Taxing the super-rich to save capitalism from itself

[Usual Caveat: AI Generated translation (with slight edits) of a piece written in Italian]

The distribution of income has become topical again in recent days, and it is likely going to be one of the issues that will characterize the debate on the global governance of the economy in the coming months.

First, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a plan to reduce public debt centered on raising the minimum corporate tax from 15% to 21%, and on a minimum income tax of 25% for billionaires. The announcement is especially significant because it was made in the traditional State of the Union address, a solemn moment that this year also marks the beginning of the election campaign for the November elections. It is no coincidence that Biden has decided to call on the super-rich and corporations, especially the largest, to contribute the most to public finances’ healing: they are in fact the two categories that have managed to offload most of the inflation of recent years on consumers, wages and the less well-off categories in general.

The plan is highly unlikely to become a reality in a Congress dominated by a radicalized Republican Party, united behind Donald Trump, and conservative Democrats. But its symbolic significance is important and makes it clear what interests the president intends to defend in the November elections. With this proposal, the Biden administration proves once again, at least as far as economic issues are concerned, to be the most progressive in recent decades, much more courageous in attempting to protect the middle classes than the iconic, but ultimately too timid, Barack Obama.

A minimum tax rate for the super-rich

The issue of tax justice, and this is the second piece of recent news, is also at the center of the agenda of Lula’s Brazilian government, which in 2024 holds the rotating presidency of the G20. The G20 is probably the most significant body today for the coordination of economic policies at the international level. It is therefore particularly significant that the idea of reintroducing more progressivity by taxing the super-rich, which is not new in itself, is being discussed there.

In front of the G20 finance ministers that were meeting in São Paulo, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman pleaded for  a fairer global system, first of all insisting on how tax progressivity, being crucial for financing public goods such as health, education, infrastructure, is one of the pillars on which the growth and the social contract of well-functioning democracies are based. Second, documenting how the tax systems of most countries have, in recent decades, become fundamentally regressive, especially with regard to the few thousand super-rich that sit at the top of the income distribution. In France, for example, the poorest 10% of the population pays almost 50% of their income in taxes, while the super-rich pay less than a third (the figure is taken from the 2024 Global Tax Evasion Report).

The reasons for this aberration are well known: the unbridled rush of recent decades to fiscal dumping, the benefits offered by many countries to multinationals and higher income owners in an attempt to attract them, have created a multitude of tax niches and possibilities for the wealthier to structure their income and their fortune in such a way as to generate low or no taxable incomes.

Precisely to avoid fiscal competition between countries, which allows the wealthier (but also multinationals) to travel in search of tax havens, Zucman and others are pushing for a global solution, along the lines of the BEPS agreement reached at the OECD in 2021 on the taxation of multinationals. For this reason, the initiative of the Brazilian presidency and the decision of the G20 finance ministers to commission a report that goes into the details of the proposal are very good signs.

Beyond the details that will need to be worked on, crucial to avoid loopholes and avoidance, the proposal by Zucman the economists of the Tax Observatory he heads, on which the G20 will discuss in the coming months, is that of a minimum rate of taxation on the super-rich, designed taking as a model the aforementioned OECD agreement on the minimum rate for multinationals. Since income, for the reasons mentioned above, is very difficult to compute, the international community should agree that taxpayers pay at least a certain percentage of their wealth in income taxes (Zucman proposes 2%). The proposal has several advantages: (1) those who already pay high income taxes would not have any additional burden, while those with large wealth that manage to hide their income from the tax authorities (in a more or less legal way) would be called upon to pay. (2) in many countries there are already instruments for assessing wealth, which would therefore only need to be generalised and harmonised. (3) as with the minimum tax on multinationals, mechanisms can be devised to discourage the relocation of wealth to countries that decide not to cooperate. (4) even with just a low rate like the one proposed by Zucman, it would be possible to obtain tax revenues of hundreds of billions a year, which are needed above all by the poorest countries to finance welfare, ecological transition, and infrastructure for growth.

Last, but certainly not least, being able to get the richest to contribute to the common good would help at least in part to restore the sense of justice and trust in the social contract that has progressively eroded in recent decades. As Zucman concludes in his address to the G20 ministers, “Such an agreement would be in the interest of all economic actors, even the taxpayers involved. Because what is at stake is not only the dynamic of global inequality: it is the very social sustainability of globalization, from which the wealthy benefit so much.”

