Tape 32 - Monetary Developments, Future Federal Policy Lag in Effect of Money, Tax Legislation
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Interviewer | Hello, this is Instructional Dynamics, | 0:02 |
inviting you to another of our bi weekly interviews | 0:05 | |
with doctor Milton Friedman, professor of economics | 0:08 | |
at the university of Chicago. | 0:11 | |
We are taping this interview on Thursday August 7th. | 0:13 | |
As usual, professor Friedman, we might start off | 0:18 | |
by asking what has been happening | 0:21 | |
in the monetary area? | 0:23 | |
Friedman | Well I am sorry to say | 0:25 |
that there has, so far, been no change | 0:26 | |
in the development that I reported in the last two tapes. | 0:29 | |
The appearing shift toward a much tighter posture | 0:34 | |
of monetary policy that I reported on then, | 0:40 | |
appears to have been continuing. | 0:43 | |
I put together a number of figures, | 0:46 | |
the last week, for a column that I'm going | 0:48 | |
to have a news week on this subject, | 0:50 | |
which, not all of which I read was able to use | 0:53 | |
in news week, which seems to me | 0:56 | |
to be very striking indeed. | 0:57 | |
I took a variety of monetary aggregates | 0:59 | |
and for each of them, I compared the rate of growth | 1:02 | |
of those aggregates, in the period before, | 1:05 | |
the turn to tightness in December that is in 1968 | 1:09 | |
during the highly inflationary period of the fed, | 1:13 | |
with what was happening from December | 1:15 | |
when the fed turned to moderate restrain until April. | 1:18 | |
And then what happened from April to now, | 1:22 | |
to the latest figure I had available for July. | 1:23 | |
And in every case, this shows a moderate bring off, | 1:27 | |
from 68 to early this year, and then a sharper turn. | 1:31 | |
Let me sight a number of these. | 1:35 | |
With respect to the money supply narrated fund | 1:38 | |
that is currently closed to demand deposits, | 1:41 | |
it grew at a over seven percent rate in 1968. | 1:44 | |
From December 1968 to April this year, | 1:49 | |
it grew at about four percent per year. | 1:53 | |
In the past three months, it's been essentially stable, | 1:56 | |
the actual computer graded growth | 2:02 | |
is zero point two percentage point, | 2:03 | |
that is two tenth of one percentage point. | 2:06 | |
So you've gone from four percent, to zero. | 2:09 | |
Now if you look at a broader aggregate, | 2:12 | |
currency plus demand deposit, plus time deposits, | 2:15 | |
but leaving out the CDs that have come added on in the past, | 2:19 | |
you get essentially the same picture | 2:24 | |
from a four percent rate of growth, | 2:27 | |
from December to April, to an actual mild decline | 2:29 | |
from April to July at the rate | 2:32 | |
of minus zero point three percentage point. | 2:34 | |
If you look at M three, M two, | 2:39 | |
that is the broad monetary total | 2:41 | |
including the CDs, currency plus | 2:43 | |
all commercial buying time deposits, | 2:45 | |
that was rising at the rate of ten point seven percent | 2:47 | |
in 1968 or nearly 11 percent, it was falling | 2:50 | |
at the rate of a little under one percentage per year | 2:55 | |
from December to April, it's been going down | 2:59 | |
at over four percent per year from April to now. | 3:01 | |
To turn away from these aggregate money aggregates | 3:05 | |
which measure the amount of money which people hold, | 3:08 | |
and look at the banking situation in particular, | 3:11 | |
the results are even more striking. | 3:14 | |
For example one can look at the total reserve | 3:17 | |
held by a member bank, that is to say | 3:20 | |
the amount of cash they had in their vault | 3:23 | |
plus the amount of deposits they had at reserved banks. | 3:25 | |
That total was rising at the rate of about nine percent | 3:29 | |
a year in 1968, it was going down at the rate | 3:32 | |
of two and a half percent a year | 3:36 | |
from December to April, it's been going down | 3:38 | |
at over four percent a year from April to now. | 3:40 | |
An even more striking result is given | 3:44 | |
if you subtract from member bank reserves | 3:46 | |
the amount they've been borrowing from the fed. | 3:48 | |
Because of the high market rate, | 3:51 | |
and the fact that the fed discount rate | 3:53 | |
