Should online retailers be responsible for collecting sales tax like brick-and-mortar stores? Is it “taxation without representation” or something that’s overdue in our ecommerce world? Should Amazon.com, based in Washington, have to collect sales tax on sales to California customers, even though they have no offices, warehouses, or employees there?
Taxes are basically the price we [...]
Evaluating the potential outcomes of passing the “Amazon tax” to force out-of-state retailers to collect California sales tax, the legislature will be forced to make a business design – something government entities are notoriously bad at. They need to look at revenues and expenses, and the impact on California citizens. We’ll save the debate about [...]
What the Dog Saw (and other adventures) is the latest from Malcolm Gladwell, the best-selling author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers. The book is not one cohesive story or thesis, but rather a series of 19 Gladwell essays that were previously published in The New Yorker magazine. So if you’ve been a devout [...]
You heard it here first:
By the end of this year, “strategic default” will be a familiar media buzzword describing the next phase of the foreclosure crisis.
In a strategic default, mortgage borrowers who owe more than their house is worth, but who can afford their loan payment, decide it is simply smarter to stop paying. In [...]
This guy was totally my professor for Econ 200!
He was a great teacher. It was one of my favorite classes at UW. Definitely a quirky sense of humor though.
According to some economists, the annual tradition of holiday gift-giving creates a massive “deadweight loss” in our overall utility. The reason? Gift recipients don’t value the gifts as much as they cost.
In Scroogenomics, author and University of Pennsylvania economics professor Joel Waldfogel explains that, on average, people value items they receive as gifts 20% less [...]
