Tax laws are designed to make us all better off. But there is a famous saying in business: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.” Professor Marc Fleurbaey understands the profound challenges hidden within that simple statement. If policymakers can’t measure the potential impact of tax policies, how can they make better laws? Fleurbaey explores how we can evaluate how well off we are so that we can increase not just income and wealth, but also do better to quantify aspects of our society such as health and social relations.  

Fleurbaey explains how optimal tax theory, an imperfect tool policymakers use to write our tax laws, can be improved to address similar flaws in the ways we fail to measure what really matters. He also describes the lessons Rawls can teach us about creating tax laws that reflect society’s values more accurately than merely maximizing GDP. The conversation wraps up with a discussion of a surprising carbon tax proposal from conservative economists and politicians that aims to protect both the environment and vulnerable individuals.

Fleurbaey tackles a pencil question about a New Jersey taxpayer named Zarin.

The Tax Maven

[email protected] (Marc Fleurbaey, Steven Dean)

If You Can't Measure It, How Can You Improve It? (Marc Fleurbaey)

NOV 24, 202023 MIN
The Tax Maven

If You Can't Measure It, How Can You Improve It? (Marc Fleurbaey)

NOV 24, 202023 MIN

Description

Marc Fleurbaey is the Research Director of the National Center for Scientific Research at the Paris School of Economics. He is the author of Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare (2008), a co-author of Beyond GDP (with Didier Blanchet, 2013), A Theory of Fairness and Social Welfare (with François Maniquet, 2011), and the coeditor of several books, including Justice, Political Liberalism, and Utilitarianism: Themes from Harsanyi and Rawls (with Maurice Salles and John Weymark, 2008) and the Oxford Handbook of Well-Being and Public Policy (with Matthew Adler, 2016). His research on normative and public economics and theories of distributive justice has focused in particular on the analysis of equality of opportunity, risk, redistributive taxation, climate policy, and on seeking solutions to famous impossibilities of social choice theory.   

Our student quote is read by Rita Halabi. 

Resources

  1. Marc Fleurbaey’s bio and website
  2. Daniel Shaviro’s blog post about Pratt’s recent visit to the NYU Tax Policy Colloquium
  3. Do You Believe in Democracy or in Equality — or Both?
  4. Beyond GDP: The Quest for a Measure of Social Welfare
  5. To learn more about Zarin, read Daniel Shaviro, “The Man Who Lost Too Much: Zarin v. Commissioner and the Measurement of Taxable Consumption”, 45 Tax L. Rev. 215 (1990)
  6. The student quote comes from Peracchi v. Commissioner, 143 F.3d 487 (9th Cir. 1998).