Taxocracy

Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life won’t help you lower your tax bill, but it will help you understand how politicians use taxes to influence our lives, how taxes harm the economy, and why we need a simpler tax system. Did you ever wonder why the costs of health care, housing, and college tuition keep going up? Or how your neighbor could afford that fancy electric car? Or why there are so many hard seltzers on the market? Your first guess might not be “taxes,” but they play a big role. We live in a world ruled by taxes—a taxocracy. History is full of misguided tax policies that led to “see-through” buildings, tax-free attics, three-wheeled cars, women in children’s clothing, and baked chips to go along with our hard seltzer. Written by former Tax Foundation CEO Scott Hodge, Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life uses amusing lessons from past tax policies gone wrong to explore how the US tax code caused serious consequences, affecting how we get our health insurance, the price of a college education, what car we buy, where we bank, and, in some cases, even when we die. Taxocracy outlines economic principles for designing a tax code that doesn’t rule our daily lives—a tax code that promotes economic growth, free-enterprise, and takes the politics out of tax policy.

A media expert and network commentator examines the welter of misinformation--generated by politicians and the media alike--that surrounds political campaigns.

"The most important book at the borderland of psychology and politics that I have ever read."—Martin E. P. Seligman, Zellerbach Family Professor of Psychology at that University of Pennsylvania and author of Learned Optimism Why are we devastated by a word of criticism even when it’s mixed with lavish praise? Because our brains are wired to focus on the bad. This negativity effect explains things great and small: why countries blunder into disastrous wars, why couples divorce, why people flub job interviews, how schools fail students, why football coaches stupidly punt on fourth down. All day long, the power of bad governs people’s moods, drives marketing campaigns, and dominates news and politics. Eminent social scientist Roy F. Baumeister stumbled unexpectedly upon this fundamental aspect of human nature. To find out why financial losses mattered more to people than financial gains, Baumeister looked for situations in which good events made a bigger impact than bad ones. But his team couldn’t find any. Their research showed that bad is relentlessly stronger than good, and their paper has become one of the most-cited in the scientific literature. Our brain’s negativity bias makes evolutionary sense because it kept our ancestors alert to fatal dangers, but it distorts our perspective in today’s media environment. The steady barrage of bad news and crisismongering makes us feel helpless and leaves us needlessly fearful and angry. We ignore our many blessings, preferring to heed—and vote for—the voices telling us the world is going to hell. But once we recognize our negativity bias, the rational brain can overcome the power of bad when it’s harmful and employ that power when it’s beneficial. In fact, bad breaks and bad feelings create the most powerful incentives to become smarter and stronger. Properly understood, bad can be put to perfectly good use. As noted science journalist John Tierney and Baumeister show in this wide-ranging book, we can adopt proven strategies to avoid the pitfalls that doom relationships, careers, businesses, and nations. Instead of despairing at what’s wrong in your life and in the world, you can see how much is going right—and how to make it still better.

Roger Koppl develops a theory of experts and expert failure, and illustrates his theory with wide-ranging examples, including that of state regulation of economic activity.

Hollywood's body-fat expert and nutritionist to the stars shares the ten revolutionary diets that help celebrities get and stay skinny. "Dr. Tony Perrone helped me get in the best shape of my life, from the inside out". -- Denzel Washington. Charts throughout.