Category: payroll taxes

Safety Net or Trap?

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June 13, 2021

by Steve Stofka

It has been 200 years since the cloth mills in Massachusetts instituted the “Lowell system,” employing young women and taking half of their pay for company provided room and board (Taylor, 2021, p. 234). 100 years ago, the states ratified the 16th Amendment, permitting the federal government to tax all income, including worker’s wages and salaries. 70 years ago, the government instituted payroll withholding. Today 145 million American workers receive salaries or wages, of which 30% is withheld by employers and sent to the federal government (Bird, 2021). Have we all effectively become government employees leased out to employers?

“Shan gao, huangdi yuan” is an ancient Chinese saying that reflected the attitude of many Chinese toward a central authority: “The mountains are high, and the emperor is far away.” Until the enactment of the 16th Amendment in 1913, most Americans felt the same. In Article 1, Section 8, the framers of the Constitution built a corral around the power of the federal government. The ink was barely dry on the document when Federalists like Hamilton argued for an interpretation of the Constitutional language that would give the federal government more power. In the next two decades, the Supreme Court headed by John Marshall, an appointee of Federalist President John Adams, did just that (Taylor, p. 54). During his 35-year tenure as Chief Justice, the decisions of the Marshall court effectively restated the Constitution.

Still, the federal government’s reach was limited enough that it took an amendment to that Constitution to permit the federal government to tax U.S. citizens directly. Richard Byrd, a delegate from Virginia and an opponent of the 16th Amendment, warned that “A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man’s business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man’s counting house . .” (Tax Analysts, 2021). He warned that the new amendment would feed the growth of a Washington bureaucracy remote from the interests of ordinary people. Many of those living today have great-great grandparents who voted for that amendment. Why did they consent?

When the 16th amendment to the constitution was ratified more than a century ago, the IRS enacted a system of withholding. Employers complained and the withholding provision was repealed a few years later in 1917 (Higgs, 2007). Most people who did owe taxes paid only 1% in quarterly installments the year after they incurred the tax burden. During WW2, the federal government wanted more revenue to support the massive wartime spending, and instituted withholding for income taxes.

The federal government employs almost 9 million workers (Hill, 2020), about 6% of the total workforce, but its effective reach is so enormous that employers today only borrow workers from the federal government. Each employer must abide by so many employment regulations that even a small business has to dedicate at least one person to administering regulations. The hiring of an employee initiates an implicit contract not between the employer and employee, but between the employer and the federal government. The employer faces stiff penalties for violating any provisions of that implicit contract. How has the tentacled reach of the federal government affected employees?

Like the young women at the Lowell mills, workers are not allowed to touch their pay until taxes, insurance and fees have been withdrawn. Some taxes are silent, withdrawn by lowering gross pay. After state and local taxes and the employee portion of health insurance is deducted, a worker today may be left with only half their pay. Unlike the women at the Lowell mills, the federal government does not provide room and board for most workers. As Richard Byrd warned a century ago, a federal government is only remotely concerned about those needs. Instead, it takes from the worker in the now and gives back to the worker in the future after forty years or more of work – a pension and medical care after retirement.

In addition to future needs, a worker’s taxes feed a bureaucracy that safeguards the security, wealth and needs of the upper 20%, and selected regional interests. Like the Chinese emperor, the $1 trillion spent on current military needs and past military promises seems far away from the daily security needs of most Americans. That spending  supports local economies in some regions and may be the key economic base in some rural communities who strongly support military spending to maintain a global empire. After all, their local economic security depends on such spending.

Larger than Amazon’s football sized warehouses is the largest warehouse in the nation run by the federal government. It is bounded not by walls but by a web zealously tended by lawyers and regulators, and inescapable for most employees and employers. The restrictions and harsh working conditions of the Lowell mills strike us today as paternalistic exploitation. The parents of the young women welcomed the discipline and extra money that their daughters earned. The hard work instilled moral character in the women before they returned home to marry a local lad.

Many of us today welcome the paternal oversight of the federal government as a safety net. The children of our children 200 years from now will certainly regard this age differently. Will they see the complex net of laws that bind employees and employers as a safety net or a trap?

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Photo by Fikri Rasyid on Unsplash

Bird, B. (2021, May 26). How much does the average American pay in taxes? Retrieved June 11, 2021, from https://www.thebalance.com/what-the-average-american-pays-in-taxes-4768594.

