Suchergebnisse

Intro -- Cover -- Also by Grant Buday -- Title -- Dedication -- Chapter One Victoria, British Columbia -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three -- Chapter Four -- Chapter Five -- Chapter Six -- Chapter Seven -- Chapter Eight -- Chapter Nine -- Chapter Ten -- Chapter Eleven -- Chapter Twelve -- Chapter Thirteen -- Chapter Fourteen -- Chapter Fifteen -- Chapter Sixteen -- Chapter Seventeen -- Chapter Eighteen -- Chapter Nineteen -- Chapter Twenty -- About the Author -- Copyright -- Back Cover.

The flat tax idea has given rise to an ongoing debate both in academics and politics. Further on, it has recently been very successful, especially in transition countries in Eastern Europe. Although flat taxes are high on the political agenda in various Western European countries, they have not been implemented in these grown-up welfare states. The introduction of a flat tax with a basic tax allowance, a low uniform marginal tax rate, and a broad tax base as a reform of existing tax systems is supposed to have several advantages. Most importantly, positive effects on employment and GDP as well as reduced tax distortions are expected. In addition, flat tax reforms are thought to reduce administration and compliance costs as well as incentives for tax avoidance or evasion. However, the distributional effects seem to prevent a flat tax adoption in democracies with a well-established middle class. The motivation of this book is to identify hereby the driving forces behind the economic effects of a flat tax reform. There are two dimensions to be considered that are mutually interdependent: the details of the reform and the environment of its implementation. First, the flat tax design (e.g. parameters such as marginal rate and allowance, tax base simplification or cash flow corporate taxation) plays an important role for the results. Second, the results crucially depend on the country under observation. The underlying income distribution and demographic structure as well as the institutional background (i.e. the tax benefit system, welfare state) are decisive for the outcome of such a reform. The present book contributes to the existing literature in various ways. First, we provide a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art in simulation modelling for the ex-ante analysis of tax reform proposals. Second, we analyse and compare different types of welfare states and tax benefit systems especially with respect to the distribution and redistribution of income to explain differing results across countries. Third, we conduct an extensive analysis of the key sources of the economic outcomes of flat tax reforms. For this purpose, the extended methodology of simulation analysis is applied to analyse different hypothetical flat tax scenarios and the impact of their key elements (tax base simplification, marginal tax rate and basic allowance) on equity and efficiency for Germany and the other EU-15 countries in a common microeconometric framework. The analysis differs from the existing literature mainly by analysing the distributional effects as well as the effects on welfare and employment in a uniform simulation model and by applying a systematic approach for choosing the flat tax parameters. As stated above, the aim of this book is to identify the conditions which mainly influence the economic effects of a flat tax reform. The setup of this analysis is as follows. Chapter 2 introduces the methodology. Chapter 3 analyses the relevance of the flat tax design. In chapter 4, the European countries are compared regarding their institutional background and the underlying income distribution. In chapter 5, the role of these country specific aspects and their impact for possible flat tax reforms is investigated. Chapter 6 draws conclusions. At last, what can be learnt from our analysis is that the flatness of the tax schedule itself is not a key feature of the economic success of a tax reform. Other elements (simplification, increased compliance, corporate taxation) play a more important role. However, a flat tax reform can indeed overcome the fundamental equity efficiency trade-off. This is only true in two specific cases: first, for Mediterranean countries with highly polarised income distributions, and second, for Germany in the long-run if accounting for general equilibrium effects. Therefore, due to its adverse short-term distributional effects, the chances that the flat tax idea will invade the grown-up democracies of Western Europe are rather low. However, a further movement towards lower (marginal) tax rates with broader and simpler tax bases shall be observed. This, however, could eventually lead to tax benefit systems moving closer to linearity, albeit without an actual flat tax schedule.

Globalization became more and more prominent during the last decades. There is no way to argue that globalization led to more interconnected economies, facilitating the communication and the collaboration around the world. But where is this going? Doesglobalization mean uniformity or diversity? As the world begins to resemble more, the people are trying to distinguish between them more, which can exacerbate nationalistic feeling. Friedman argues that globalization made the world smaller and flatter, allowing all countries to take chance of the available opportunities equally. But is this really true? Although politic and cultural factors can stand in front of a really flat world, what is the key for Chinese and Indian success and which are theirs perspectives?

This open access book looks at the dramatic history of ovariotomy, an operation to remove ovarian tumours first practiced in the early nineteenth century. Bold and daring, surgeons who performed it claimed to be initiating a new era of surgery by opening the abdomen. Ovariotomy soon occupied a complex position within medicine and society, as an operation which symbolised surgical progress, while also remaining at the boundaries of ethical acceptability. This book traces the operation's innovation, from its roots in eighteenth-century pathology, through the denouncement of those who performed it as 'belly-rippers', to its rapid uptake in the 1880s, when ovariotomists were accused of over-operating. Throughout the century, the operation was never a hair's breadth from controversy.

Is addiction a disease, a sin, a sign of hypersensitivity, a personal failing, or a unique resource for the creative mind? However it is defined, addiction can have devastating consequences, often shattering lives, sundering families, causing impoverishment, and even triggering suicide. Yet it can also be a source of inspiration. In these frank essays, leading American and Canadian writers explore their surprisingly diverse personal experiences with this complex phenomenon, candidly recounting what happened when alcohol, heroin, smoking, food, gambling, or sex — sometimes in combination — took