acemoglu32_JIM WATSONAFP via Getty Images_biden tax plan

拜登伟大的税收再平衡

Apr 14, 2021 Daron Acemoglu

波士顿—美国总统拜登的支出计划总是万众瞩目的，这是当然的。美国政府的救助计划和基础设施计划可能通过加强社会安全网、增加交通、宽带和教育支出，将美国重塑成一个福利国家。

但由新冠疫情大流行后，美国政府支出可能仍将居高不下。由于额外的借贷只能提供这么多资金，税收收入就必须增加。因此，拜登政府提出了同样全面的“美国制造税收计划”（Made in America Tax Plan），该计划将增加企业在税收收入中的份额。

提高企业税率是最佳选择。在二战后的头十年，个人收入和社会保险收入的税收约占联邦税收收入的50%左右，而企业所得税则另占30%。但此后，前一类税收稳步增长，达到联邦税收总额的85%左右，而企业所占份额则降至10%以下。

To continue reading, register now.

As a registered user, you can enjoy more PS content every month – for free.

Subscribe now for unlimited access to everything PS has to offer.

Already have an account? Log in

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

Enjoy unlimited access to the ideas and opinions of the world’s leading thinkers, including long reads, book reviews, topical collections, short-form analysis and predictions, and exclusive interviews; every new issue of the PS Quarterly magazine (print and digital); the complete PS archive; and more. Subscribe now to PS Premium.

new comment has been posted. new comments have been posted.

0 Comments on this paragraph, 1 Comments on this article

David Punabantu Apr 14, 2021

The issue of taxation is critical but the maths behind it is plain but economists need to understand it if a fairer tax system is to exist against the real purchasing power of money. As the US pumps out stimulus packages to deal with the fall out of COVID 19, the back drop globally has been rising commodity prices.
The issue here is whether these US dollars will end up in China as Americans buy cheap Chinese goods and the repeat of 2008 may well occur as the US faces the Triffin Dilemma.
Consequently there are two issues at hand, the internal value of the US dollar and the external value of the US dollar. Increasing the internal value, ie purchasing power of the US dollar is one avenue to increasing local demand and US productivity.
Behind all this as the US economy picks up internally is how then will the government rack in the amounts spent to stabilise the economy and it's tax structure affecting the value of money?
For starters in Fiscal Year 2020, federal spending was equal to 31percent of the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Therefore if Federal spending is 31 percent of the GDP, it indicates that within a calender year the federal government got 31 percent of the GDP. For simplicity a year can be broken down into twelve units, representing the twelve months of a year. To extract 31 percent of the GDP twelve times then the tax rate should be 2.58 percent. Now if the tax rate was 8.3 percent per month then the entire value of the GDP in a calender year would be 100 percent. In effect all the value of the GDP would have been spent at a tax rate of 8.3 percent.
In the United States, the average single worker faced a net average tax rate of 24.0 percent in 2019.
What does this mean and the real value of money? The real value of the stimulus?
As taxes are above the 8.3 percent threshold, the government will collect the budget, spend it, re collect it, spend it, recollect it, spend it in a cyclical pattern many times in a single budget year. In effect it will be like Keynesian economics and the printing of money except instead of printing physically, the printing is done by recycling it. Taxes thus become compounded. Government tax at 30 percent in the first cyclical would extract that value leaving 70 percent. Then in the next cycle extract another 30 percent leaving 40 percent. The next 30 percent extraction in real terms is facing 40 percent left of the economy and in real value terms is 70 plus percent. Once all the value is extracted of savings, investments of ordinary people the whole nation government borrows against a " an economic crisis".
The budget represents the value of the GDP which is spent by the state before even citizens earn their wages. When they do earn their wages these wages buy next to nothing as the value has been spent. A situation may arise that the state may spend the entire GDP within 4 months, despite the physical use of money, and after that period a fiscal crisis occurs. Therefore a budget can be recycled for example every 21 days hence it being an "economic year" as opposed to a calender year. Thus what has to be done in 365 days has to be done in 21 days as a nation will go through 17 economic years in a calender year. Companies and government decisions based on a time scale of a calender year get over run as time horizons shrink and for the private sector it collapses.
The sequencing of decisions become obsolete. It must be noted that the quarterly board meeting occurred when the sequencing of the budget was based on 90 days. Every 90 days government collected the budget and spent it. In effect an "economic year" every 90 days as reflected by the velocity of an economy placed at 4. But as taxes increased and exchange rates moved to a floating system the economic years increased per calendar year.
A new reply to this comment has been posted.

https://prosyn.org/lNSzwRfzh

拜登伟大的税收再平衡

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

New Comment

Email this piece to a friend

Contact us

Log in/Register

拜登伟大的税收再平衡

Subscribe to Project Syndicate

Edit Newsletter Preferences

Set up Notification