Was Heckscher Right About Monopolies on Communications in 1921?
My new paper about how current threat to free mobility is not a new thing is now published in this anthology. Already in the 1920s Eli Heckscher feared monopolized mobility.
Austrian Economics 150 Years after Carl Menger can be ordered from the Friedrich August von Hayek Institut
”From Adam Smith we learned that a farmer by specializing did not himself need to be baker, butcher and brewer. Specialization made products better and less expensive. The “extent of the market” increased, enabled by better and faster transportation. While in other areas central planning has been ruled out, in traffic it has become widely accepted. Today we see forces trying to regulate and limit free mobility of goods and services.” Presentation by Anders Ydstedt at ”The Austrian School of Economics in the 21st Century” at Oesterreichische Nationalbank, OeNB, Vienna, Austria.
All effort made by French farmers; selecting the fruit, cultivating the soil, harvesting the grapes, crushing, pressing, storing, perhaps blending and finally bottling of the finished liquid is totally worthless until someone drinks the product. Until consumption it is only water and rotten fruits. This must be the belief of those who thinks all value is created at consumption and not at production, such as the EU Tax Commissioner Pierre Moscovici
Read the full blog post here.
The Government’s looking at Sweden’s Vision Zero model, as part of its plans to overhaul the transport system. It is hoping to imitate Sweden, where the road toll has halved over the past two decades. Anders Ydstedt from the Royal Sweden Automobile Club told Kate Hawkesby a combination of factors have contributed to that decline.
”Better roads, we have separated traffic barriers, a push for better education and a push for enforcement and traffic regulation has been stricter.”
Listen to the interview here.
Austria, France and Germany together with other EU-countries made a proposal earlier this month to introduce an “equalization tax” on foreign internet companies. The justification for this tech tax is that companies such as Google, Facebook and Airbnb are not paying their fair share of taxes, and especially not in France and Germany.
Read my text on values4europe.com
Sweden might not have much to teach other countries about tax policy. The tax-to-GDP-ratio of 42.8 percent (2013) exceeds the OECD average by nearly 9 percentage points. Our marginal tax rate on labor income is the world’s highest, and the capital gains tax is almost twice as high as the average in the EU, OECD and the BRIC countries. That being said, the developments from the year 2000 until today might still be interesting even for foreign readers.
Read my article in Cayman Financial Review.
In 2004 the Swedish inheritance tax and gift tax was abolished by a unanimous vote in the Riksdag. In a new book ”Ten years without the Swedish inheritance tax. Mourned by no one – missed by few”, by Amanda Wollstad and myself, we tell the history of the inheritance tax, its abolition and what consequences it had on Swedish business owners and tax revenues.
Read the article on the IEA Blog here.
It 2004 the Swedish inheritance tax was abolished by a unanimous riksdag (parliament). How did it happen? How come all political parties in parliament – from the conservative right to the socialist left – agreed on its demise?
This book tells the history of the tax, its abolishment and what consequences it had on Swedish business owners and Swedish business. It also takes a broader perspective and looks out to Europe and the world, proving that Sweden is far from as alone in refraining from taxing inheritance.
The book can be downloaded for free from this site.
Taxation in Europe – Yearbook 2013, är en årsbok från den franska tankesmedjan IREF, The Institute for Research in Economic and Fiscal Issues. Boken beskriver aktuella skattefrågor och debatt i 28 Europeiska länder. För tredje gången skriver jag det svenska kapitlet. För svenska läsare bör noteras att texten är skriven vinter 2012/2013 och därför inte helt aktuell.
Läs boken i web-version här.
Jag medverkar i den franska tankesmedjan IREFs årsbok 2012 med ett kapitel om svensk skattepolitik. Boken beskriver aktuell skattepolitik i 20 europeiska länder.
Läs mer på IREF Europe hemsida här.
