The Greedy Hand

The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy and What to Do About it."
by Amity Shlaes, of the Wall Street Journal

I give this book 5 stars for explaining "How taxes drive Americans Crazy" and only half a star for "What to do about it". Contrasting the guiding "invisible hand" present in free market economics that leads to enrichment and prosperity for everyone (more of course to the more successful capitalists) to the "greedy hand" of the U.S. taxman, Shlaes delves into a historical explanation of U.S. tax code previously uknown to me. The result of countless lobbyists and voting blocs that now seems to permeate daily decisions in a very unamerican kind of way. She explains the tax situations we now find for sales tax and shopping, corporate vs business taxes, the marriage penalty (married filing singly is a sham), the mortgage deduction, school equivalency laws and the disincentive they now have for communities, and how retirees get boxed into low incomes or the taxman wins again.

This was a depressing book. It makes me realize you cannot win unless you find a business that you control and make it provide for you long term. No one else is going to be there.

Medicare and Social Security have scheduled insolvency problems beyond what the shifting and burgeoning elderly population will be able to solve, in fact, they will demand more and make it worse as the Boomers saw their parents receive more than they put in -- they will want more also. It is the Charles Ponzi Scheme of our inter-generation.

The automatic withholding process created in 1943 gave the taxman an unlimited access to our pocketbooks, and there is nothing the masses can do about it. Again, depressing. The only comments she had on tax efficiency is paying the taxman or paying for your efficiency through tax professional assistance. The CPA's and EA's depend on the taxman for their livelihood (the more complicated the tax code the better for them!), but a tax attorney can assist if tax court or tax advice is needed beyond what a CPA can do.