{"id":17286,"date":"2014-05-31T19:34:40","date_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:34:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17286"},"modified":"2014-05-31T19:38:38","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:38:38","slug":"randy-wray-taxes-and-the-public-purpose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/05\/31\/randy-wray-taxes-and-the-public-purpose\/","title":{"rendered":"Randy Wray: Taxes and the Public Purpose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Naked Capitalism<\/em> has the post <a title=\"Naked Capitalism post\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2014\/05\/randy-wray-taxes-public-purpose.html?utm_source=feedburner&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NakedCapitalism+%28naked+capitalism%29\" target=\"_blank\">Randy Wray: Taxes and the Public Purpose<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If Congress ever got hold of its senses (no, I\u2019m not holding my breath), it would increase spending (or reduce taxes) to employ idle resources. At some point (probably later rather than sooner) we could come up against resource constraints. At that point we might need to curtail spending and\/or raise taxes.<\/p>\n<p>We can examine how to deal with the happy problem of chock-full employment later\u2014we haven\u2019t seen it in the US since WWII and it isn\u2019t on any horizon at present.<\/p>\n<p>Taxes can serve other purposes, too, as I\u2019ve argued earlier in this series. We can use taxes to discourage \u201csins\u201d\u2014in which case the purpose of the tax is to eliminate \u201csin\u201d so the optimal sizing of the tax would eliminate sin and hence raise no revenue at all.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, I argued that we can view excessive riches as a sort of \u201csin\u201d that we want to tax away. Some commentators have argued that high tax rates on high incomes in the early postwar period \u201cworked\u201d by discouraging corporations from paying high incomes to top executives. Exactly! That is how sin taxes are supposed to work. The goal is not to raise revenue but to reduce sin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is the clearest description of the attitude MMT proponents have about taxes.\u00a0 It doesn&#8217;t cover all taxes, though.\u00a0 The topic will garner more attention in later articles.\u00a0 Above, I have excerpted some statements on issues on which I am particularly focused.\u00a0 There is more good stuff in the article.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naked Capitalism has the post Randy Wray: Taxes and the Public Purpose. If Congress ever got hold of its senses (no, I\u2019m not holding my breath), it would increase spending (or reduce taxes) to employ idle resources. At some point (probably later rather than sooner) we could come up against resource constraints. At that point [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17286","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17286"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17288,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17286\/revisions\/17288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}