Higgs, R. (2007). Wartime Origins of Modern Income-Tax Withholding. The Freeman, (November). Retrieved from https://admin.fee.org/files/doclib/1107higgs.pdf. Also, see IRS history Timeline (2021) and LOC (2012).

Hill, F. (2020, November 05). Public service and the federal government. Retrieved June 11, 2021, from https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/public-service-and-the-federal-government/

IRS. (2021). IRS history Timeline. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from https://www.irs.gov/irs-history-timeline

Library of Congress (LOC). (2012). History of the US income tax. Retrieved June 10, 2021, from https://www.loc.gov/rr/business/hottopic/irs_history.html

Tax Analysts. (2021a). The Income Tax Arrives. Retrieved from http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/THM1901?OpenDocument. For PDFs of original tax forms that your great-great-grandparents might have filed, see

 U.S. 1040 Tax Forms, 1913 to 2006. Retrieved from http://www.taxhistory.org/www/website.nsf/Web/1040TaxForms?OpenDocument

Taylor, A. (2021). American republics: A continental history of the United States, 1783-1850. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.

Minority Control

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October 13, 2019

by Steve Stofka

On September 15, 2008 the trading firm Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. A small number of outstanding shares traded on the stock market that day. The SP500 lost almost 5% of its value. New Yorkers gathered in Times Square to watch the ticker tape display. A small number of people controlled the direction of the market and constructed a reality that they sold to the rest of us.

In politics, a few key people control the direction and fate of legislation. In the Senate, the Majority Leader decides whether to bring legislation up for a vote. Even if a bill makes it out of a Senate committee, the Majority Leader can stop it from reaching the full Senate.  Unlike the Majority Leader in the House, his position is practically impregnable. Legislation vetoed by the President can be overridden by Congress. There is no recourse to a veto by the Senate Majority Leader.

The current holder of the position is Sen. Mitch McConnell from Kentucky. He is up again for re-election next year. When Democrats held the Senate, Sen. Harry Reid ruled with a similar disregard for others in his own party as well as the minority.

In 2014, 800,000 voters chose McConnell. In effect, less than 1% of the country’s voters control the course of legislation in the U.S. Did the founders of this country intend that one person should control Congress? James Madison, the chief crafter of the Constitution, worried that a majority would overwhelm and take advantage of a minority (Feldman, 2017). Accordingly, the Constitution is structured so that a minority controls power. However, one person is a very small minority. What would the founders think of the current arrangement in Congress? If Americans wanted a king with veto-proof power, America would still be a colony of Britain.

Our method of electing a President is a 230-year-old compromise between republicanism and democracy. An electoral college composed of men not subject to the passions of the crowd would elect the leader of the country. It was an Enlightenment model of dispassionate rationality.

Even if they had Fox News and CNN on Election night at the time of the founding, all the thirteen states were in the same Eastern time zone. At a recent symposium on our election, former RNC chair Michael Steele pointed out the west coast states are mostly taken out of the Presidential election (C-Span.org, 2019). By 5 P.M. Pacific time, they are discouraged from voting because much of the action has already been called. The founders did not design a system for four time zones.

We have 50 states but the election for President takes place in eight to twelve battleground states. Most polling is done at the national level, not in the battleground states. Many polls do not accurately survey the sentiments of the critical minority of voters in the states that will decide the election.

A minority of people own and control much of the wealth of the world. They now pay a lower percentage of their income than the bottom 50%. That includes federal, state and local taxes. In the Triumph of Injustice, due to be released next week, authors Saez and Zucman (2019) tally up the tax bills for the rich and ultra-rich. The book is #1 bestseller at Amazon and it hasn’t been published yet.

In 1980, the top 1% paid 47% of their income in total taxes at all levels. Now they are down to 23% and below the rate paid by the bottom half of incomes. Two sets of rules – one set for the peasants and one for the castle royalty. The Constitution prohibits the granting of titles so the rich granted themselves the titles. This book is sure to get a lot of media attention. Like we need more controversy.

Notes:

Feldman, N. (2017). Three Lives of James Madison: genius, partisan, president. [Print]. New York: Random House.

C-Span.org. (2019, October 7). National Popular Vote Election, Part 2. [Video]. Retrieved from https://www.c-span.org/video/?464997-2/national-popular-vote-election-part-2

Saez, E. & Zucman, G. (2019) Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay. [Print]. Available for pre-order at https://www.amazon.com/Triumph-Injustice-Rich-Dodge-Taxes/dp/1324002727

Effective tax rates: If you make $100,000 and you pay $25,000 in federal, social security, state, sales and property tax, then your total effective tax rate is 25%.