The conservative revolutions of the early 1980s ushered in an era in which the watchword was simply “get as rich as you can and think only of yourself” (exemplified by Gordon Gekko’s praise of greed in Oliver Stone’s masterful Wall Street). That era did not bring us the promised prosperity or stability. On the contrary, we now live in sick democracies, unstable economies characterized by intolerable levels of rent seeking and inequality. In the 1930s, one of Keynes’s goals in pleading for an active role of the government was to save capitalism, in crisis and threatened by the rise of the Soviet Union. The many who are in love with the supposed Great Moderation of the 1980s and 1990s stubbornly opposing all attempts to correct excessive inequality, should think twice. Instead, they should endorse wholeheartedly attempts such as that of the G20 Brazilian presidency to save capitalism above all from its internal enemies, far more dangerous than the external ones.

Squeezing a Balloon

Via the Financial Times I have read the Asian Development Bank Asian Development Outlook 2019 Update. The outlook has an interesting section on the impact of the US-China trade war on the region. Let me simply quote the relevant paragraph: “Recent trade data also provide evidence of trade redirection. In the first 6 months of 2019, US imports from the PRC fell by 12% from the same period in 2018. At the same time, US imports from the rest of developing Asia rose by about 10%, with notably large increases of 33% for Vietnam; 20% for Taipei,China; and 13% for Bangladesh” (page 14). I also copied and pasted the figure in the following page:

This was to be expected. Of course trade diversion is not automatic, nor costless. Supply chains need to be reorganized, bottlenecks may appear. But it is obvious that as long as US demand for the goods produced abroad remains strong, if the price of these increases in China, the demand will look elsewhere. Now, the US has been recording substantial negative net lending (the sign of an excess of domestic demand over supply) since at least the early 1990s:

The source of this excess demand has not always been the same. Sometimes corporations, rarely households (most notably in the run-up to the crisis), and most of the times the government.

In particular, in recent years households have experienced excess savings, initially joined by corporations which then gradually went to equilibrium. The government is keeping demand high, and as a consequence the trade deficit alive.

The tariffs on China, in this context, are just like squeezing a balloon. As long as US domestic demand remains strong, compressing Chinese imports simply pops imports from Vietnam, or Bangladesh, or who knows what other country next. As long as American excess demand will persist, somebody elsewhere will provide the supply for it. Reducing bilateral trade deficit with China is not a solution to persistent excess domestic demand.

Of course, the US could impose barriers to imports from all countries. This would solve the problem and reduce the trade deficit. Higher import prices and competition between households, firms and the government, would reduce purchasing power and, together with excess domestic demand, the welfare of American voters. Mr. Trump should try this before November 3rd, 2020.

Trump is Right about Germany, for the Wrong Reasons

Readers of this blog know that I share with Donald Trump the belief that Germany is harming the world economy. (Ok, ok, it is not bad Germany, it is bad German trade. ). Yet, I think it is worth pointing out something trivial that is not emphasized enough. Trump is right about Germany, but for the wrong reasons. The problem is not the number of German cars circulating in the US, but the number of American cars not circulating in Germany.

The trade balance is a subtraction, exports minus imports. Thus, it can be small when a country does not trade a lot (small exports are similar in size to small imports), but also when the country trades a lot (large exports are similar in size to large imports, the difference being small). The size of the trade balance has all to do with the relative size of imports and exports, and very little to do with the openness of the economy.

Trivial, isn’t it?  And yet, Trump, and many (way too many) commentators forget it when they argue that we should stop seeing many German cars circulating in the US. Protectionism is just one of the possible solutions to widening trade imbalances. As it does not directly address the excess savings (or spending) in countries in disequilibrium, its effectiveness can be questioned (and the jury is still out on this). Among other things because protectionism is a declaration of war, and likely to trigger a race to the bottom.

A more direct, and certainly effective way to reduce imbalances is to reduce the excess surplus (deficit) of domestic demand on GDP in deficit (surplus) countries. This is where more American cars in Germany would help. I don’t think that I am saying anything new here…

I know the answer to this. “How can you force Germany to rebalance its economy, and spend more?”  “That will never happen.” “Germany only cares about its interests”. I have heard all of these. I am conscious that the problem is not economic, but political.  But the political difficulties of this (too long) moment, and the stubbornness of the German elites don’t make protectionism less problematic.

