Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Today we will discuss how the tax code affects health care. Tax exemption of employer-provided health insurance. “In 1943, the Internal Revenue Service (ruled) that employees could exclude the value of employer-paid health insurance premiums from their taxable income. In 1954, Congress excluded by statute the value of employer-purchase health insurance from gross income.” To…
The New York Times is reporting that “to pay for a sweeping overhaul of the health care system, House Democrats will propose a surtax on individuals earning $280,000 and up and couples earning more than $350,000.” Now, taxes in and of themselves need not be distortionary. Let us assume that your employer takes $10,000 from…
Bond Markets seem to be concerned over the escalating level of U.S. Government debt. Yields rose during the latest $14 billion auction of U.S. 30-year Treasury Bonds. This graph shows an ominous budget deficit trend as well. There seems to be good reason for this. American’s stimulus plan and entitlement programs are putting an…
The book Cadillac Desert discusses the development of dams, aquaducts, and irrigation canals to slake the thirst of cities and farmers in the Western U.S.. While these projects did eventually deliver the water they promised, they did so at huge costs to taxpayers. In the words of former congressmen Robert W. Edgar: “The old-boy network…
Obama Budget Cut Visualization. HT: Megan McArdle
Nevada is contemplating ‘slapping’ a $5 tax on sex acts in brothels.
An NBER working paper by Jonathan Guryan, Melissa Schettini Kearney (2009) gives strong evidence that gambling is addictive using a creative identification technique: “We use the sale of a winning ticket in the zip code, the location of which is random conditional on sales, as an instrument for present consumption and test for a causal…
Does Social Security work? By that, I mean does giving elderly individuals a government pension increase their level of income, the amount of goods the can consume, or even their happiness? An NBER working paper by Baker, Gruber and Milligan (2009) tries to answer this question in the Canadian setting. Background Currently, Canadian income transfer…
Two weeks ago I did a piece looking at the cost of living in different states. One major dimension of the cost of living is state sales and incomes taxes. With the recent economic downturn, it looks like I’ll have to update my numbers. California currently has the highest sales tax of any state (7.25%). …
This June, I will finish my Ph.D. in Economics at the University of California, San Diego. I am currently interviewing for a post-graduate employment and will likely move to another city. Which city should I move to? Of course, much of this has to do with personal preference. Do you like warm weather or seasons?…