Category Archives: Taxes
New fees for athletics: Will they pass?
This week’s Nicholl’s Worth page one headline reads “Will it pass?” Pauling Wilson’s article having that headline concerns a referendum before students on raising student fees by $84 per semester for a full-time student to support Nicholls athletics. Here, I do not address the normative question, ”should students pass the referendum?” but rather the more [...]
Cigarette taxes revenues and elasticity of demand
A few weeks ago the Nicholls Worth ran this article about Jindal’s plan to change the structure of taxation in Louisiana, moving away from income taxes and toward sales taxes. More recently, more details of the governor’s tax proposals have been released, as we see in this article from the Baton Rouge Advocate. In particular, [...]
Anakin Greenspan’s turn to the Dark Side
Before Alan Greenspan’s almost 19-year reign as Federal Reserve Chairman (economic sith?), and before his appointment by Nixon as Chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, Greenspan was a private sector economic consultant and a critic of fiat money or a government manipulated monetary system. In fact, he penned ”Gold and Economic Freedom” (a short [...]
The rich leaving France in the face of a huge tax hike–who would have seen this coming?
If you take a look at this recent article from France24.com, you will see that many French businessmen are puting their houses on the market to leave France, trying to avoid being hit with a stinging 75% marginal tax rate (the rate on their highest earnings, their “marginal” earnings). Leaving a high tax region was [...]
UN considers global taxation
Yesterday I posted a comment on the World Health Organization’s attempts to place a global tax on cigarettes here. Today, I read here that the UN is attempting to tax billionaires, carbon, airline flights, minerals, currency trading in dominant currencies (the dollar, the pound, the euro, the yen), and in financial transactions. In yesterday’s posted [...]
The Wrath of Grapes—The Dust Bowl Era Migration to California Has Been Reversing
When a seller of a product competes, an increase in that seller’s market share indicates that that seller is doing a better job, relative to its competitors, of producing net value, or benefits to buyers minus price, something economists call “consumer surplus.” Marketing professionals use the term value for this idea, which is a bit [...]
The French exodus continues
The evidence of France’s wealthy and their wealth fleeing that country is mounting. Take a look at this article from Britain’s The Telegraph. Could it be time to invest in real estate in Ontario and Montreal? -MC
Tax rates, budget problems and the exodus of the rich
Without a doubt, the federal budget is in awful shape. For every dollar of federal spending, we are only taking in 60 cents of taxes, meaning that another 40 cents on the dollar is deficit spending, which must be borrowed, some from Americans and some from the Chinese. We know we cannot borrow much from [...]
A note on low-turnout, single-issue ballot elections
In this April 7th post, I pointed out that school boards like to have tax increases in special elections, where there is not much else on the ballot, so that the beneficiaries of those tax dollars, mostly school employees, will show up to vote while those who are likely to oppose the tax may not have [...]
The economics of low turnout in tax elections
On April 21st, there will be various local tax elections. This is especially the time when school boards, parish sheriffs and parish governments hold elections to raise, extend or rededicate taxes. One question that should be asked is “why would a school board or other taxing authority hold a special election, when it has to [...]