Yearly Archives: 2005

The Tax Mess: Sticking It To Us. Presidio Fires Back

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Lynnley Browning sort of misses the point of Presidio’s lawsuit against the US Government. Browning focuses on the personalities, rather than the larger constitutional question.

Presidio’s suit is an attempt to test how the tax code’s ambiguities and complexity stand up in a federal court.

It’s easy to find zero sympathy for the wealthy, however, recent tax law changes, including large corporate giveaways supported by our “populist” US Senators Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl demonstrate the problems (and opportunities) that our tax law spaghetti creates.

Growing tax code complexity simply means more opportunities for the wealthy and growing hassle for the rest of us….. Disclosure: One of Presidio’s principals is a good friend of mine.

UPDATE: Andrew Ross Sorkin takes an interesting look at a Wall Street case that NY Attorney General Eliot Spitzer lost. Sorkin digs up quite a quote from a juror:

The jury was split 11 to 1 – with all but one juror prepared to acquit Mr. Sihpol of all charges. The lone juror told reporters that she was convinced of Mr. Sihpol’s guilt because she just could not believe the government would bring a case if there wasn’t something to it.

Having said all that, if Presidio did break the law, then they will deal with the consequences. It’s difficult for me, a laymen, to understand all the nuances of our tax system. Time to start over, I think.

Concept Maps

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Wired:

A research institute here is taking software designed in part to preserve scientists’ knowledge and giving it to schools around the world as a tool to help children learn.

The software was designed to literally map out what scientists know in diagram form. The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition is providing the concept mapping software to individual schools as well as training teachers in Panama, the first country adopting Cmaps nationwide.

Too Much Choice?

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Virginia Postrel, writing in Reason:

When customers enter the Ralphs supermarket near UCLA, they see a sign announcing how many different fruits and vegetables the produce department has on hand: “724 produce varieties available today,” it says, including 93 organic selections.
Sixty dozen varieties is a mind-boggling number. And that’s just in the produce department. Over in the cheese section, this pretty run-of-the-mill supermarket offers 14 types of feta alone. Not so long ago, finding feta of any type required a trip to a specialty shop.
During the last couple of decades, the American economy has undergone a variety revolution. Instead of simply offering mass-market goods, businesses of all sorts increasingly compete to give consumers more personalized products, more varied experiences, and more choice.
Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a bookstore with 2 million titles, while Netflix promises 35,000 different movies on DVD. Choice is everywhere, liberating to some but to others a new source of stress. “Stand in the corner of the toothpaste aisle with your eyes wide open and–I swear–it will make you dizzy,” writes design critic Karrie Jacobs. Maybe the sign in Ralphs is not an enticement but a warning.