the best taxes are the ones that don't require a tax-enforcement gestapo.

Are you at a point where you would even consider a consumption tax or are you throwing this point into the mix thinking it will dismiss the idea of a consumption tax? If you are serious we can seriously address the issues.

But being serious, in my opinion, would require some acknowledgment that there are problems with our current system of taxation. If you think there are problems with our current system of taxation what do you think those problems are? Is it simply that the "rich" are not being taxed enough?

my problems with the current tax system have more to do with the way the tax money is wasted and less to do with how it's collected. shifting from an income tax model to a consumption tax model wouldn't change the waste. It also wouldn't balance anything out, as the wealthy people who job the system now would figure out how to job the new system, leaving the middle and lower class holding the bag (as usual)

The best way to set up a tax system is one that is nondistortionary, that doesn't excessively affect incentives, is minimally intrusive on people's daily lives and thus their freedom, provides a fair amount of certainty of collection, is broadly based and transparent.

To get there would require a combination of a number of relatively low-rate imposts on diverse things - part income, part consumption, part gains, part transations. It'll never be accepted.

If it's necessary to explain that the stock and real estate markets under Clinton were a house of cards (which began to crumble BEFORE Bush), that the Dems blocked reform of Fannie and Freddie, and that the economy was fine during the SIX years the Republicans controlled Congress, there's no point in further discussion.

Of course, the "fine" economy of those 6 years was merely the bubble that eventually burst. I'm not assigning blame to any party here, especially because in terms of economic policy they've been very similar over the last 3 decades, but it seems to me that there must be some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance going on to treat the bubble burst as a completely unrelated matter to the creation of the bubble itself, especially when you point out that a similar situation under Clinton was also part of a speculative bubble.

Obama and his supporters are a bunch of drama queens. In order for Obama to come across as the savior, he had to make it appear as if we were near the biggest economic catastrophe in the history of the nation. "Bubbles" form and burst all the time, there are economic winners and losers all the time, for everyone who paid too much for a house another person got an economic windfall. Real money and real wealth just doesn't disappear. Our economy goes through cycles, it is natural, and what we are learning is that government can not "manage" our economy.

Talk about cliches.

Yeah, what's up with that?

Wall Street bonuses are in the news today. As I listen to the "talking heads" on the subject I can not help but be amazed about why so many "smart" people ignore the obvious.

The bonuses being paid clearly gives evidence that the financial sector was not on the brink of catastrophe.

The bailouts simply gave the financial sector an easy way out of a difficult situation and allowed them to profit from it. Rather than the financial sector going to the private market to enhance their capital at private market rates, they got "free" money from the government. Rather than the financial sector selling assets at "fire sale" prices, the government stepped in and saved them from that cost. The speed in which the bailout money was returned indicates the money may not have been needed.

Bad firms who made bad decisions should have been allowed to fail.