In the famous Gene Wilder movie, “Quackser Fortune and His Cousin In the Bronx,” Wilder plays a character who picks up horse manure in the street and sells it for its rich nutrients. As horses are outlawed in the Dublin streets Quackser finds himself an unemployed manure sweeper, a negative outcome from Schumpeterian creative destruction. However, it seems Quackser resurrected his business and is now packaging horse excrement as an item of political discourse. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin was the recipient of the newest symbol of public disdain for the recent tax “reform.”
Posts Tagged ‘tax reform’
Notes From Underground: Quackser Fortune + Horse Manure
December 26, 2017Notes From Underground: Ghosts (Past, Present and Future)
December 21, 2017I want to wish every one who celebrates Christmas a very joyous season, and, most importantly I want to wish all my readers a year of good health and peace. The meaning of Christmas, Hanukkah and the spirit of the season should resonate with us everyday of the year. As I have told my children over the years about their wedding day: It is the least important day for it is the next day that matters most as does every day that follows. May we experience the meaning of the season each and every day of the coming year. I was always amazed that wars would halt for a Christmas truce but begin hostilities 12 days later. If you could stop for 12 days why not 12 months?
Notes From Underground: But Subjectivity Is Objective (Woody Allen, Love and Death)
November 15, 2017The airwaves fill with the narrative of the coming corporate tax cut benefiting profits, growth and higher wages. Each side argues that their data is closer to reality: one being static analysis the other dynamic scoring of increased growth. My view continues to be, REAL TAX REFORM, NOT A TAX CUT. Genuine tax reform would provide tax relief for the middle-income earners and most probably result in a tax increase for the high-income earners. Congress has mucked up TAX REFORM as the starting point OUGHT to have been a return to BOWLES/SIMPSON. The problem with the Bowles plan is that it meant spending cuts as well as an effort to broaden the tax base by closing many tax loopholes. Also, Alan Simpson was in favor of defense cuts so it was a genuine tax restructuring as all “OXES WOULD BE GORED.”
Notes From Underground: The Chinese Cite Hyman Minsky
October 19, 2017First a few jokes: My sources tell me that the new Fed Chairman will be Marc Faber; second, as Lloyd Blankfein is chirping about Brexit and Goldman moving to Frankfurt, Germany, he opined several years ago that Goldman was doing God’s work. Well, being the cyclical time in the Jewish Torah of the reading of NOAH, I remind Blankfein that Noah was also part of God’s work. (Pour a scotch and laugh).