Monday, January 20, 2020

The Starving State: Why Capitalism’s Salvation Depends on Taxation

“In its current form, capitalism has reached its limits. Unless it reforms from within, it will not survive.”


Foreign Affairs:  The Starving State: Why Capitalism’s Salvation Depends on Taxation, by Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia), Todd N. Tucker (Columbia) & Gabriel Zucman (UC-Berkeley):

Foreign Affairs Cover 3For millennia, markets have not flourished without the help of the state. Without regulations and government support, the nineteenth-century English cloth-makers and Portuguese winemakers whom the economist David Ricardo made famous in his theory of comparative advantage would have never attained the scale necessary to drive international trade. Most economists rightly emphasize the role of the state in providing public goods and correcting market failures, but they often neglect the history of how markets came into being in the first place. The invisible hand of the market depended on the heavier hand of the state.

The state requires something simple to perform its multiple roles: revenue. It takes money to build roads and ports, to provide education for the young and health care for the sick, to finance the basic research that is the wellspring of all progress, and to staff the bureaucracies that keep societies and economies in motion. No successful market can survive without the underpinnings of a strong, functioning state.


One in four countries beset by civil strife as global unrest soars Guardian. And by “global” is meant global


What inequality?! Real-World Economics Review Blog  Important.


College Degrees Used to Make Families Wealthier. That’s No Longer True

Is a liberal arts education a practical investment or waste of money? You might be surprised. Washington Post

Big Brother Australia aims to ban cash spending Asia Times


  Alleged Islamic State fundraiser shot at, charged with intent to murder