• March 28, 2017

Angst in America, Part 2: Men Without Work

I have been promising a review of Nicholas Eberstadt’s very important book, Men Without Work: America’s Invisible Crisis. The book is relatively short at 216 pages, but it is packed with meaty facts and insights. One of the reasons I seldom read an actual physical book anymore is because I can highlight text and make notes in my Kindle app on my iPad and then find those notes and highlighted sections on my Amazon page for later review. I actually highlighted 36 pages with 22,000 words from this...

• March 19, 2017

Angst in America, Part 1: Aimless Men

“America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.”

– Harry S. Truman

“Unemployment is a weapon of mass destruction.”

– Dennis Kucinich

“Ever since 2000, basic indicators have offered oddly inconsistent readings on America’s economic performance and prospects. It is curious and highly uncharacteristic to find such measures so very far out of alignment with one another. We are witnessing an ominous and growing...

• March 7, 2017

Tax Reform: The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly—Part Five

“A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you, it is tax reform”

– Russell B. Long

“Corporate tax reform is nice in theory but tough in practice.”

– Andrew Ross Sorkin

“I hold it that a little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people, which have produced them. An observation of this truth should...

• March 1, 2017

Tax Reform: The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly—Part Four

“The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.”

– Jared Diamond, Collapse, 2005

Tax reform means, “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me. Tax that fellow behind the tree.”

– Russell B. Long, Democratic Senator from Louisiana, longtime chairman of the Senate Finance Committee (and a strong believer in capitalism who was a champion of tax breaks for businesses)...