Archive for March 8th, 2012|Daily archive page
A visual map of human kind’s space exploration.
A visual map of human kind’s space exploration.
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The Benefit and The Burden: American Tax Reform-Why We Need It and What It Will Take
author: Bruce Bartlett
name: Paul
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2012
rating: 3
read at: 2012/03/07
date added: 2012/03/07
shelves: non-fiction
review:
Some things I liked about Bruce Bartlett‘s book about tax reform are as follows:
1. The writing is clipped, precise and unadorned. For a book about, of all things, taxes, this is a welcome decision and it works to have the book broken down into concise chapters that stick to a topic, cover the material and then move on. Bartlett doesn’t waste time trying to over-explain everything, relying on the reading comprehension of the reader to draw the necessary conclusions.
2. Bartlett takes a refreshingly moderate stance on the political aspects inherent in conversations about taxation. Bartlett worked for the Regan and Bush I administrations, but his views aren’t Glen Beck riot conservatism, he just happens to be somewhat Republican-leaning. The faults he finds with the resistance to tax reform are widely spread and he’s not afraid to lay the blame wherever it is found. One gets the sense that if all contentious topics in politics could be discussed in this manner, there might be a chance for legitimate, effective, reasoned change in this country.
3. The book is extensively researched, exhaustively referenced, and full of supporting evidence for the opinions and presented facts.
Now, some things I didn’t care for about The Benefit And The Burden:
1. The no-nonsense prose on display here is almost so bare as to be challenging to muddle through. The salvation is the brevity of each point, but my own ignorance of economics and tax principles really made this a trying book at times. This isn’t really a fault with Bartlett in and of itself, but for anyone hoping to have a gentle introduction into modern tax theory and economic principles, start somewhere else because Bartlett doesn’t have time to carry you along.
The way that this manifests as a negative in the book is that it’s sometimes hard to decipher who the target audience for the book is. I presume economists are perfectly aware of all this information and a piece directed at them could have been shorthanded all the way into an essay. Know-nothing laypeople like myself may find the book to be a bit insider-y, presuming basic familiarity with a lot of the core concepts which can make a lot of the book seem foreign and unfathomable. The best I can figure is that this book is for highly educated people with a decent background in economics, to whom this may be simply an extended persuasive op-ed, but considering the inflammatory state of national politics at the moment, it’s hard to think that the narrow band of moderate academics make up a sufficient demographic for a viable book sales projection.
2. The brief chapters and extensive “Additional Reading” sections make the book feel a bit like an annotated bibliography rather than a complete work in itself. It’s sort of cheap to praise a book for being well-referenced and also to complain that the book relies on these references for support, I know, but I did feel that there was the potential for a middle ground where some additional detail was included (perhaps more quoted source material?) to make the book feel more stand-alone without artificially inflating the presentation.
Overall, I felt that Bartlett was very persuasive. The Benefit And The Burden is essentially an argument for Value Added Taxes (VATs) which are essentially labor taxes that are paid and credited through the production chain until the burden falls on the consumer (like a layered sales tax at the federal level). Bartlett lays out how current taxes work, explains why tax increases are going to be necessary in the near future and then describes why VATs are the best option for managing the necessary tax hikes to avoid deficit fallouts like inflation and weakened US economies. Bartlett is also pretty fair to detractors of VATs as he devotes plenty of time to defining alternate methods and highlighting some of the serious (or not so serious) arguments against VATs.
I wouldn’t say I necessarily recommend the book to just anyone, but for people who want a decent overview of the current economic state and the potential issues that could result from it, and then want a well-thought-out proposed solution to those problems, this is a good place to start.