1hundredsixty8

With a new work project getting underway, demands on my time over the next few months will be increasing.  I have already postponed my epic motorcycle trip from New York to Albuquerque. I will have to make an effort to post here. That being said, I do have a few topics that I've been researching that I will post for comment over the next week.

With my self-imposed April 15 deadline approaching, I will supplement my original thoughts on taxation (Taxology, Part 1. January 19). I have been researching various forms of consumption taxes- the VAT, the Bradford "X" tax, for example- as alternatives to the income tax. My motivation is the theory that preferences and exceptions in our current income tax code have become media of exchange in the political marketplace, a marketplace where the only players are elected politicians and special interests. Along these lines, Romesh Ponnuru reports in Bloomberg View of a proposal by Representative Devin Nunes (R, California) to convert business income taxes to a type of VAT.  Whatever the merits of Nunes' plan, it does represent a novel approach. As Ponnuru concludes. "people in Washington must realize that the conventional approaches to these issues aren't going to work."

I am attempting to wrap my head around the basics of MMT ("Modern Monetary Theory"), which deals with the interaction of government-issued fiat currency with taxation and budget surpluses and deficits.  MMT is another unconventional approach in that it views these interactions as primarily a policy tool to regulate inflation and unemployment, and not merely the mechanism of funding the government. 

I intend to explore  the hypothesis I'll call "post-modern colonalism" which postulates that what we commonly believe to be sovereign states are defacto colonies of transnational corporations. 

A tip of the hat to Mark McKinnon for suggesting that it is good to own a car that is the same color as duct tape.