It's out! The @EU_Commission winter economic forecast for 2021 📊
🇪🇸 +5.6% GDP
🇫🇷 +5.5% GDP
🇭🇷 +5.6% GDP
🇸🇮 +4.7% GDP
🇲🇹 +4.5% GDP
🇵🇹 +4.1% GDP
🇸🇰 +4.0% GDP
🇭🇺 +4.0% GDP
🇧🇪 +3.9% GDP
🇷🇴 +3.8% GDP
💶 +3.8% GDP
🇪🇺 +3.7% GDP
🇬🇷 +3.5% GDP
🇱🇻 +3.5% GDP
🇮🇪 +3.4% GDP
🇮🇹 +3.2% GDP

Thread: Why Kenya and other countries are introducing Digital Taxes? Why now?

Now,the current tax laws & international tax framework (which dates back to the 1920s) was designed at a time when businesses were largely brick-and-mortar (physical stores).Then, it was unimagineable for a biz to operate in another country without some form of physical presence

Thus, in most countries, for a business to be pay corporate tax it has to have some form of nexus there (e.g. Kenya). Either it's registered here, or it's managed from here or it has what we call a permanent establishment (also implies some form of physical presence)

Fast forward to today, there are numerous companies that are able to operate in multiple countries without having any physical presence in those countries. Consider social media platforms or streaming services, with a device, connection & subscription you can access their service

...and they don't have to have any physical office or employees etc in Kenya for them to deliver the service to you. I mentioned above that to be subject to corporate tax here, a company would have to have some form of nexus here in Kenya, these companies, don't.

Window dressing: : the act or an instance of making something appear deceptively attractive or favorable

Tens of thousands of of businesses shut down, economy in shambles, windows showing abandoned stores and restaurant are staring at you ugly when you are passing by. Now the same leftists responsible for this disaster think they found a solution to fix the ugliness they created.

This is the solution our Dem leaders have chosen to remedy the scars they created and the livelihoods they destroyed: apply some make-up. Make art installations in the windows of the abandoned stores and restaurants. Apply propaganda lipstick on the leftist pig and call it "art"

God forbid our leftist betters who run our cities would have thought of stopping this closure madness and helping people go back to work, re-opening stores and restaurants. That's not what they want. They want you to stay at home, afraid and dependent on their hand-outs.

In Socialist Romania during the years of the Ceausescu regime they did pretty much the same thing, only they didn't call it "art". The grocery stores and butcher shops were always empty, there was no food anywhere other that on the black market.

Long rant: So earlier today, I got into a spat over the $15 minimum wage with @JamesSurowiecki and @noamscheiber. Because this disagreement over whether there is a mechanical relationship between raising wages and less jobs is incredibly consequential, I wanted to say more.

The problem with (and for) #SiliconValley is their lack of #entrepreneurship. Yes, really: they're bad at being entrepreneurs, at providing the entrepreneurial function in the economy. To put it differently, they are technology driven in their profit-seeking but not consumer

driven. The difference is monumental both for the economy and the companies, and this is why they're failing. No, failing doesn't mean they are necessarily losing money, but that their profits are short-term and that they are undermining their own market positions. The business

they are in is not sustainable. This goes way beyond the selling of eyeballs, which is the focus of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others. As it's often said, if you are not the paying for the product you *are* the product. Facebook is selling you, and your future purchases, to

their advertisers. The service the company provides is to lure you in, keep you busy, and make sure you don't leave while they feed you ads and collect data on who you are. It's the same with Google's search, maps, etc. But my point is not this, but that the focus by these

technology companies, more broadly, is unentrepreneurial--that they have lost sight of the consumer and, therefore, the real value they facilitate. They're not entrepreneurial. This, in turn, explains their behavior in everything from attempting to steer, direct, if not censor

My friend @itsafronomics wanted to know the breakdown of student debt by income, so I pulled data from the SCF.

Student debt is more concentrated amongst high earners, but disproportionately amongst Black borrowers. The plot below plots the average within Income Quartiles.
1/n

But those are the averages. What's the share that's above 10k? (This is the Biden current cutoff for debt forgiveness, so a useful benchmark).

For comparison, 20% of white Americans have student debt, and 31% of Black Americans.

Let's contrast that with say, above 20k. I was surprised at how high the share remains.

When we get to 50k of student debt, or more, we see it's only about 5% of the US, and around 8% of Black Americans. Strikingly, it's a huge share of high income Black Americans (this is a known fact in the education literature, I believe).

So what does this look like put together? Overall, we see a higher share of Americans with debt above 10k, and 20k. We would cover a decent amount with 10k, but miss Black Americans especially.