Andy Brett

Happy Tax Day! In light of the occasion, I thought I’d repost something from before, since none of the old posts are available, which raises another question: should I import all of the old posts by hand? Feel free to share your thoughts on whether clicking through to LiveJournal or the old site is too much of a hassle. Here’s the (shortened) March 9th post:

Alan Greenspan discussed (here, here, and to a lesser extent here, although that article misses the point, I think) the possibility of a consumption tax in some incarnation. This is mildly interesting to me because if it gets passed anytime soon it could vastly change how much I have to send to Uncle Sam.&nbsp_place_holder; In general, and without getting into my personal finances, I would probably be better off under a consumption tax of some kind, although that seems counterintuitive…anyway, I’ll be watching you, Alan.

(End of March 9th post)

While on the subject of taxes, the estate tax, aka the death tax, has been in the news as well, so I thought I’d mention that. While I like the idea of everyone starting off with a level playing field, there is bound to be a disincentive to earn if you think it’s all going to get taxed away instead of left to your progeny, and a surprisingly high number of Americans do think that the estate tax will affect them. Whether this is the eternal optimism or misinformation, I don’t know.