Competition in the Digital Age
The other day I wrote about the potential impact of a wealth tax. In so doing, I wrote: "we can all agree that the wealth tax likely deters risk-free saving." This was a paraphrase of a claim made by Larry Summers who then went on to say that it was unknown whether a wealth tax …
Continue reading "Does a wealth tax discourage risky investments?"
Today is publication day for Innovation + Equality: How to create a future that is more Star Trek than Terminator (MIT Press). This is my book -- co-authored with Andrew Leigh (the author of Randomistas) -- that examines the relationship between having more equality and more innovation. We make the case that you can have …
Thanks to this interesting debate last week between Saez, Summers and Mankiw on the wealth tax, there has been considerable discussion of the possible effects of a wealth tax. As is usual with these things, the main discussion has been what a wealth tax will do to the behaviour of those taxed at the margin. …
Continue reading "Does being rich make you better at allocating capital?"
In yesterday's post, I reacted to Paul Graham's much talked about essay on inequality by suggesting that the premise -- entrepreneurship causes inequality -- is far from obvious. Indeed, I conjectured that if things were working as they should, entrepreneurship would tend to decrease inequality. My argument was based on where the entrepreneur started in …
Paul Graham, best known as a founder of Y-Combinator, likes to ruminate on many topics. He favours the essay rather than the tweet. And he has been hard at work on two essays recently; one on structural change in the US economy and the other on inequality. While I suspect they are both coming from …
This is not strictly digitisation (well, not at all) but I thought I'd just point to a piece I put out today on using social pressure to solve the inequality problem by getting the rich to feel compelled to pay more taxes. Basically, the idea is that shining a light on contributions (even doing so …
