Interview on One America News Network with Liz Wheeler on Economy, Trump Tax Cuts, and Tariffs6/29/2018
Also watch it here: www.texaspolicy.com/blog/detail/americans-keep-winning-six-months-after-the-trump-tax-cuts. For more information, read this blog post: Americans Keep Winning Six Months After Trump Tax Cuts. Please sign-up for my channel Vance Ginn Economics to watch this full episode and more.
In today's episode, I discuss how stocks look to end Q2 2018 up after a rocky quarter, projected economic growth rates continue to go up, price inflation reaches a 6-year high, and economics is the study of how people act and interact to satisfy their desires within institutions given scarce resources. Enjoy! The result of taxing something is that you will get less of it. That's simple, correct? But the details of how to best collect taxpayer dollars to fund limited roles for government gets complicated. I try to break this down simply at the video above.
According to the Texas Comptroller, property taxes and sales taxes are both regressive. Any time you have a flat tax rate, higher income people will pay a lower share of their income on taxes than lower income people. But the costs of property taxes are substantial, with businesses and individuals each paying about half for school M&O property taxes. Sales taxes, on the other hand, allow people the freedom to decide how to spend their money, don not have to tax real estate (capital formation and accumulation--keys to wealth of nations), and are transparent. Individuals pay about 60% of sales taxes collected while businesses submit about 40%, but we know that businesses don't ultimately pay taxes because they just pass those costs along to consumers (us) in the form of higher prices, lower wages, and fewer jobs available over time. As noted in Episode 8, I have long supported the elimination of property taxes in Texas. There are multiple ways to do so by possibly swapping them (sales tax rates are lower now because of expanded economic growth since these rates were calculated) with a reformed sales tax and/or buying them down over time. The key is to limit government spending so that the burden of government can be reduced. We know that sin taxes (e.g. carbon tax or cigarette tax) or tariffs are poor forms of taxation. Income taxes are also a terrible form of taxation. Check out the table below that provides information for the 9 states without a personal income tax and the 9 states with the highest personal income tax rates. Those states without a personal income tax blow the others out of the water regarding multiple economic indicators. Of course, the key is limiting spending. Let's move to a tax system with just a sales tax for more economic prosperity. Property taxes continue to skyrocket in Texas. I have long supported the elimination of property taxes in Texas. Fortunately, the Texas Public Policy Foundation continues to publish valuable ways to achieve this by swapping them (sales tax rates are lower now because of expanded economic growth since these rates were calculated) with a reformed sales tax and/or buying them down over time. The key is to limit government spending so that the burden of government can be reduced. I had the privilege of teaching 67 top-notch students of the MOWW Youth Leadership Conference about the labor market and the costs of the minimum wage. You can watch my presentation of the minimum wage game from a previous year here. It's always a pleasure to teach the bright young minds of tomorrow about something as important as the minimum wage. |
Vance Ginn, Ph.D.
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