Photo: WyrdLight.com [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bodiam-castle-10My8-1197.jpg

Unauthorized Tax Revenue

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September 1, 2019

by Steve Stofka

This might be a sensitive subject for some – the amount of taxes that unauthorized immigrants pay. Homeland Security uses the term “unauthorized” (Note #1). Some people prefer the adjective “undocumented” but many immigrants have adequate documentation. Some prefer to use the adjective “illegal” but the only illegal act is being in the country without proper authorization. If someone is speeding but is obeying all other traffic laws, are they an illegal driver? In most cases, they are a legal driver committing an illegal act.

 Those who defend immigrants point out that they pay taxes, so they are contributing to our society. I was curious as to how much because I have not heard an immigrant advocate offer any data. I told my trusty hunting dog, Google, to go find them facts and bring them on back to me.

First the big picture. The total Federal, State and local taxes paid in 2016 was $5,300 billion, or $5.3 trillion (Note #3). What was the share that unauthorized immigrants paid? The Institute on Taxation and Tax Policy recently estimated that they paid almost $12 billion dollars in state and local taxes. The IRS says they paid $9 billion in payroll taxes (FICA) and almost $1 billion in income taxes (Note #4). The total is $22 billion.

How do they report? They get Federal ID numbers called ITINs. To encourage compliance with our tax laws, the IRS says they do not share this information with the immigration and naturalization folks in Homeland Security. I was amazed that unauthorized immigrants would file tax returns. They are not eligible for social security benefits or earned income credits available to low income families. They are not eligible for TANF – what most people call welfare. The only benefits they are entitled to are those directed toward children – free public education and school meals, child medical care and SNAP (food stamps).

So why file? If you follow that IRS link, you’ll find that an unauthorized immigrant who shows “good moral behavior” may have their deportation proceedings waived or be eligible to apply for citizenship after ten years of residence. What is one sign of good moral behavior? Paying taxes. What is a sign of bad moral behavior and might get someone deported? Not paying taxes. Good incentive to pay taxes.

Homeland Security estimated 12 million unauthorized immigrants in 2015. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, unauthorized immigration grew by a small 70,000 per year (Note #5). In the 2000s, the influx was almost 500,000 per year, and that was a decline from the record 1.4 million apprehended at the southern border in 2000. In 2019, the number of border apprehensions will approach one million (Note #6).

Numbers like these cause Americans to disagree strongly about policy choices related to immigration. In the 1980s, in the late 1990s and again in the 2000s, the numbers were high and we argued. This time is no different. These numbers don’t include visa overstays which make up 40 – 50% of the unauthorized immigrant population (Note #7). Let’s guesstimate the population at 15 million, about 4.6% of the population. That 4.6% is paying less than 1/2% of total taxes.

We can go look at unauthorized immigrants and say that they are leveraging their taxes – paying a small amount of tax to receive proportionately more in benefit. But that is the case for all low-income people, unauthorized or not. Low-income people buy less stuff, so they pay less in sales tax. They live in lower-valued properties, so they pay less property tax. They make less money, so they pay less income tax. Those are the three primary sources of tax revenue in the U.S.

When President Trump said he wanted higher quality immigrants, he meant that he is not anti-immigrant. He is anti-poor-immigrant. Like Trump, some say we don’t need more poor people; we already have too many poor people.  Some people anticipate that their taxes will go up to provide benefits for the growing number of poor people, documented or not. Few want higher taxes to pay for services to people who just arrived in the country.

When my grandfather came to this country more than a 100 years ago, there was no income tax, no social security tax and property taxes were relatively low. The only benefit for immigrant families was public education. There were no school lunches, no food stamps, no medical care for children. Despite that, anti-immigrant sentiment was strong enough to pass a bill in 1924 that cut off legal immigration for all except northern Europeans. Our grandparents and great-grandparents were far less tolerant of immigrants than we are today.

Let’s keep some perspective. People who are concerned that they will have to pay higher taxes for benefits are not evil or uncaring. Low-income people who are worried about competition for their jobs in the construction industry are not moral slugs. Whatever your occupation, imagine that the number of people available to do that kind of work doubled in your community. How would you feel? The more the merrier? Probably not. Those workers will compete for your job and that competition will hamper any future salary increases you can expect.

