(click on image for bigger version)
A few days ago I posted on the recent report that U.S. tax receipts as a percentage of national income are at their lowest point in the past 60 years, although the reason why isn't perfectly clear. I also suggested that this fact may surprise many Americans. Surely this OECD report, showing that the U.S. also has one of the lowest tax burdens among advanced industrialized countries, would be more expected.
I don't have much to add to this, except to note that this gives the U.S. room to move in coming decades. We can afford to raise taxes if needed to balance the budget, pay down debt, or finance welfare programs as the country continues to age. Perhaps that is one reason why U.S. sovereign debt is still so affordable. However, this also may indicate that the country does not have the political will to accept higher taxation in order to finance debt and a larger welfare state.
IPE @ UNC
IPE@UNC is a group blog maintained by faculty and graduate students in the Department of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The opinions expressed on these pages are our own, and have nothing to do with UNC.
Bookshelf
Tags
Blog Archive
-
▼
2010
(478)
-
▼
May
(23)
- PSA
- The Economics of Immigration
- The Situation in Europe
- The World in Decession
- How to Out-Crazy Kim Jong Il
- You know you're in trouble when
- Surprising Fact of the Day
- Is the Subprime Crisis a Transformative Event?
- PSA
- Germany Passes Stabilization Package
- Fact-checking Immigration Claims
- UNC on the UK
- In Which I'm Accused of Being a Keynesian Maoist (...
- Quote of the Day
- The World Cup: High Politics and Low Journalism
- U.S. Taxes Are Low Cross-Nationally, Too
- WTF Thursday
- Modeling Britain's New Government
- American Tax Receipts Lowest in 60 Years
- Parsing the Euro Bailout
- Strangest Sentence I've Read Today
- Update
- Between Rock and Hard Place
-
▼
May
(23)
Thursday, May 13, 2010
U.S. Taxes Are Low Cross-Nationally, Too
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment