but it is a progressive political victory. It is more impressive a victory as it happens in the shadow of notable inflation. The "pay backs" make it politically possible. Its what the public (voters) understand. A politician too far ahead of his constituency won't stay in office long. Until we spread the ideas of MMT more broadly in the public it will remain as such.
I'm also glad as a share holder in the $ economy that my ability to purchase won't be diminished by too many (green) dollars entering the market with the Federal spending. It's quite possible for congress to screw this up. I wonder if they still have good MMT economists advising them? I found the ideas presented by Nathan Tankus in the paper 'New Monetary Policy' referenced in the last Lens email to be intriguing. The rub seems to be finding politicians and voters who favor cooperative effort and long term investment over immediate profit
The tax increases will nevertheless allow more spending on what matters that can be authorised in future bills. As we all know the deficit and the debt are of no real consequence and hopefully one day a proper Job Guarantee will be implemented which will ensure the full fiscal capacity available to the Federal Government will be available to serve the public interest. Thanks Stephanie for your decisive involvement which will help so many and is also a powerful precedent for the whole world.
Don't worry, they will quickly fritter away any budget gains on the military/industrial complex which has become the laboratory experiment for MMT. It's funny that no one ever asks "How will we pay for it?" when they give the defense industry unlimited funding.
The Medicare drug pricing provision is pretty much a nothing burger.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/08/the-ira-drug-price-victory.html
Re the 15% minimum tax on corporate profits: I understood this to mean that EVERY corporation would pay at least this amount with absolutely no exceptions whatsoever. Ha! The tax is in place but so are are a host of new loopholes and paybacks that, in some cases, will even give profitable corporations a negative tax rate. In my perhaps limited understanding, this part of the bill appears to be a complete fraud.
And that raises questions about everything else in it. Saying, for instance, that this is the biggest federal investment in combating climate change is saying almost nothing. Especially in light of the added favors for the fossil fuel industry. But good luck reading the mainstream media if you hope to learn anything substantive about the bill. Their superficial coverage appears geared completely to cheering on Biden and the Democrats irrespective of the garbage they churn out.
Finally, let's not be too harsh on Manchin and Sinema. If they didn't exist, the Democratic Party would surely designate one or two more Snidely Whiplashes to sabotage any constructive measures. The Today's Dems have an endlessly deep bunch for such chicanery.
Thanks, Andreas. Very interesting. I'll check out your links when I have some time away from work. I'm a big fan of pumped hydro where it can be placed. There are not many places where facilities can be put near population centers in the U.S. without moving a lot of people and losing a lot of wild habitat. Battery storage is expensive and lithium mining is hard on the environment. Mining a ton of lithium uses 500,000 gallons of water and many of the places it is mined are arid.