hasn't risen proportionately, | 3:55 | |
the amount of member bank borrowings | 3:57 | |
has been at very high levels recently | 3:59 | |
and has been going up. | 4:01 | |
So that we have a situation in which, | 4:02 | |
an unborrowed reserve, that is member bank reserve | 4:04 | |
minus their borrowings, to a rising | 4:08 | |
of over nine percent a year in 1968, | 4:10 | |
falling at nearly seven percent a year | 4:13 | |
from December 68 to April 69, and falling | 4:15 | |
at nearly 11 percent a year in the past three months. | 4:19 | |
Now that's an incredible squeeze on the banking system. | 4:22 | |
It's partly, so, extraordinary because, of course, | 4:27 | |
the run off of CDs which is, I've emphasized in these tapes | 4:33 | |
before, is in many respects a bookkeeping operation | 4:38 | |
involving the use of the euro dollar market, | 4:42 | |
the run off of CDs does reduce reserve acquirements, | 4:44 | |
and that's why these reserves have been falling so rapidly. | 4:47 | |
But with all the technical adjustments | 4:51 | |
you can possibly make, it's still, looks very much, | 4:53 | |
it's still an extremely tight pressure on banks | 4:58 | |
to have their own borrowed unborrowed reserves | 5:02 | |
going down at the rate of 11 percent a year, | 5:05 | |
no amount of qualification can offset that, | 5:07 | |
a very striking fact. | 5:11 | |
Interviewer | Well will the fed continue | 5:12 |
on this path, d'you think? | 5:14 | |
Friedman | I don't see how they can, | 5:15 |
and I hope very much they won't, | 5:17 | |
but I am a little chary of making such firm predictions | 5:19 | |
as I am inclined to because, I had thought | 5:23 | |
that they had learned very much their lesson | 5:26 | |
and that they would not start on this path. | 5:28 | |
And I may say that in the four, three or four weeks | 5:31 | |
since I first discussed this on these tapes, | 5:35 | |
I have been talking my head off | 5:37 | |
to everybody I could get a hold of about this, | 5:40 | |
both in and outside of the system, | 5:43 | |
and I had thought that they were by now aware | 5:45 | |
of the extend to which their modes of operation, | 5:49 | |
automatically buy us in this direction soon | 5:53 | |
as the delayed effect of monetary restrain takes over. | 5:56 | |
What's happening now is that there's pressure on interstate | 6:00 | |
to decline, and this pressure on interstate to decline | 6:03 | |
is interpreted by the New York Federal Reserve bank | 6:07 | |
as if they were easing policies | 6:10 | |
and they're trying to keep interstate from declining | 6:12 | |
and then as a result they're pulling | 6:14 | |
reserve funds out of the market. | 6:18 | |
Now by now they are surely getting aware of this, | 6:20 | |
these numbers are making an impression on them, | 6:23 | |
and my instincts are to say | 6:26 | |
they certainly are going to have to turn around | 6:28 | |
and going to have to turn around very shortly. | 6:31 | |
Now, there's a little bit more than instinct going on there, | 6:34 | |
those of you who follow the barn market closely, | 6:38 | |
know that in the past week or so | 6:41 | |
there has been a definite tendency toward rise | 6:43 | |
in the price of barns that there's a decline | 6:48 | |
in their yields, it's been small | 6:50 | |
but it's been definite. | 6:52 | |
Similarly, there is a very clear indication | 6:54 | |
that short time rights have been starting | 6:56 | |
to come down a little, and this is some indirect sign, | 7:00 | |
far from conclusive but nonetheless, some indirect sign | 7:03 | |
that the fed may, in the past few weeks, | 7:05 | |
be starting to ease off a little, | 7:09 | |
and to get back on a sensible path | 7:12 | |
of a moderate, steady growth in the money supply | 7:14 | |
that will enable us to proceed without inflation, | 7:18 | |
but without also an extremely severe tightening | 7:22 | |
of monetary conditions. | 7:26 | |
Interviewer | What would be the consequences | 7:28 |
if they did continue on this very tight path? | 7:30 | |
Friedman | Well if despite the statement | 7:33 |
that I'm making, if they continued on this path, | 7:36 | |
the consequences would be far reaching, | 7:39 | |
I oughta say, again as I have before, | 7:40 | |
that some of the consequences are already manifest. | 7:44 | |
