Depuis quelques jours, les médias (notamment Radio-Canada), mènent une campagne pour dénoncer le manque de soutien du gouvernement fédéral envers la recherche et le développement. Subventionner la R&D, est-ce un choix rentable pour un gouvernement ? L'économiste Austan Goolsbee a répondu à cette question par la négative:
 |
— |
« Conventional wisdom holds that the social rate of return to R&D significantly exceeds the private rate of return and, therefore, R&D should be subsidized. In the U.S., the government has directly funded a large fraction of total R&D spending. This paper shows that there is a serious problem with such government efforts to increase inventive activity. The majority of R&D spending is actually just salary payments for R&D workers. Their labor supply, however, is quite inelastic so when the government funds R&D, a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages. Using CPS data on wages of scientific personnel, this paper shows that government R&D spending raises wages significantly, particularly for scientists related to defense such as physicists and aeronautical engineers. Because of the higher wages, conventional estimates of the effectiveness of R&D policy may be 30 to 50% too high. The results also imply that by altering the wages of scientists and engineers even for firms not receiving federal support, government funding directly crowds out private inventive activity. » |
N.B. Austan Goolsbee est un conseiller économique très proche de Barack Obama. Il est aussi le directeur/économiste en chef du "President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board".
Voici comment a évolué le niveau de taxation* des ménages canadiens depuis 1961:
IPC: Indice des Prix à la Consommation
Besoins essentiels: logis, nourriture, vêtements
En 1961, les Canadiens consacraient en moyenne 33,5% de leurs revenus pour payer les taxes exigées par les différents paliers de gouvernement. En 2008, cette proportion est passée à 43,9%.
L'impôt sur le revenu représente seulement 33% des revenus des gouvernements. Le reste, 67%, provient de la taxation.
En 1961, les Canadiens consacraient 56,5% de leurs revenus pour satisfaire à leurs besoins essentiels contre 33,5% pour payer les différentes taxes. En 2008, 35,7% du revenu était affecté aux besoins essentiels contre 43,9% qui s'est retrouvé dans les poches des gouvernements sous forme de taxes.
Les taxes représentent la dépense la plus élevée des ménages canadiens.
*Inclus toutes les taxes à tous les niveaux de gouvernement
Sources:
/ 
Taxes versus the Necessities of Life / Taux et statistiques
|
- |
Worries Rise on the Size of U.S. Debt The nation’s debt clock is ticking faster than ever — and Wall Street is getting worried. As the Obama administration racks up an unprecedented spending bill for bank bailouts, Detroit rescues, health care overhauls and stimulus plans, the bond market is starting to push up the cost of trillions of dollars in borrowing for the government. Last week, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes rose to its highest level since November, briefly touching 3.17 percent, a sign that investors are demanding larger returns on the masses of United States debt being issued to finance an economic recovery. That is why the Federal Reserve announced an extraordinary policy this year to buy back existing long-term debt — $300 billion over six months — to drive down yields. The strategy worked for a while, but now the impact of that decision appears to be wearing off as long-term interest rates tickup again. To calm nerves and fill the deficit hole, the government is getting creative. The Treasury is ramping up its auction calendar, holding more frequent sales of government debt and selling the debt in expanded amounts. It is now holding sales of its 30-year bond each month, up from four times annually. It is also resuscitating previously discontinued bonds, such as the seven-year note and the three-year note, to try to mop up any available money all along the yield curve. There is even talk of issuing billions of dollars of a new 50-year bond, though the idea has not won official approval. |
