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Gerald Prante, Senior Economist, The Tax Foundation
Biography provided by participant
Gerald Prante is senior economist at the Tax Foundation. Prante, a Ph.D. student (ABD) in economics at George Mason University, has done work on issues at both the federal and local levels with a special emphasis in data analysis, including microsimulation models and local geographic data. On issues, he specializes in the federal income tax at the federal level and property taxes at the state/local level. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, the Economist, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, and the New York Post, among others. He has appeared on C-SPAN's Washington Journal program, as well as CNBC and numerous radio programs. Gerald holds a bachelor's degree in economics and political science, and a master's degree in economics from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Gerald has also taught economics at Southwestern Illinois College and East Central College. While at the Tax Foundation, he is pursuing a doctorate in economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, specializing in the fields of public finance and industrial organization. He is currently working on his dissertation.
August 24, 2009 10:08 AM
This question basically comes back to whether the representative democracy system that the U.S. has would make better fiscal policy than a panel of fiscal policy experts, better as defined by which produces a higher social well-being broadly defined. (By broadly defined, I mean including not just maximizing consumer surplus plus producer surplus but also including concerns for distributional outcomes, infringements on liberty/fairness, etc.) I see two possible overarching problems with the current system: (1) policymakers are subverted by asymmetric special interests that can tilt policies in one direction that fall well short of maximizing social well-being (ex: subsidies for housing that far exceed any positive externality…
Read moreJuly 20, 2009 08:58 AM
Are Obama's tax hikes on the rich efficient? Even if one wants to argue that the rich should bear a larger burden of federal taxes and claim that such a policy is efficient (under the assumption that we are not at the optimal level of redistribution which is a public good in itself), there are better ways to redistribute from upper-income Americans than the Democrats appear set to do. Obama ridiculed Sen. McCain in the campaign for proposing to tax employer-provided health insurance, but such a revenue raiser is far better than a surtax. Even partially taxing it (above some…
Read moreJanuary 5, 2009 07:32 PM
Obama’s idea of giving companies a tax credit for hiring a new worker or "saving a job" reminds me of the famous sophism of Bastiat, which said that the French government should develop a device that blocks out the sun to promote the hiring of candlemakers. At the heart of Bastiat's mockery is a simple idea: a government that uses economic policy to make life better for its citizens should not merely try to maximize the quantity of jobs in existence. (Never mind the fact that implementing such a credit could have all sorts of administrative problems.) Government should…
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