There's little doubt in my mind | 7:47 | |
that the stark market decline | 7:48 | |
has been as severe as it has primarily because | 7:50 | |
of this shift toward extraordinary tightness by the fed. | 7:53 | |
There's also little doubt in my mind | 7:57 | |
that if had the fed continued, on a steady path | 7:59 | |
of safe or present monetary growth from April on, | 8:02 | |
barn yields would today be lower than they are, | 8:06 | |
and barn prices higher. | 8:09 | |
So in the securities market, stark and barn market | 8:11 | |
you've already had the effect of this policy. | 8:14 | |
These markets are as you all know very sensitive, | 8:18 | |
and they show up the effect of policy much more rapidly. | 8:21 | |
But as yet you've had very little impact of this | 8:25 | |
on the economy and that's understandable | 8:28 | |
because, as I've empathized in the past, | 8:29 | |
takes a considerable time for such changes | 8:31 | |
to affect the economy, but if they were to continue, | 8:34 | |
if you could conceive a very continuing | 8:37 | |
as zero rate of growth of money, | 8:39 | |
for let's say the rest of this calendar year, | 8:41 | |
well then I believe the effects of that | 8:44 | |
would almost surely be a contraction, | 8:46 | |
of a severity that we have not seen in this country | 8:50 | |
since, well, the closest one that comes | 8:54 | |
is 57 58, but I believe that a policy | 8:58 | |
of the kind that I've described | 9:01 | |
would be even more severe than that. | 9:02 | |
A few numbers, well, suggest what's happening. | 9:04 | |
To go from rate of growth of the money supply last year | 9:10 | |
of over seven percent a year, in the narrow money supply, | 9:14 | |
to zero percent this year, requires an even larger change | 9:18 | |
than the rate of growth of income. | 9:23 | |
It requires a larger change because | 9:26 | |
these adjustments always tend to overshoot. | 9:28 | |
Now income has been growing at the rate of about | 9:31 | |
national income about eight percent a year, | 9:34 | |
so such a shift in monetary policy | 9:38 | |
would mean that you would have to, | 9:40 | |
you would have probably a declining normal income. | 9:41 | |
Now for GNP and current prices to be declining, | 9:45 | |
when the price level is going to continue to rise | 9:48 | |
because you can't bring inflation under control overnight, | 9:52 | |
it tends to keep on going it has an inertia of its own, | 9:55 | |
the effect of that would undoubtedly be | 9:59 | |
that real output would go down in four, five, | 10:01 | |
six percent per year, which would mean | 10:03 | |
a rise in unemployment to levels of perhaps five, | 10:05 | |
six, six and a half percent, a very substantial recession, | 10:08 | |
something that by any measure | 10:10 | |
would have to be called a recession. | 10:13 | |
As I say I hope and trust this will not happen, | 10:14 | |
I believe there is every reason | 10:18 | |
to expect that the fed is going to get back | 10:19 | |
on a sensible course much before that. | 10:22 | |
It's perfectly clear to me that the Federal Reserve | 10:25 | |
has no desire to have this happen, | 10:28 | |
they're not doing this out of malice at all, | 10:29 | |
they're doing it because they have not yet adjusted | 10:33 | |
their operations to our increasing understanding | 10:35 | |
of the why and which the monetary system works. | 10:38 | |
But in answer to your question of what would happen if, | 10:41 | |
that seems to me to be the best answer. | 10:43 | |
Interviewer | Along these very lines, | 10:46 |
professor Samuelson mentioned in his latest tape | 10:48 | |
that there were wild differences of opinion | 10:51 | |
among monetarists about how long it takes | 10:53 | |
for monetary policy to take effect. | 10:56 | |
He mentioned lags from a few months, | 10:58 | |
to 16 or more months, would you care to comment on that? | 11:00 | |
Friedman | Yes I would be very glad to comment on that | 11:04 |
because I think that professor Samuelson | 11:06 | |
is confusing two very different things. | 11:10 | |
On the one hand, there are some differences of opinions | 11:14 | |
among people who have studied monetary relations | 11:17 | |
about precise length of the lag, | 11:20 | |
but those are rather small. | 11:23 | |
What I think professor Samuelson is confusing | 11:26 | |
