[Vision2020] request "impartial" info source

[Kenneth Marcy]

On Sunday 07 September 2008 15:23:39 Bill London wrote:
> During an email exchange about the tax policy issues in the upcoming
> electiony, my cousin made the following request...
>
> "I would really appreciate actual, factual, real information on all of
> this.  But I'm not sure how to research it.  A lot of things get sent over
> the internet, we don't know for sure what is real.  If you have some actual
> info I would be interested in seeing it."
>
> What she would like is an "impartial" source of tax policy info, expecially
> explanations of the impact of Obama/McCain policies.
>
> What websites would you suggest?

Tax policy is a broad term simultaneously, and differently, applicable to 
several levels of government with various interjurisdictional effects. Fiscal 
policy, monetary policy, and tax policy together interact with various 
sectors of the general economy to achieve economic goals such as stable 
growth, low inflation, and full employment, however defined and assessed, 
while funding short and long-term obligations governments set themselves.

To understand tax policy specifically one must understand its relationships 
within economics generally, and that implies an understanding of economics. 
So, the following link is to economics courses offered by the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology through the Institute's OpenCourseWare program.

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Economics/ 

Intermediate Microeconomics, Intermediate Macroeconomics, International 
Economics, and Public Economics are the minimum courses necessary to 
understand the "big ideas." However, to get closer to the numerical values 
necessary for applied work, one should have some understanding of statistics 
and real analysis (i.e., linear algebra, calculus, differential equations) to 
do economic modeling. This will allow a person to pick economic variables 
such as interest rates, GNP, etc., plug them into an economic model, and let 
the model generate an economic forecast for several future fiscal quarters.

An example of an economic model that has been available and successful for 
many years is the one maintained by Professor Ray C. Fair at Yale University:

http://fairmodel.econ.yale.edu/main2.htm 

To the objection that one has insufficient time to complete an economics 
degree, and do comparative policy analysis, before election day, I would 
suggest that tax policy analysis is meant to be understood within its natural 
economic context, just as neurosurgery is understood within medical science, 
and operating system development is understood within computer science.

If there is a standard way to understand tax policy in a single volume, it is 
to borrow or to purchase a recent copy of Economics, by Paul A. Samuelson 
(recent editions have William Nordhaus as a co-author), and read as many of 
the relevant chapters as are possible in the time available.

Following Samuelson's book with someone else's Public Finance text would offer 
more specialization and more focused examples, but not likely Obama versus 
McCain in specific detail. However, examples and homework problems could be 
adapted to the current fiscal budget numbers.

Beyond public economics and finance comes macroeconomic time series modeling, 
and that implies some sort of computer simulation and quantitative analysis 
with non-trivial statistical and mathematical prerequisites. From that point 
forward the investigator's mental economic model provides the context within 
which the tax policy analysis takes place.


Ken