We all need to admit that immigration presents complicated moral, political and economic choices. History has taught us that we don’t know how to solve this problem in a way that satisfies most of us. Each time we have to choose which side of the rope tug we are on. Each side hurls insults and curses at the other side. This is not the new normal. This is the old normal. How about if we try the new normal, sit down and hash out the difficult details of a compromise?

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Notes:

  1. Homeland Security uses “unauthorized” to refer to those in the country without proper authorization
  2. Tax Policy Center calculation of total taxes paid to governments at all levels  
  3. Estimate of taxes paid by unauthorized immigrants – PDF
  4. IRS data on payroll and income tax paid by unauthorized immigrants- PDF
  5. Estimate of unauthorized immigrants – PDF
  6. Apprehensions at the border – CBP
  7. Visa overstays – Potitifact

A Proposal

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May 28, 2017

The Republican led Congress has promised tax reform in the coming year.  This week I’ll introduce an income tax program that I think will clarify the debate.

Let me begin with those on the left side of the political aisle who talk about the rich paying their fair share.  The kernel of the Democratic social plan is a promise to take care of the poor by giving them benefits. Even if I don’t get any of those benefits, I like voting for politicians who help out the poor because I’m a good person.

If I ask House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi or Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer “Where should the money come from?” they answer “People with too much money.” Nancy and Chuck know which people have enough money and which ones have too much.

BBLR has long been a rallying cry for those on the right. The acronym means “broaden the base, lower the rate.” As Majority Leader in the House and as Vice-Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan has espoused this philosophy. Here is a PolitiFact article on the issue during the 2012 presidential race. Tax reform champion Grover Norquist has advocated for the same principle.

The term “broaden the base” means to have more people paying at least some income tax so that they have skin in the game, so to speak. In a very progressive tax system, people who pay little or no taxes will vote for politicians who promise them benefits. After all, it is OPM, or other people’s money. In Democratic circles, BBLR stands for a mean tax system. Here’s the debate between Nancy and Chuck on the political left, and Paul and Grover on the right:

Paul and Grover: A minority of people are being forced to pay for federal programs that benefit other people who pay almost nothing into the system.  Those people will vote for more programs because it costs them nothing.

Nancy and Chuck: Republicans are bad people because they want to tax poor people. Poor people already pay Social Security and Medicare taxes so they are paying into the system.

Paul and Grover: Medicare and Social Security taxes are essentially forced saving programs that will return that money to the taxpayer in the future. Payroll taxes do not support the other functions and expenses of government like defense and the justice system.

Nancy and Chuck: Those taxes all go into the same pot.

Paul and Grover: Democrats have always been careful to separate Social Security and Medicare programs in their rhetoric. You champion the preservation of these programs as though they are separate. You can’t have it both ways. Either they are separate or they are not.

Nancy and Chuck: You Republicans are really mean and you are pawns of rich people.

These debates usually end in name calling, particularly during election season.  Some of the rhetoric is political branding but each side remains convinced that their way is the best way.

Let’s turn to recent history and take the chance that facts might get in our way. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) routinely analyzes proposed House and Senate laws for their estimated impact on the budget. In this report the CBO separated income, government transfers and taxes paid into income quintiles. (Click here if you want to know more about a quintile).

CBOIncTaxQuintile2013

In the table above, the lowest and highest quintiles received the least amount of money in government transfer payments like Social Security. The highest quintile had ten times more before-tax income than the lowest quintile but paid 87 times more tax than the lowest quintile. Notice that the CBO analysis includes all taxes paid to the federal government, including Social Security and Medicare.

Pretend you are a reporter. Ask House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi “How much more should the rich pay than the poor, Ms. Pelosi? If 87 times is not fair, what is fair? 100 times? 200 times?” Each of us is an expert on what “fair” means.

In the past 35 years, despite all the rhetoric, state and federal policies have had only a small effect on income inequality. The GINI index is a standardized measure of the inequality in a data set. The scale runs from zero, perfect equality, to one, or perfect inequality. The CBO report showed a 35 year history of the separate effects of benefit and tax policies on inequality. In 1980, tax policy reduced inequality by 10%. 35 years later, the reduction was 9%. Despite major tax reform in 1986, the tax increases of the early 1990s and the tax decreases of the early 2000s, tax policy has had little to no effect on inequality.