with that real disagreement, is the fact | 11:28 | |
that people have stated the lags | 11:32 | |
with respect to different kinds of things | 11:35 | |
that is they have measured different kinds of lags. | 11:38 | |
Now I myself have of course been, | 11:40 | |
probably the prime culprit in this respect, | 11:41 | |
in an attempt to get at the problem | 11:45 | |
from as many different ways as possible, | 11:47 | |
I have defined and measured the lag in various ways. | 11:50 | |
Now the most significant, and the one I ought | 11:53 | |
to mention, because it undoubtedly underlies | 11:57 | |
professor Samuelson's 16 months | 12:00 | |
on the one end versus six months, | 12:03 | |
he was kind enough not to attribute both views to me | 12:05 | |
but many people have done so, because it is true. | 12:10 | |
That in certain contexts, I have said the lag is six months, | 12:11 | |
and in other contexts, I have said it is 16 months. | 12:15 | |
But those are not inconsistent at all | 12:18 | |
because I was talking about different kinds of lags, | 12:20 | |
between different kinds of lags. | 12:23 | |
And it may be worth there for spilling out a little bit, | 12:25 | |
the two kinds of things I've measured | 12:28 | |
which gives out these very different results. | 12:30 | |
The one I have, generally used to avoid confusion | 12:34 | |
in the popular discussion has been | 12:38 | |
the time that the lapses before a change | 12:44 | |
in the rate of change of money, and a change | 12:46 | |
in the rate of change of income. | 12:49 | |
Just as now, I've been talking about the rate of change | 12:51 | |
of money going from four percent per year | 12:54 | |
to zero percent in April, well then the counterpart of that | 12:56 | |
would be to say that about six months after that, | 13:00 | |
the rate of change of GNP would go from say, | 13:03 | |
five or six percent, which might correspond | 13:08 | |
to the four percent rate of growth of money, | 13:11 | |
in narrowly defined, to let's say, | 13:15 | |
zero percent or one percent or two percent | 13:19 | |
in GNP which might be the rate of growth | 13:22 | |
corresponding to a zero percent in money. | 13:25 | |
So in that comparison, what I am comparing is change, | 13:28 | |
in the rate of growth in one magnitude | 13:33 | |
and the rate of growth in the other. | 13:35 | |
Now in my scientific work, published research, | 13:38 | |
I have supplemented that and indeed generally found | 13:44 | |
more useful, a rather different way | 13:47 | |
of comparing these relationships. | 13:50 | |
One I have looked at is the period elapsing | 13:52 | |
between the change and the rate of change of money. | 13:55 | |
The same kind of thing for money. | 13:58 | |
To absolute peaks of troth in income, | 14:01 | |
not to a change in the rate of change of income, | 14:04 | |
but in the level of income. | 14:07 | |
Let me illustrate. | 14:09 | |
Let's suppose that we consider income, | 14:11 | |
let's suppose it's been rising at seven percent a year | 14:15 | |
and then it starts rising at three percent a year, | 14:17 | |
it's still rising. | 14:20 | |
You reach a peak in income, | 14:22 | |
only when the rate of change falls to zero, | 14:23 | |
that is to say when you no longer are going up | 14:26 | |
but going horizontal or down. | 14:28 | |
And so, it's perfectly clear | 14:32 | |
that an absolute peak in income, | 14:33 | |
a top, a ceiling, will come considerably later, | 14:36 | |
than a deceleration of income, a slowing down. | 14:41 | |
Just as when you're driving a car | 14:44 | |
and you step on the break, you will slow down | 14:45 | |
well before you stop. | 14:47 | |
And so if I may carry on that analogy, | 14:50 | |
the one method of measurement is between | 14:53 | |
the time when you slow down the input of gas | 14:55 | |
and you slow down the speed of a car, | 14:59 | |
that's the six to nine months. | 15:01 | |
And the other is between the time | 15:03 | |
when you slow down the input of gas, | 15:05 | |
and when you bring the car to a complete halt. | 15:06 | |
That's the 16, 18, 20 months. | 15:09 | |
Now you may ask why in the world | 15:11 | |
ever make this second comparison? | 15:12 | |
Well the reason is because much of my research work | 15:15 | |
