AnthonyBAtkinson

AnthonyBAtkinson https://www.dailykos.com/news/AnthonyBAtkinson News Community Action Copyright 2005 - Steal what you want Sun, 26 Jan 2020 20:29:24 +0000 Sun, 26 Jan 2020 20:29:24 +0000 Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Daily Kos rss@dailykos.com (Daily Kos) Exploring ways to achieve a more equal society https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/6/5/1391068/-Exploring-ways-to-achieve-a-more-equal-society This excerpt comes from a review of Inequality: What Can Be Done? in the New York Review of Books. Thomas Piketty writes about Atkinson's call for a more progressive tax system and then touches on a couple of very intriguing ideas.   <blockquote><a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/25/practical-vision-more-equal-society/">A Practical Vision of a More Equal Society</a> By Thomas Piketty Review of Inequality: What Can Be Done? by Anthony B. Atkinson At the core of his program is a series of proposals that aim to transform the very operation of the markets for labor and capital, introducing new rights for those who now have the fewest rights. His proposals include guaranteed minimum-wage public jobs for the unemployed, new rights for organized labor, public regulation of technological change, and democratization of access to capital. This is only a sampling of the many reforms he recommends. Instead of saying more in detail about these proposals, I’d like to focus particularly on the question of wider access to capital and ownership. Atkinson here makes two especially innovative suggestions. On the one hand, he calls for the establishment of a national savings program allowing each depositor to receive a guaranteed return on her capital (below a certain threshold of individual capital). Given the drastic inequality of access to fair financial returns, particularly as a consequence of the scale of the investment with which one begins (a situation that has in all likelihood been aggravated by the financial deregulation of the last few decades), this proposal strikes me as particularly sound. In Atkinson’s view, it is intimately bound up with the larger issue of a new approach to public property and the possible development of a new form of sovereign wealth fund. The public authority cannot resign itself merely to go on piling up debt and endlessly privatizing everything it possesses. On the other hand, alongside this national guaranteed and insured savings program, Atkinson proposes establishing an “inheritance for all” program. This would take the form of a capital endowment assigned to each young citizen as he or she reached adulthood, at the age of eighteen. All such endowments would be financed by estate taxes and a more progressive tax structure. In concrete terms, Atkinson estimates that, with current revenue from the British estate tax, it would be possible to finance a capital endowment of slightly more than £5,000 for each young adult. He calls for a far-reaching reform of the system of inheritance taxation, and especially for greater progressivity with regard to the larger estates. (He proposes an upper rate of 65 percent, as with the income tax.) These reforms would make it possible to finance a capital endowment on the order of £10,000 per young adult. Personally speaking, I must say that I’ve always had certain reservations about the idea of an individual financial endowment. I’ve generally preferred a focus on guaranteed access to certain fundamental goods—education, health, culture among them. But whichever approach you may prefer, the idea of directly linking the estate tax to the allocation of rights that would be underwritten by such a tax seems to me extremely pertinent. The immense advantage of the solution set forth by Atkinson is that it makes it possible to clearly express the notion that the purpose of the estate tax is to underwrite “inheritance for all.” By directly linking the sum given to each person with estate tax rates, we may perhaps hope to change the terms of the democratic debate on this subject. </blockquote> Please share your thoughts. rss@dailykos.com (Lefty Coaster) AnthonyBAtkinson Inequality InequalityWhatCanBeDone ThomasPiketty _1391068 Sat, 06 Jun 2015 05:09:29 +0000 Gov. Jack Markell (D) Punches the Hippies https://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/5/11/1384035/-Gov-Jack-Markell-D-Punches-the-Hippies <div class="dkimg-c"><img src="http://images.dailykos.com/images/142687/large/Markell.Flag_.png?1431368432" alt="" width="415" height="272" /></div> Delaware Governor Jack Markell (D) has written a rather lengthy piece last week in "The Atlantic" entitled "<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/05/americans-need-jobs-not-populism/391661/">Americans Need Jobs, Not Populism.</a>"  The title alone enrages me because, since when were jobs and populism mutually exclusive? Indeed, this has been the Democratic Party's problem since 1992: they ditched populism either because they cowtowed to Wall Street or because they needed to cowtow to Wall Street to garner campaign dollars in order to remain competitive with the Republicans back in the 1990's. At its root, populism is a belief in the power of regular people, and in their right to have control over their government rather than a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite.  So the Governor's title to his thesis implies that only a small group of political insiders or a wealthy elite can create jobs, and the little people should shut up and be happy with what he and his friends give us.   But then I saw a highlighted and enlarged excerpt that said: "Too often, the right seems to think the creation of great wealth is more important than whether or not the bounties of that wealth are broadly shared." Is the Governor just trying to bait and switch me? rss@dailykos.com (Delaware Dem) AnthonyBAtkinson Delaware IncomeInequality JackMarkell JosephStiglitz NicholasKristoff Rescued _1384035 Mon, 11 May 2015 18:23:25 +0000