Laffer's Growth Agenda

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2010/11/laffer-growth-agenda

Arthur Laffer has a Wall Street Journal op-ed with some intriguing policy suggestions, among them:

A true flat tax, a la Jerry Brown's proposal in 1992. Congress should replace all federal taxes (except sin taxes) with two flat-rate taxes, one on personal income and one on net business sales. The personal income tax would be on all forms of income: wage income, dividends, inheritance (as proposed by Democratic Rep. Jared Polis), and all capital gains. This tax code would remove loopholes and almost all deductions, and the static revenue rate would be around 11.5%.

and

incentive pay for politicians (which the comedian Jackie Mason called "putting the politicians on commission"). Politicians must be held personally responsible for their actions. In business, firms align the incentives of decision makers with the incentives of shareholders to ensure that they take the best course of action. Washington must begin doing the same by creating an incentive structure that pays elected officials according to factors such as stock market performance and economic growth.

It seems to me that the politicians already have a version of incentive pay on the downside in that, if the economy does badly enough, they get voted out. (Though a reader-watchdog-participant-community member-content co-creator points out that the politicians then they wind up making more money as authors/lobbyists/speakers, so it's really not much of an incentive.) As for the upside, they've got retirement savings and own homes, too. If you think the Wall Street guys gamed the bonus system by taking risks so that they would get big bonuses if things worked out well, but get bailed out by the taxpayers if things did not work out well, wait till you see the politicians designing an incentive compensation system for themselves based on risking not mostly shareholder or firm money but entirely taxpayer money from the start.

by Ira Stoll  |  Nov 12, 2010 at 9:23 am Related Topics:  Compensation, Taxes receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list