in this connection has been in the context | 15:18 | |
of the work with the National Bureau of Economic Researches | 15:22 | |
done on business articles, and they have done | 15:24 | |
an exhaustive amount of work in defining | 15:28 | |
what everybody accepts as the true dates of peak | 15:31 | |
or thrust of business cycles, in defining recessions | 15:34 | |
and expansions, and it so happens, | 15:38 | |
and here I may say I think the bureau will, | 15:40 | |
as a result of changes in the world, | 15:43 | |
change its method, but it so happens that in the past, | 15:45 | |
the bureau has found it convenient | 15:49 | |
to define the peak of a business cycle | 15:50 | |
as a point where you reached an absolute top | 15:53 | |
and started going down, not as a point | 15:56 | |
in which you had to slow down. | 15:59 | |
That for example is a reason why, | 16:00 | |
according to the bureau's method of dating, | 16:02 | |
1967 does not qualify as a full recession. | 16:05 | |
And that's why people have been calling it a mini recession | 16:09 | |
or a slow down, I think myself that by any, | 16:11 | |
by a method of dating and handling these matters, | 16:14 | |
that I am sure will become standard | 16:19 | |
in the course of the next few years, | 16:21 | |
it will come to be the case that 1967 | 16:23 | |
will be regarded as a full blooded recession. | 16:26 | |
But in anyway to get back to my main theme, | 16:29 | |
it is perfectly consist, simultaneously, | 16:31 | |
that the time and a roll between a slow down in money | 16:36 | |
and a slow down in the economy | 16:40 | |
deceleration is six months, and the time and a roll | 16:42 | |
between a slow down in money | 16:47 | |
and a decline in the economy and decline in the income, | 16:49 | |
is 18 months, all I mean is that it typically | 16:52 | |
takes 12 months, between the time when the economy | 16:55 | |
starts slowing down and the time when it comes to a halt. | 16:58 | |
In consequently these are not an indication | 17:02 | |
in any way of a difference of opinion | 17:04 | |
or contradictory results, they simply are | 17:06 | |
measurements of different things. | 17:09 | |
If you, now look at measurements of the same thing. | 17:11 | |
I do not know of any as I mentioned before, | 17:16 | |
of any two monetarists, who have | 17:19 | |
expressed a view about the time lags | 17:23 | |
that would be as wildly divergent | 17:26 | |
as those which professor Samuelson pointed at. | 17:28 | |
The difference that I think is real and not artificial | 17:31 | |
is about of the range of say six to nine months, | 17:35 | |
something like that, maybe ten months on occasion, | 17:38 | |
maybe five months or four months, | 17:40 | |
and of course you all realize that this doesn't say | 17:42 | |
that absolutely nothing happens for six months | 17:46 | |
and that all of a sudden it starts to bite. | 17:48 | |
The moment monetary growth slows down | 17:50 | |
it starts to have a little effect on the economy, | 17:54 | |
but it has very little and it starts to build up, | 17:57 | |
and then it reaches a peak and then decline, it falls off. | 17:59 | |
And when we speak of a six months lag | 18:03 | |
what we mean is it's sort of the average of that | 18:05 | |
distributed effect, is about six months, | 18:08 | |
or, sometimes, nine months or something of that sort. | 18:12 | |
Interviewer | Turning to a somewhat different area, | 18:17 |
there have been a lot of action recently | 18:20 | |
on the tax front, what is your reaction? | 18:22 | |
Friedman | Well there certainly has been a lot of, | 18:26 |
I don't know whether action, so much as noise | 18:28 | |
and talk, and discussion on the tax front. | 18:32 | |
We've had two major measures. | 18:35 | |
On the one hand, as you all know, | 18:37 | |
the senate and the house finally got together | 18:39 | |
on an extension of the search tax. | 18:42 | |
Personally I may say I would have been just as pleased | 18:45 | |
if they hadn't gone together, I was opposed | 18:47 | |
to the institution of the search tax in the front place, | 18:50 | |
I am opposed to its continuation now. | 18:52 | |
It has very little effect on inflation | 18:55 | |
in my opinion and I think the main effect | 18:58 | |
in continuing the search tax is simply | 19:00 | |
