Economist and author Phil Magness debunks a recent 'New York Times' piece and shoddy academic work about the rich and their taxes.

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Text and links to sources available here: https://reason.com/podcast/2024/05/16...

How much do billionaires really pay in taxes?

"Today, the superrich control a greater share of America's wealth than during the Gilded Age of Carnegies and Rockefellers," said Gabriel Zucman in a recent New York Times opinion piece entitled, "It's Time to Tax the Billionaires."

Zucman is an economist at the Paris School of Economics and the University of California, Berkeley, and a frequent collaborator with superstar economist Thomas Piketty, author of the extremely influential book on wealth inequality, Capital in the TwentyFirst Century.

But today's guest, Phil Magness—an economic historian, author, and the David J. Theroux Chair in Political Economy at the Independent Institute—says the work of Piketty and his circle of inequalityobsessed colleagues is deeply flawed and sometimes outright deceptive. He points out that billionaires do pay taxes…a lot of taxes. And the inequality literature is riddled with errors and bad statistics.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Just Asking Questions: Billionaires and Taxes
01:38 Unpacking the Misleading Tax Rate Graphs
06:38 The Political Motivations Behind Misleading Tax Narratives
15:39 Analyzing the Impact of Tax Credits on LowerIncome Earners
22:32 The Real Tax Burden: A Closer Look at Wealthy Americans' Contributions
27:05 Countering Piketty's Inequality Data With Accurate Accounting
34:58 The Practical Problems With a Wealth Tax
40:04 Piketty's Inequality Narrative and Its Flaws
48:50 Global Financial Transparency and Taxation Proposals
54:40 The Moral and Economic Case Against High Taxation
57:48 Listener Q&A: Defending the Show's Title