No. of Recommendations: 5
Simpler, more efficient, fairer, and more reflective of America's current social values, McCaffery's "fair not flat" tax could help get us out of the tax mess that politicians and special interests have gotten us into, improving the whole country in the process.
Somehow, I don't think exempting most of the wealthiest people's income from taxation altogether would actually do this.
VAT systems are inherently less progressive than income taxes. I haven't read the book, but I've read summaries of the arguments and proposals. It seems McCaffery's got some kludges to try and address that, but they're not very effective. Mostly they just rely on a handwave - "it all gets spent on consumption someday" - which wasn't true back in the day, and is probably even less true today.
