Well if you start with the truth -- that growth rates in the modern economy, roughly defined as the post-war period of clear Pax Americana, were highest when marginal tax rates were as well, your next step would be to add nuance to that truth. You could wonder if that would work now. And there's a very good reason to expect it would not, for various reasons but possibly primarily because the mobility of capital and the options offshore were a fraction of what they are now. Which is why I just mentioned what I just mentioned. Maybe AOC's already there. Maybe she knows that a simple call to soak the rich is good enough to galvanize the masses and to freak out Howard Schultz, and that below the surface she's already thought about offshoring and legal tax planning and transfer pricing to allow for profits to be shifted to a company subsidiary in a tax haven in which there are no actual sales, fabrication, R&D or workers. Dunno. But the people on the left in civil society, international organizations who have followed the money have all gone in those directions.
I hope we're gonna get smart policy too, but one thing for sure is that we're gonna get policy. It's always been hidden in tax policy, it turns out, and people like Schultz are now doing what they are doing because people like AOC finally get that.
I hope we're gonna get smart policy too, but one thing for sure is that we're gonna get policy. It's always been hidden in tax policy, it turns out, and people like Schultz are now doing what they are doing because people like AOC finally get that.
Comment