When I was tagged earlier this week to share 7 things about myself, I received a comment from The Weakonomist. He was the one who had tagged My Life ROI, and thus is indirectly to blame for me writing that column. Or, if you prefer, he deserves the credit for inspiring me.
I decided to browse his blog after he made his comment, and I’ve been impressed by what I see. He seems to be an interesting blogger, covering some thought-provoking topics in a fair, even-handed manner. Here are some of his posts from the last few weeks that got me thinking:
7 Things You Didn’t Know About The Weakonomist – Probably as good a place as any to start, since this is the post that (indirectly) got me to start reading the Weakonomist. As always with these types of lists, there’s plenty of interesting stuff; he likes flip flops, hates scray movies, and he can play three musical instruments. (Which ones, you ask? Read the post to find out!)
A Simplified Story of Our Economic Crisis – A guest post by the Weakonomist on SimpleMom.net, detailing how we found ourselves in our economic conundrum. A simple, succinct explanation, certainly clearer than many of the official renditions I’ve read. A good read, especially if you keep asking yourself, ‘What Happened?’, without gettingmany clear answers, here would be a good place to look.
How the Federal Government Prints Money – And no, it’s not by putting special ink on special paper and chopping into wallet sized slivers. (Although, it does that, too.) Here, we’re talking about ‘capital creation’, how the government, in the form of the Federal Reserve, can inject additional capital into the system (or remove it, as the situation warrants). It’s not clandestine, it’s not illegal, and it’s necessary for the economy to function as it does (however well that might be, at the moment). It’s an interesting read; given how much the Federal Reserve has been in the news lately (Look for any story that refers to ‘The Fed’), it’s important to know what it does.
Tax Week – The Weakonomist spent an entire week covering different methods of taxation, including the income tax, the ‘Fair Tax’, and the Value Added Tax (VAT), which I’ll admit I didn’t really understand before reading this post. He also concluded that the Fair Tax (or the National Sales Tax, if we use a more descriptive name) would be the best course of action.
I disagree. I could probably write an entire post (or even an entire week of posts) on how I would structure a tax system if I were in charge, but I think that the best possible tax system would be a hybrid, combining a national sales tax (lower than the Fair Tax mandates) with a progress income tax that has a high deductible, allowing lower income people (those making below $30,000 or so) to only pay the sales tax. This would allow us to make the system more progressive, while avoiding the possibility of a ‘negative tax’ for the lower earners (where they would receive more from the Fair Tax ‘prebate’ than they pay in taxes). But that’s just armchair policy making.
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the weakonomist
on April 5 2009
Wow! Thanks for the coverage. If you really want to see how controversial the fair tax is, just look at all the comments the post received.
Roger
on April 5 2009
You’re welcome, Weakonomist. I did look at the fair tax post; forty-one comments? I’m amazed at just how much discussion you inspired.