CBOGiniIndexChange

Changes in social policy that directs government transfer payments have helped ease inequality in the past 35 years, but the CBO analysis finds the combined change from tax and benefit policies negligible. They reduced inequality by 25% in 1979. 35 years later the total reduction was 26%. The difference could be a measuring error.

Tax reform is tough because it involves contentious issues. We argue about tax rates and the income brackets for those rates. We argue about deductions and tax credits. Like pornography, we may not be able to define “fair” but each of us knows it when we see it. We can agree on what “cat” means but not “fair.”

I propose something different, something that will give us less to argue about. Let’s recognize that there are socio-economic classes and assign a portion of federal tax revenues to each income quintile. Using the CBO’s analysis, the 1st and lowest quintile paid 8/10ths of 1% into the kitty. It is such an insignificant amount that we might has well make it zero. What this means is that poor people would pay no income tax and no payroll tax. Paul Ryan led the effort on last year’s Better Way tax proposal which included the same concept:  poor people should pay nothing.

If we can agree on that, we have four things left to argue about: the percentages that each of the remaining four quintiles would pay. Let’s begin the discussion by looking at the CBO analysis of the federal revenue “pie” in 2013.. The second lowest income quintile #2 paid 4% of total individual federal income and payroll taxes, the middle quintile paid 9%, quintile #4 paid 17-1/2%, and the top #5 quintile paid 69-1/2%. I rounded the percentages.

There will be a fight over these percentages but we will be fighting over four concrete numbers, not 100 million interpretations of what the word “fair” means as it relates to thousands of pages of tax code. Once that portioning is settled, a bipartisan committee representing each quintile can argue over the details of how they raise their portion of the anticipated revenue.

Taxpayers in the highest quintile may want tax breaks for angel investors who invest in early startup companies. Sounds like a worthy cause. The members of that quintile’s committee can argue amongst themselves as to whether they can afford to carve out tax breaks for that subgroup and still raise the required revenues. Should some of the income of hedge fund managers be taxed at a lower rate like capital gains? Under the current tax system, that is an emotional issue. Why should those guys get a special interest tax break? Under this proposal, I don’t care because I’m not in that quintile. A hot button issue turns into a yawner for most Americans.

A majority of taxpayers in the middle quintile might want the mortgage interest deduction. Those people can put political pressure on that quintile’s committee members to include that carve out. The majority in the next lower quintile might prefer tax breaks on child care. Should capital gains be taxed at a lower rate? This group has little in the way of capital gains so they might prefer that all income be taxed the same. Those in the lowest three quintiles who pay small tax percentages might be attracted to the simple grade school arithmetic used by some states to calculate their state income tax. Adjusted gross Income x 10% = $tax, as an example. Tax filing made simple.

Could this proposal make the tax code more complicated than it already is? Yes, but most of the complications won’t affect each person. Under the current system, my tax software asks me questions about tax credits and situations that have nothing to do with me or my family. Why? Because all of the tax code applies in theory to all of us. Under this proposal, my tax software would know what quintile I was in and the tax rules that applied to me and my family.

But what if people move from one quintile to another? How will they plan? Incomes do change. A person gets a raise, a better job, goes to school, loses a job or retires. A simple rule would help: a person’s quintile this tax year is based on their income the previous year.

The setting of the quintile brackets could be done by another simple rule. The IRS can not provide summaries and analysis of tax data for a particular tax year till about two years have passed. Each year we could adjust the income brackets of each quintile by the annual inflation rate based on the most recent tax year data available.  Families with fairly predictable income will know in advance what their tax expense will be in the coming year.

What about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program for poor people? This program largely offsets the payroll taxes that poor people pay with tax credits paid directly by a person’s employer. The program is fraught with abuse. Under this proposal, payroll taxes for the lowest income workers are eliminated so the offsetting tax credits aren’t needed.

Will those workers in the lowest quintile still be eligible for Social Security?  Sure.  There is still a record of their labor income, which is the basis for determining Social Security payment amounts.

Tax reform has come infrequently because the tax code tries to be all things to all people. The top 40% pay most of the individual income taxes so naturally they lobby for special interest tax breaks which are slipped quietly into the tax code.  Under this proposal, those special interests can lobby all they like, just as long as they meet their revenue targets.