going to be to encourage larger government spending. | 19:02 | |
But be that has it may, what happened there | 19:05 | |
was that the search tax was extended | 19:07 | |
but only until January, there remains another fight, | 19:09 | |
another battle, over whether the extension of the half, | 19:12 | |
on a halfway basis of five percent, | 19:16 | |
will be continued in the first half of 19, | 19:20 | |
of calendar 1970. | 19:24 | |
The second and the more interesting | 19:26 | |
and significant action has been the reporting out | 19:27 | |
from the ways and means comity | 19:30 | |
of a billing tax reform or tax reform bill. | 19:32 | |
Now this bill is itself a fascinating thing | 19:35 | |
as it came out on the ways and means comity. | 19:37 | |
But I think there are two things that need to be said. | 19:40 | |
And I'll discuss these in a little bit more length, | 19:42 | |
the first is, the reporting of bill out of the ways | 19:45 | |
and means comity is one thing, | 19:48 | |
even having it pass by the house is another, | 19:50 | |
what finally comes out after it's gone through the senate, | 19:53 | |
and through the conference machinery | 19:56 | |
of house and senate, may be very different. | 19:58 | |
And so I would not place any plans | 20:00 | |
if I were you, on a firm conclusion | 20:03 | |
that what came out of that ways and means comity | 20:08 | |
is what's going to come out as legislation. | 20:11 | |
I make this statement on the basis of a very long period | 20:14 | |
of watching tax legislation, I first got involved | 20:17 | |
in this back in 19 | 20:20 | |
(coughs) | 20:23 | |
41, to 43 when I was working as a, | 20:24 | |
as a economist at the treasure department | 20:28 | |
of the division of tax research | 20:32 | |
and was closely associated with the bringing | 20:33 | |
of bills to congress, and one of the great elements | 20:35 | |
of my education was to learn how much of a gap | 20:37 | |
there was between the house and the senate, | 20:41 | |
let alone between the cop and the lip. | 20:43 | |
So that many things are possible | 20:46 | |
between now and then, you may be sure | 20:47 | |
that the law bias for every special interstate | 20:49 | |
that's been affected would be working full time | 20:52 | |
on the members of the senate, on the members of the house, | 20:56 | |
and on the conference comity to make sure | 20:59 | |
that things look one way and comes out another. | 21:01 | |
That's one thing. | 21:06 | |
Now the second thing is what about the content | 21:07 | |
of the so called tax reform bill, | 21:09 | |
is it something that we should all be very happy about? | 21:11 | |
Is it a desirable change? | 21:14 | |
And here it is a very great mixture. | 21:16 | |
Many of the particular elements in reform | 21:18 | |
are reforms that have been long overdue. | 21:20 | |
There is no doubt in my mind | 21:22 | |
that percentage depletion has no, | 21:26 | |
in a while has no justification. | 21:28 | |
It's, it would be a major step to get down to 20 percent. | 21:30 | |
But there's one place where I particularly | 21:34 | |
have my fingers crossed, in fact, | 21:36 | |
I don't believe I would give anybody | 21:38 | |
a better evened odds that it will in fact | 21:40 | |
be reduced to 20 percent when the final bill comes out. | 21:42 | |
Taxes still has too many votes in both | 21:45 | |
the house and the senate. | 21:48 | |
But nonetheless, that's a move in a good direction. | 21:50 | |
The institution of a minimum tax | 21:53 | |
is on the whole a good move. | 21:55 | |
Many of these specific reforms are very good | 21:57 | |
taken separately. | 22:00 | |
Yet it's very interesting if you look at the things | 22:02 | |
as a whole, take into account the suspension | 22:04 | |
of the investment credit, as well as it, | 22:07 | |
while each of these items separately is very good, | 22:12 | |
taken as a package, the package has some very bad features. | 22:14 | |
In particular, the package increases | 22:20 | |
the extent of taxation on corporations. | 22:23 | |
And reduces the extend on individuals. | 22:26 | |
Now this is a bad thing, because you cannot tax corporations | 22:29 | |
corporations don't pay any tax, | 22:33 | |
they're not people, you must only tax people, | 22:35 | |
and the taxes pulled on corporations | 22:38 | |
