TAX MISERY 2008

Forbes recently published 2008's Tax Misery Index (link).

THE WORLD IN 2009 IN FIGURES

The Economist designed an interactive mapping with data, factsheet and forecast for 80 countries in the world (link).

INCOME TAX RATES ARE FALLING, BUT NOT IN SLOVENIA

The newest study by the KPMG surveyed tax rates on individual income around the world (link). The study finds that average top rate on individual income is less than 29 percent. In Slovenia, it is 41 percent (link).

SAVE TAXPAYERS BY DROPPING THE BAILOUT

I will come back with more comments regarding government bailout of Detroit's "Big Three" auto industry. Gary Becker (link), Dan Mitchell (link), Matthew J. Slaughter (link), The Economist (link) and Mitt Romney (link) provided an opinion regarding the bailout of the auto industry.

IS KEYNES REALLY BACK?

Amity Shlaes nicely outlined (link) the upcoming return of Keynesian economic policy initiated by efforts to boost consumer spending despite the empirical evidence about the lifetime path of consumption pattern. While president Obama has a very smart and knowledgeable team of economic advisers such as Jason Furman, David Cutler and Jeff Liebman, he opposed free-trade agreements with South Korea and Columbia, while he supported the proposal to raise tariffs on Chinese goods in case Chinese government would not allow yuan to appreciate relative to the U.S dollar. There is an overwhelming evidence that an increase in government spending negatively affects output, employment and productivity while proposals to extend health care benefits over the boundaries of tax scheme are a worrying threat to growth and stability of the U.S economy and the overall fiscal stance of the United States.

WILL DEFLATION RESURGE?

Fed chairman says (link) deflation might resurge as a worrying threat to the U.S economy.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT HOUSING MARKET?

Allan Meltzer suggests an increase in demand for housing as a way to prevent mortgage defaults.

GLAESER ON EDUCATION

Ed Glaeser of Harvard University provides a detailed insight on the importance of human capital for economic growth (link):

"Schools can also attract more talent with an environment that welcomes talented outsiders instead of erecting bureaucratic barriers that prevent their success. The literature on teacher certification finds few benefits from that hurdle. By contrast, Teach for America has achieved remarkable results by putting capable young people, often with little formal training as teachers, in classrooms. The experience illustrates that it isn't easy to assess teacher quality with standard teaching credentials. If attracting a wave of good people into teaching is the first step, the second step is keeping the best teachers and redirecting the rest. Performance in the classroom is the best way to know if a teacher is a success. Teacher promotion and tenure needs to be based on clear performance measures, including student test scores. Perhaps teachers unions could start endorsing the use of test scores to evaluate their members and determine tenure."