Last week, Joe Stiglitz posted a blog piece at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/a-tax-system-stacked-against-the-99-percent/, in which, among other things, he wrote:
One of the reasons for our poor economic performance is the large distortion in our economy caused by the tax system. The one thing economists agree on is that incentives matter — if you lower taxes on speculation, say, you will get more speculation. We’ve drawn our most talented young people into financial shenanigans, rather than into creating real businesses, making real discoveries, providing real services to others. More efforts go into “rent-seeking” — getting a larger slice of the country’s economic pie — than into enlarging the size of the pie.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We could have a much simpler tax system without all the distortions — a society where those who clip coupons for a living pay the same taxes as someone with the same income who works in a factory; where someone who earns his income from saving companies pays the same tax as a doctor who makes the income by saving lives; where someone who earns his income from financial innovations pays the same taxes as a someone who does research to create real innovations that transform our economy and society. We could have a tax system that encourages good things like hard work and thrift and discourages bad things, like rent-seeking, gambling, financial speculation and pollution. Such a tax system could raise far more money than the current one — we wouldn’t have to go through all the wrangling we’ve been going through with sequestration, fiscal cliffs and threats to end Medicare and Social Security as we know it. We would be in sound fiscal position, for at least the next quarter-century.
to which I posted a response. The last time I looked, it was the only one, out of about 430, which discussed the issue of rent seeking. Here's what I wrote:
How do we unstack it? Collect the rent. Treat it as our COMMON treasure, not something subject to privatization by individuals, corporations, foundations, universities, etc.
Will it fund everything? We don't know. We can't know. We don't even collect the data that would permit us to calculate its magnitude. (Funny thing about that. Wonder who benefits from that. Could it be the rent-seekers?) Start collecting it, and using it to fund public goods.
At the same time, start reducing, even eliminating the dumb taxes which burden the economy: taxes on sales, buildings, wages, starting with the lowest wages earned. Watch the 99% recover. Watch the economy recover. The 1% will do all right under such a set up, but the rest of us will begin to thrive. Most likely, we'd be able to reduce the amount we need to spend on the social safety net, so that collected rent might cover a large share of our internal revenue needs.
What else might we collect revenue from? How about the privileges we've given out -- the privilege of using the airwaves (think how much a strong radio signal sells for in a large city) and the entire electromagnetic spectrum; franchises of various kinds, landing rights at LaGuardia, particularly at rush hour;
Then there are our nonrenewable and scarce natural resources: water, oil, natural gas, various metals. Royalties on many of these things are trivial, or they are going into private pockets, instead of being treated as our common treasure.
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