Is it fair that someone making a half a million dollars gets a tax break on their vacation home on the Outer Banks in North Carolina? Of course not. Under the current system, I get angry about that. Under this proposal, I simply don’t care. If that person is getting a break, some other equally rich person is having to pay for that tax break. None of my business.

As it is now, we struggle to understand the various tax proposals. Politicians talk in non-specific terms about what is fair, or they speak in slogan tax talk like BBLR. Tax reform rhetoric has become a rallying cry to get out the vote.

This proposal will not stop the political fights. We will continue to debate the amount of  federal spending, the role of government and what tax revenues should be spent on. We will fight bitterly about the percentages of tax revenue expected from each quintile. But this proposal will direct the debate to specific percentages that most of us can understand. So let’s put on our debating gloves and get into it!

 

 

Re-pricing the Market

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January 31, 2016

In the closing moments of one of the “big ape” films, the very large gorilla Mighty Joe Young saves the girl, placing her on a boat as an island in the Pacific, broken by a volcano, falls back into the sea.  The bandaged hand of the big ape reaching out of the roiling waters is the last we see of the movie’s star.

On Friday morning, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) surprised the world by cutting it’s funds rate to a negative .1% from a positive .1%, vowing to fight the deflation and lack of growth that has plagued the Japanese economy for two decades.  As the island’s economy collapses under the weight of its aging population and lack of immigration, the bank thrust its arm above the Pacific waters to save – well, the entire Japanese population.  Could be the script of another big ape movie or a Godzilla sequel.

The first estimate of fourth quarter GDP was released Friday morning and the news was not good, which meant that the news was good, get it?!  GDP growth for the last quarter was positive, not negative, but less than 1%, so traders figured that the Fed will not raise interest rates again in March.

#3 in the combination was positive earnings surprises from Microsoft and Facebook, among others. Thursday was the busiest day of the earnings season.  #4 The price of oil continued to climb above the near rock-bottom benchmark of $30.  All of these factors were the impetus for a stock market surge of 2-1/2% on Friday and helped soften a really bad start to the year.  For the month, the index fell 5%.  During the month, revisions to earnings estimates for 2016 fell about the same amount – 4.7% (Fact Set).  In short, the stock market re-priced itself.

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Taxes

As the primary season approaches and millions of Americans receive their W-2 earnings record in the mail, Americans turn their attention to the cheery subjects of incomes and income taxes.  Here’s a Heritage Foundation chart of the effective payroll tax rates and income tax rates for the five quintiles of Americans based on income.

Those in the lowest quintile making less than $25K pay a combined rate of 2.1%.  Those in the next quintile making less than about $47K pay a combined rate of 6.6%.  Those in the next higher quintile making less than $80K pay 12.2%.  The top two quintiles pay 14.7% and 21% respectively.  It is easy to understand why many in the upper quintiles feel that they are already paying their fair share of taxes.

The fault in these calculations is that they neglect the employer’s portion of the payroll tax which is paid indirectly by the employee in the form of a lower wage.  Including that portion would add another 7.5% to 8% to the lower quintiles, a bit less to the top two quintiles.  Here’s a chart showing the total payroll tax burden since the Social Security Act was passed in the 1930s.

Should the rich pay more in taxes?  Yes, says Democratic Presidential contender Bernie Sanders.  Many Americans do not realize that we are in the top 10% of global incomes, the world’s fat cats.  Should Americans pay a global fairness tax of 10% or so?  This money would then be redistributed to poorer people around the world.  That is the world that Mr. Sanders is aiming toward.

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Consumer Problem Survey

Over the past several thousand years people have developed numerous tools to predict the future.  Reading chicken bones, tea leaves and other forms of augery have given way to mathematical and statistical modeling.  The folks at Georgetown have developed a predictive tool to estimate consumer spending. Using a survey methodology researchers ask consumers what problems they have and which ones they are planning to solve in the coming months. These can be the payment of taxes, needing a new computer, iPad, or cell phone, the purchase of new home, etc.  Based on these responses, the researchers compile a Problem Driven Conumption Index (PDCI).  In the spring and early winter of 2014, the predictive index badly under-estimated retail sales.

However, the approach brings an essential understanding of the challenges American families face.  In a 2013 survey, respondents reported having many problems for which they see no solutions.  We learn that men and women have a few problems in common but confirm the axiom that each sex really does see the world differently.  The researchers are able to chart the shifting patterns of problems as we age.  This problems based approach is another statistical tool in the field of behavioral finance.