are paid ultimately either by | 22:41 | |
the stock holders, or by the customers, | 22:44 | |
or by the workers. | 22:47 | |
And so you have a change in the structure of the tax, | 22:49 | |
which unfortunately, from my point of view, | 22:53 | |
is in the wrong direction. | 22:56 | |
Similarly, if you look at the change on the individual side, | 22:58 | |
what we urgently need, in my opinion, | 23:05 | |
is a lessening of the inner qualities of taxes | 23:09 | |
on different individuals, and this means | 23:13 | |
what we need is to get rates down, | 23:15 | |
but the base broaden. | 23:17 | |
What we need is something more nearly approaching | 23:19 | |
a relatively flat rate tax on income above, | 23:22 | |
a substantially higher exemption than we now have, | 23:25 | |
and with a fewer deductions. | 23:30 | |
In this area, some of that has been achieved | 23:33 | |
in the bill that's been reported | 23:36 | |
out of the ways and means comity, | 23:37 | |
in particular I think the rises in, | 23:39 | |
in exemptions or facts of exemptions are a good thing, | 23:43 | |
but they're done in a very bad way, | 23:47 | |
because they're done in a way which in effect | 23:49 | |
increases the graduation of the tax | 23:51 | |
immediately above the exemption. | 23:54 | |
But nonetheless, that's a good measure. | 23:58 | |
But for the rest, most of the attempts | 24:00 | |
to cover up loopholes turn out to be highly technical things | 24:04 | |
which it will be relatively easy to find ways around, | 24:08 | |
few of them if you examine them in detail, | 24:11 | |
get at the gut of the problem. | 24:13 | |
Few of them really broaden the base. | 24:15 | |
For example, there is an attempt | 24:19 | |
to disallow certain kinds of interest paid. | 24:22 | |
Now there's no reason at all why interest paid | 24:27 | |
should be a deduction in computing income tax, | 24:30 | |
except as it's a business expense. | 24:32 | |
But we now allow any kind of interest | 24:36 | |
to be deducted in a computing income tax. | 24:38 | |
This is one of the devices which can be most readily used | 24:40 | |
to convert ordinary income into capital games. | 24:43 | |
But now what's done on this prevision | 24:46 | |
is to reduce the extend to which interest rate | 24:49 | |
can be deducted, but in such a complicated way | 24:51 | |
that it is doubtful that very many people | 24:54 | |
will be affected by it, there may be a few individuals. | 24:59 | |
In general, this is a character of these reforms. | 25:01 | |
Instead of getting at the base, | 25:05 | |
broadening the base substantially, | 25:08 | |
what they do is try to pick out the dramatic cases | 25:11 | |
of abuses, and try to force the people | 25:14 | |
who have been using these dramatic cases of abuses | 25:19 | |
to get more complicated ways to get around it. | 25:21 | |
So here again, while many of the individual items are fine, | 25:24 | |
the result as a whole is, if anything, | 25:28 | |
to enhance the degree of graduation on the income tax. | 25:33 | |
The one feature of it that I may say | 25:38 | |
that I approve whole heartedly | 25:40 | |
is a propose reduction in some of the rates. | 25:43 | |
Indeed, as over the course of 20 odd years | 25:46 | |
I have watched the course of tax reforms, | 25:49 | |
starting from the view point of believing | 25:53 | |
that there is, it's highly desirable | 25:55 | |
to have a great deal of tax reforms. | 25:57 | |
To have a much more equitable and justice | 25:59 | |
to my gradually come to the view, | 26:02 | |
that there is only one way you're going | 26:04 | |
to get effective tax reform and that's | 26:05 | |
by getting tax reductions. | 26:07 | |
That what we need is lower rates, | 26:09 | |
and that would be the most effective single reform | 26:11 | |
that we can have. | 26:14 | |
Interviewer | Thank you very much professor Friedman. | 26:15 |
Remember subscribers, if you have any questions | 26:18 | |
or comments for topics you would like to hear | 26:20 | |
discussed in this series, please send them | 26:23 | |
to Instructional Dynamics Incorporated, | 26:25 | |
166, E Superior Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 26:28 | |
Doctor Friedman will be visiting | 26:35 | |
with you again in two weeks. | 26:37 |
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