“We are Better than This” was a very difficult book to read
even though the essence of the author’s intent was relatively simple. The author, Edward Kleinbard, is not a
radical person who advocates for major changes in our system of financing our
nation’s interests.
The first point is that this nation was built around the
general proposition documented in our Constitution that “Congress shall have
Power to Lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts
and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…”
[Article 1, Section 8]. The general welfare of the people is the underlying
principle for which everything else is exercised. I agree with his observations, voiced by so many others,
that our nation’s well-being is being threatened by shabby infrastructure and
poor education for many. Compared to other nations, our problems result in our
being ranked very low in comparison to others.
The second point is that our taxation system is screwed up.
Again, this is not news since others commonly voice their objections. Without
belaboring the criticisms, there are issues with deductions and subsidies which
are grouped under the general topic of tax expenditures. While anyone with a
mortgage sees a personal gain in having mortgage interests deductible, all of
these tax expenditures represent costs to the government. When we read that we
need to raise more revenue to address our national debt, it causes us to think
that the problem can be solved by raising taxes. It surely is one method of
addressing the problem, but if we reduced the tax expenditures (total of $1
trillion annually), we would achieve the same end without changing the tax
structure. In short, there are methods to address our nation’s fiscal problems
that can be addressed by some changes in either the tax structure or tax
expenditures. Note that we are the only advanced nation that does not have a
single-payor healthcare system which would address our extraordinary costly
fee-for-service system with a series of private health insurances.
Until the nation is willing to say “enough” to the delay in
addressing our infrastructure needs and our educational problems, acutely noted
in urban areas, there will little incentive for political leaders to take
action. The author’s recommendations are relatively modest since there is such
a huge amount of monies involved in the tax structure as well as tax
expenditures that we could address our nation’s needs relatively painlessly.
Some pain is inevitable. If we don’t address our nation’s infrastructure and
education needs, we will suffer. The pain in introducing some changes in our
tax and expenditure system seems to be relatively minor compared to the
consequences of more deterioration of our infrastructure and failure to educate
all of our young people.
For anyone interested in reading a great review of this
book, please refer to http://blogs.cfainstitute.org/investor/2015/05/28/book-review-we-are-better-than-this/.
