Continuations

I wrote a bit of a rant recently about the structural changes in our economy and society that need to be addressed. What we are getting instead – not surprisingly – is a lame last minute compromise on the debt ceiling that includes absolutely no additional revenues for the government (“it’s all cuts!”). This essentially means that the Democrats and the President caved completely on their original positions (that’s simply an assessment of the outcome, whether or not you happened to agree with ...

Last week I wrote briefly about my position in the carried interest taxation debate. Since then the debate has gotten a bit more heated with opposing posts by Chris Dixon and James Robinson. Chris argued that this is a matter of basic tax fairness and Jim provided two (new) arguments for how increasing the tax rate on VCs might result in fewer dollars for startups. Jim’s first argument is what economists call “tax incidence." When you tax someone they will lay off part of the tax on their cus...

There is a lot in the FY 2010 US budget and it will take some time to digest. But one thing that is clear right away is that there is a big tax hike coming for folks at higher income levels. I for one have never been upset about paying taxes. That’s probably in part because growing up in Germany my Dad, who was a teacher and – like all teachers in Germany at the time – a government employee, instilled a sense that paying taxes was a civic duty right up there with voting. I still believe that ...