My friend John Teevan of Grace College sends out a monthly newsletter, “Economic Prospect.” He passes along this in the current edition:
I found this note from a newly retired accountant (age 66) who has not gone on social security yet. His income as a part-time accountant in his town was $60,000.
What is the “fiscal cliff”?
The term “fiscal cliff”, which is believed to have originated in Congressional testimony by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, refers to the substantial changes to tax and spending policies that are scheduled to automatically take effect in January 2013. The changes are intended to significantly reduce the federal budget deficit.
What are the tax and spending policies that will change?
Several major tax provisions are set to expire at year’s end:
Read more on The FAQs: What is the Fiscal Cliff?…
After every electoral defeat—whether suffered by Republicans or Democrats—a period of hand-wringing and soul-searching inevitably develops in the days and weeks after the election. Journalists and politicians take to print to explain “What went wrong” and “Here’s what should be done differently.” Although the solutions are almost always what the pundits were saying before the election, the exercise in self-reflection is, on the whole, a much needed corrective. But too often the advice tends to be of the always terrible, “We should be more like the party that won.”
A prime example is an article today by Wick Allison, publisher of The American Conservative. Allison voted for Obama in 2008 and hinted that he would do so this year too. So it probably shouldn’t be surprising that that his economic solution looks similar to what President Obama would endorse.
Allison says that the “Republican Party can appeal to ‘Judeo-Christian values’ as long as the sun shines and their voices hold out. But they’ve abandoned the most basic moral value of all: fairness.” While he may have a valid point, Allison muddies the argument by his misunderstanding of both taxation and fairness:
As society becomes more secularized, the calls for churches to pay their “fair share” become more vocal. Erik Stanley, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, explains why churches should remain exempt from paying taxes:
In “Stop Coddling the Super-Rich” investor Warren Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest men, makes a case for upping the tax rate on the “mega-rich” in America. In a response published on National Review Online, Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg observes that “this is a broken record that Mr. Buffett has taken to re-playing over the past five years.” He points out that the U.S. tax system is already heavily progressive (no pun intended) and that the label “mega-rich” may not be as obvious as Buffett would like us to believe:
Today at Capital Commentary I discuss the size and scope of the tax code in the US relative to its basic purposes.
In “Back Door Social Engineering,” I argue, “When governments run huge deficits in part because of the complexity of its tax system and the ability of people and institutions to engage in large-scale (and legal) tax avoidance, there is something deeply wrong with the system.”
Jordan Ballor has already done a fine job of commenting on A Call for Intergenerational Justice, and I’m sure that others will be chiming in on the PowerBlog as well. I’d like to focus on a couple of points that stand out to me from an initial reading of the document.
Read more on Intergenerational Injustice and a Question on Taxation…
Catching up on some recent Acton commentaries. We welcome a new writer, John Addison Teevan, who is director of the Prison Extension Program at Grace College. He also teaches economics and Bible courses at the Winona Lake, Ind., school. This column was published Dec. 29. Sign up for the free, weekly email newsletter Acton News & Commentary here.
There’s an old saying to the effect: “Show me a man’s checkbook and I’ll show you what’s important to him.”
It may not be quite the same as a checkbook, but NPR’s Planet Money passes along what a receipt from the federal government might look like for an average taxpayer (HT):
