Courses

Mark Perry

Professor

University of Michigan, Flint

Mark J. Perry is concurrently a scholar at AEI and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus. He is best known as the creator and editor of the popular economics blog Carpe Diem. At AEI, Perry writes about economic and financial issues for American.com and the AEIdeas blog.

Blog Posts

New IRS data show that 71% of US taxpayers who make it into the ‘Top 400’ are there for only a single year

January 24, 2017
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Poverty & Inequality

The IRS recently released its annual report on the 400 US taxpayers with the highest adjusted gross incomes (AGI) from 1992 to 2014, and the table above shows the frequency of individual taxpayers appearing in the Top 400 (Table 4 in the IRS report). Of the 9,200 total tax returns filed in the 23 years from 1992 to 2014 for the 400 highest earners in each year, there were 4,584 unique, individual taxpayers in the Top 400 over those 23 years, since some taxpayers were in the Top 400 group in more than one year. The new IRS data show that: 1. Of the group of 4,584 unique top earners from 1992-2014,

Importers are exporters, exporters are importers. Slapping tariffs on imports would hurt our most competitive firms

January 22, 2017
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Free Markets and Capitalism

In today’s globally connected world with dynamic global supply chains for raw materials and inputs, and global marketplaces for final sales, it’s an economic fact of the modern world economy that: a) exporters are importers and b) importers are exporters. US firms buy inputs in a global marketplace that includes sourcing some of those inputs as imports from foreign suppliers, and then those same firms often export and sell their finished goods in dozens, if not hundreds of countries.  For example, according to The Economist, every $100 of goods we import from Mexico contains $40 of American

An economic analysis of protectionism clearly shows that Trump’s tariffs would make us poorer, not greater

December 17, 2016
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Free Markets and Capitalism

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the new government industrial policy of threatening to penalize U.S. manufacturers that move production and jobs overseas by imposing 30-40% tariffs on the American customers of those companies if their goods return to the U.S. as imports. There’s also a lot of talk about imposing punitive tariffs in general on Americans who purchase goods from Mexico, Japan and China, because according to president-elect Trump, those countries are “absolutely crushing and killing us” on trade as they completely “rip us off, steal our jobs and then laugh at us.” The

Team Trump is paying off special interests before he even takes office

December 3, 2016
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Lobbying & Special Interests

I’ve taken the liberty of making some edits to today’s CNN Money article “Carrier: Trump gave us state ‘incentives’ to save jobs” to more broadly reflect the viewpoints of: a) Indiana taxpayers and b) US consumers, and also to highlight the fact that Team Trump is already engaged in crony capitalism, legal plunder, and dishing out generous corporate welfare payments using taxpayer money before they are even in office! “Carrier: Trump gave us state ‘incentives’ corporate welfare financed by Indiana taxpayers to save jobs that was too generous to turn down” Carrier