Word: okun
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such programs, Okun advocates some less-than-sweeping changes in federal tax laws. "To me," he notes, "the purpose of heavier taxation at the top of the income and wealth scale is not to bring down the affluent, but to raise up the deprived." Thus unlike some egalitarians, he would not raise taxes on salary income, remove tax breaks for homeowners or even touch the investment tax credit for businesses. But, he points out, under present law wealthy taxpayers count only half their capital gains in calculating their taxable income; Okun would reduce or even eliminate that discount. He also...
...been a prime source of tension, division and violence in American life. A critical challenge for politicians and economists alike has long been to try to find a way to soften the harsher injustices of U.S. capitalism without crippling it. That is the central dilemma that Economist Arthur Okun faces in an eminently readable, slim new book, Equality and Efficiency: The Big Tradeoff, published by the Brookings Institution in Washington...
...Okun, a senior fellow at Brookings, an influential liberal Democrat and a member of TIME's Board of Economists, questions the social sensitivity of capitalism. The free market, he maintains, allows "the big winners to feed their pets better than the losers can feed their children," and if left to itself, "would sweep away all other values, and establish a vending machine society." Yet the market also permits decentralization of management, encourages experimentation and innovation, and limits the power of the state to transgress on personal freedoms; by doing so, it provides incentives for work and massive production that...
Familiar Pleas. Okun argues that the U.S. can do much to create a more equitable economy while leaving the market free. Some of his ideas are familiar pleas of liberal reformers: he would have the Government strive to improve opportunities for the poor through more job-training programs and make certain that all low-income families receive food stamps, housing allowances and Medicaid. "The cliché should at least be validated," he says. "The market should not be allowed to legislate life and death...
Some of his other proposals are fresh and ingenious. For impoverished youths ready and able to enter college, Okun would set up a kind of Social Security system in reverse: the youths would get Government money to go to school and pay it back later by agreeing to subject themselves during their working years to a slightly higher tax on incomes than other people would pay. The author also would have the Government ensure that every working American earns the equivalent of about half the national average income, or between $6,000 and $7,000. One way to accomplish that...