Six Practical Proposals for Progressive Tax Policy

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December 20, 2019 —  It was quite a surprise, three years ago, when Donald Trump won a majority in the US Electoral College, thus becoming the 45th president.  In the search for explanations, one immediately dominated:  Democrats had not been sufficiently aware of the problem of income inequality or had neglected to propose good solutions to it.

This is presumably the logic behind radical proposals coming from some of the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election. Senator Elizabeth Warren, for example, has proposed an annual tax on the wealth of the wealthiest Americans (originally to be 2 % per year, but now up to 6 %). read more

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Let’s Go Back to Good Old Tariff-Cutting

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Nov. 30, 2019  — The “bicycle theory” used to be a metaphor for international trade policy.  Just as standing still on a bicycle is not an option — one has to keep moving forward or else the bike will fall over – so it was said that international trade negotiators must continue to engage in successive rounds of liberalization, or else the open global trading system would be pulled down by protectionist interests.  I don’t know if the theory was ever right.  (And, to be honest, I don’t entirely understand why forward movement keeps a bicycle from falling over.)  But if we had stood still on trade policy over the last three years we would be a lot better off than where we are now. read more

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Weaponization of the Dollar May Backfire Yet

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October 26, 2019 —  This is a good time to gauge the rankings of the dollar and its rivals as major international currencies.  The Bank for International Settlements came out in September with its triennial survey of turnover in the world’s foreign exchange markets.  The IMF’s statistics on central bank holdings of foreign exchange reserves have gotten much more reliable lately, because China has joined in on reporting its holdings to the IMF (as Eswar Prasad explains).  And SWIFT offers every month its numbers on use of major currencies in international payments. read more

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