I’m understandably fond of my video exposing the flaws of Keynesian stimulus theory, but I think my former intern has an excellent contribution to the debate with this new 5-minute mini-documentary.

The main insight of the mini-documentary is that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) only measures how national output is allocated between consumption, investment, and government. That’s useful information in many ways, but if we want more output, we should focus on Gross Domestic Income (GDI), which measures how national income is earned.

Focusing on GDI hopefully would lead lawmakers to consider ways of boosting employee compensation, corporate profits, small business income, and other components of national income. Focusing on GDP, by contrast, is misguided since any effort to boost consumption generally leads to less investment. This is why Keynesian policies only redistribute national income, but don’t boost overall output.

You may recognize Hiwa. She narrated a very popular video earlier this year on the nightmare of income-tax complexity.

The Consumer Spending Fallacy behind Keynesian Economics is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog

From the Bureau of Economic Analysis news release of May 29:

Profits from current production (corporate profits with inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments) increased $42.6 billion in the first quarter. . . Taxes on corporate income increased $31.6 billion. . . [therefore] profits after tax . . . increased $11.1 billion.

In other words, taxes extracted 74.2% of any added (marginal) corporate earnings, leaving only scraps for stockholder.

Companies that lost money, on the other hand, were often bailed out and/or nationalized.

Why bother even trying to maximize profits or minimize losses?

Marginal Tax on Corporate Profits was 74.2% in the 1st Quarter is a post from Cato @ Liberty - Cato Institute Blog