At Economics21 Diana Furchtgott-Roth reviews three strategies for increasing business investment:
- Current year expensing (instead of depreciation)
- Destination-based cash flow tax
- Smarter regulation
which adds one strategy to the list I suggested in my post last week.
You can quibble or bicker about it as much as you like but without more business investment we won’t have job growth or a rising real median income. Don’t like those strategies? Propose your own.
Current expensing is, economically, fairly indistinguishable from a tax cut, reducing the diminishment of the investment’s cash flows during the near years, the riskiest period from the point of view of investment evaluation. Of course, I’m told repeatedly taxes don’t matter, so who knows? (Sorry, couldn’t resist)
Point two gets into a very long and complicated discussion of free trade vs protectionism in the realities of today’s global economy. As I’ve tried to point out repeatedly, how you feel about policy here depends on where you sit. This is a tough one.
Whether one uses a scalpel or meat ax, reduction in regulation would be helpful. Not just smarter, not just stable. Less. Anybody note the latest here in Chicago with the Air B2B regulation? Payoffs for aldermen. Higher costs and disincentives to travel for travelers. Higher profits for hotels. Somehow I don’t feel any more protected from this regulation. I bet I could say same for about a third of all regulation.
The last thing I would note goes to the title of a recent post: a crisis of confidence. The current environment: kill the rich, free everything paid for by the producers, you didn’t build that etc doesn’t encourage risk taking and hard work. It’s self defeating. I forget who said it, perhaps apocryphal, “the left loves employment, it just hates employers.”
You can quibble or bicker about it as much as you like but without more business investment we won’t have job growth or a rising real median income.
There is no reason to believe the people running the country want either significant job growth or rising real median income. Both parties (sans the rioters Trump & Sanders*) want more of the same policies that have led to stagnation of job growth and the long slow rot of real median income. Hell, Hillary is proposing the vastly increase the number of Third World immigrants brought into the country, and the Republicans in Congress can’t wait to work with her on this.
At some point, Schuler, you’re going to admit to yourself that the people running the country really do know that what they’re doing is nothing more than looting, and that they’re doing it with both purpose and malice. I can already feel you wavering on this!
* Or rather, their supporters, who feel something has gone wrong.
Drew, and the right loves employees, it just hates paying them or otherwise treating them like human beings.
Would you care to elaborate on that, ice?
See for example importing tens of millions of people from the Third World to drive down wages and other forms of compensation. See forcing people to train their Third World replacements or risk losing whatever little bit they’ll get from their layoff package. Etc, etc.
When have you seen me advocate that, Ice? Never. I simply have tried to see these trade issues through the prism of various points of view, and relay them. You can rant and rave and make vacuous charges but you can’t change the reality of the world without specific policy prescriptions and the ability to get them implemented. I would suggest that the first step would be to enforce existing immigration law. It’s a start, modest as it might be. Those leftward voting here have to answer for that failure, not me. Neither Clinton nor Obama have any intention of doing that. Or just about any Democrat, or the establishment Republicans. As much of a flawed candidate as Trump is its still his biggest attraction for many, and not just angry white guys.
“e. Those leftward voting here have to answer for that failure, not me.”
Best estimate show that Illegal immigration is much lower under Obama than under Bush.
Steve