your tax cuts at work ...

[psongster]

MassINC recently reported that the tax credits given the film industry cost Massachusetts taxpayers $323,838 per job in Massachusetts in 2009. Tax expenditures (special tax provisions) are generally a rotten way to create jobs, but they're one of the primary job-creation strategies of our state and country nowadays because they can be sold as tax

Comments

[irilyth]

I'll be interested in seeing how often your ideas line up with libertarian ones. :^) (This one certainly does; using special taxes (high or low) as a policy tool (e.g. to promote favored behavior or discourage disfavored behavior) is very un-libertarian.)

[psongster]

It's a worth-while question. Not that I'd call myself a libertarian, or that all libertarians think exactly the same about every issue. But I think there's one big area of agreement: I believe societies and economies work best when governments provide a platform and define good rules of the game, rather than trying to micromanage things that are just too complicated for humans to micromanage well. I also believe, however, in certain economies of scale and universal practices. I once had an argument with a friend who was staking out the extreme libertarian position that government shouldn't do *anything* -- if I wanted to drive on a piece of road, there should be an owner of that road and I should pay each owner a toll for each bit of road I used and not be unfairly taxed for roads I wasn't even using. His position seemed like an reductio ad absurdum to me -- too much work! -- but he seemed to take it seriously. So, as in so many things, the best path lies in the middle ground.

[petardier]

NPR had a good piece this evening on the costs of our over-complicated tax code. It also mentioned how tax cuts are popular in Washington in part because giving money to an industry/person/cause with a tax cut does not arouse the anger that a tax increase does - even though the cost is still there.

[psongster]

Thank you for the pointer! I found the transcript and downloaded it :-).