Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Appearance today on Mike Huckabee's radio show

I am scheduled to speak with Governor Mike Huckabee on his radio show today, at 12:32 EST, for up to fifteen minutes.  The show is carried nationwide on Cumulus Media Networks, and a link to it is available here.

The topic will be tax havens for the super-rich, with particular reference to the recently issued report by the Tax Justice Network suggesting that $21 trillion to $32 trillion of unreported private financial wealth from around the world is parked in tax havens.

UPDATE: That was fun.  I found Huckabee quite engaging and open-minded to talk with.  He even let me make a few points that I am always glad to get to communicate to larger audiences.  (As talk show hosts go, definitely a listener rather than a ranter.)  One is that progressivity and the choice of tax base (income vs. consumption) are different issues.  He mentioned the FAIR tax, and said he likes it but maybe I don't.  I replied that I have two objections to it, one being its use of a retail sales tax rather than a VAT methodology to implement consumption taxation, which I called really the same thing except that the VAT is easier to enforce, and the other being the rate structure.  Then he asked a follow-up and I was able to briefly describe the consumed income tax and the David Bradford X-tax (modifying the flat tax) as available progressive consumption tax vehicles.  Romney came up very briefly at the end, but was by no means the focus.

FURTHER UPDATE: You can download the soundfile here.

2 comments:

MaxSpeak said...

Is there a podcast or something of this?

Daniel Shaviro said...

I think just the soundfile I posted. I was able to play it on my computer.