Norms exist in Europe, requiring external rebalancing. And Germany has been breaching them since the crisis started. It exists a narrow path to building a “coalition of the willing” among European countries, to force Germany to tackle its imbalances. Difficult? Certainly. Unlikely? Maybe. Costly? Probably. But still less than  embarking the world economy into a trade war, and/or dissolving the euro.

 

Trump and Reagan

A couple of days ago I had an interesting debate hosted by France 24, on Trumponomics. Interesting because there was an overall agreement between me and Dan Mitchell from Cato Institute, even if from totally opposite points of view, on the fact that Trumponomics does not exist. The Donald is pushing forward a number of inconsistent measures, whose final effect is impossible to forecast (except that it is a safe bet to say that it will not end well).

Mitchell argued of course that the only good policies imply the downsizing of the government. As one can easily imagine I would tend to disagree. And over and over again, during the 40 or so minutes of discussion, came back the reference to the golden era of Ronald Reagan. Trump needs to cut taxes, as Reagan did, and downsize government, as Reagan did. And growth and unemployment will return, as under Reagan

When I said that the problem of the US was not the lack of jobs per se, but rather the increasingly unequal distribution of income, that started precisely under Reagan, Mitchell replied that this was false (I officially spread fake truths!), claiming that median income under Reagan increased. Well, think again. An old post by Paul Krugman had already dispelled the mith, and I had written on it myself. I copy the figure from that post (updated) here:

 

So, while it is true that median income increased under Reagan-Bush (Mitchell is formally right), it is hard to define it an era or decreasing inequality I My conclusion back then was that growth does not lift all boats, and trickle-down economics does not exist. And Reagan did not do that well in terms of growth either. And did I mention twin deficits?

Just a final remark. The downsizing of government under Reagan is also a myth (which is rather good news, by the way): Look at OECD data:

 

I rest my case. People at Cato should pick their role models more carefully.

 

 

John Maynard Trump?

A sentence from Donald Trump’s victory speech retained a good deal of attention:

We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.

This was widely quoted in the social media, together with the following from an FT article about the Fed:

In particular, some members of his economic advisory team are convinced that central banks such as the US Federal Reserve have exhausted their use of super-loose monetary policy. Instead, in the coming months they hope to announce a wave of measures such as infrastructure spending, tax reform and deregulation to boost growth — and combat years of economic stagnation.

In spite of its vagueness, the idea of an infrastructure push has sent markets to beyond the roof. In short, a simple (and rather generic) speech on election night has dispelled all the anxiety about the long phase of uncertainty that we face. So long for efficient markets…

But this is not what I care about here. The point I want to make is that Trump’s announcement has triggered a strange reaction. Something going like: “See? Trump managed to break the establishment’s hostility to Keynes and to finally implement the stimulus policies we need. Forget the sexism and the p-word, the attacks on minorities, the incompetence. Enter Trump, exit neo-liberalism”. I see this especially (but not only) among Italian internauts, who tend to project the European situation in other contexts.

Well, I have some reservations on this claim. Where to start? Maybe with the “Contract with the American Voter“, that together with the (generic, once more) promise of new investment, promised a massive withdrawal of the State from the economy? Or from the fact that “Establishment Obama” made Congress vote, a month into his presidency, a “Recovery Act (ARRA)” worth 7% of GDP, that successfully stopped the free-fall and helped restore growth? Or from the fact that the “anti-establishment” Tea Party forced austerity since 2011, climaxing in the sequester saga of 2013?

Critics of current austerity policies in Europe should not be delusional. Trump is not the John Maynard Keynes of 2016. His agenda is, broadly speaking, an agenda of deregulation, tax cuts for the rich, and retreat of the State from the economy. Not to mention the strong chance of a more hawkish Fed in the future. To sum up, Trump is, in the best case scenario a new Reagan, substituting military Keynesianism with bridges’ Keynesianism. And we all (should) know that Reaganomics does shine much less than usually claimed.

Those progressives looking for a Trump Keynesian agenda should probably have looked more carefully at the plan proposed by “establishment-Clinton”: A significant infrastructure push (in fact, the emphasis on infrastructures was the only point in common between the two candidates), with the ambition to crowd-in private investment. And what is more important, such an expansionary fiscal policy was framed within a more active role of the government in key sectors like education, health care, and with increased progressivity of the tax system.

Would we have had Hilary Rodham Keynes? Unfortunately we’ll never know…