Professor of Economics | Political Economy - Public Choice - History of Economic Thought - Austrian Economics
Murfreesboro, TN
Joined August 2014
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Daniel J. Smith retweeted
Josh Rauh and Ben Jaros of Stanford's Hoover Institution work out that a founder who pays California's wealth tax by selling shares must sell about $1.59 for every $1 owed, because the sale itself triggers roughly 37% capital gains tax. The bill grows the moment you try to pay it.
Zuckerberg's fortune is mostly Meta shares, not cash in the bank. California's proposed wealth tax would take 5% of it, about $12bn, so the only way he can pay is by selling shares, which would cost him control of his own company. Meta has had to invent a new kind of share just to get around that. That's the liquidity problem Zucman says doesn't exist.
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
"For reference, $43 billion is just under double what NASA spent last year."
washingtonexaminer.com/news/…
What is the role of the economist? It depends on their assumptions about politicians' knowledge and incentives (and whether they care about doing relevant work).
It’s the equivalent of a high priest reading the entrails of a bird to declare that the gods favor the leader’s already-decided course.
Given how pervasive and pernicious the failure to understand the extent to which incentives matter in the design of institutions and policy, most economists do not spend enough time emphasizing it in economics classes and public intellectualism.
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
The economic legacy of the last two years in a single chart. Americans hate tariffs.
A symptom of some economists focusing too much on “ought” rather than “is”
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
I'm gonna take a stab: When you're afraid to mention your party's signature economic policy in campaign ads, that might be a sign that the policy is unpopular because it didn't work as promised.
Just such a fun chart here from @greg_ip. If only we could tease out some meaning. Ah, well, nevertheless. 🤣
"'Economic science', defined and used analogously to the hard sciences, requires that some person be putty, subject to the manipulation and control of others." - Buchanan
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
Siding with consumers makes political sense.
Read @ToddZywicki's latest: civitasoutlook.pulse.ly/664q…
Daniel J. Smith retweeted
An unlikely alliance between farmers and conservationists illustrates how government subsidies create political constituencies that lobby to preserve them.
cc: @JaneSShaw
thedailyeconomy.org/article/…
"the vital distinction between the use of science to assist in the control of subjects-objects (animate or inanimate) and the use of science to assist in the self-imposed control of the behaviour of those who are simultaneously the controllers and the controlled, must be kept in mind." - James M. Buchanan (1982)
Giving government an ownership stake may become the most straightforward path for companies to get government privileges.
Intel's largest shareholder just exempted it from a "national security" ban on Chinese imports:
"FCC grants Intel waiver for foreign-made robotic devices" share.google/1cpyLZdVdTscar9…
Laws enforcing negative rights create the baseline for voluntary exchange. Laws imposing positive rights expand coercion and political discretion. Treating them as the same kind of “construction” collapses a real distinction and pretends the scope of the state doesn’t matter.
Economics is fundamentally political. We cannot escape this fact.
The so-called “free market” is constructed by laws, maintained by institutions, and enforced by states.
The choice between austerity and stimulus reflects deeper beliefs about responsibility, fairness, and social obligation.
The mandates of central banks are products of political decisions. The emphasis placed on price stability in Western central banks rather than, say, regulating private finance reflects value judgments as well as political lobbying.
One of the biggest differences between mainstream economics and heterodox economics is that the former often disguises political choices as technical ones.
Economics has never been, and never will be, a value-free science, no matter how much today's mainstream economics tries to present it that way.
At its core, economics is shaped by ideologies, human morality, competing interests, social norms, and political priorities. Pretending otherwise does not make economics more rigorous. It just makes it more dangerous.