The Time Tax

The most insidious feature of kludgeocracy is the hidden, indirect, and frequently corrupt distribution of its costs. Those costs can be put into three categories — costs borne by individual citizens, costs borne by the government that must implement the complex policies, and costs to the character of our democracy.The price paid by ordinary citize... See more

Consumers lose in two ways. First, their tax money is squandered when projects that never should have been funded in the first place go bust (or when the whole banking system needs to be bailed out because it is full of rotten, politically motivated loans). Second, the economy does not develop as quickly or efficiently as it might because credit (a

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The narrative of Free America remained as inflexible as any ideology: tax cuts and deregulation = freedom and prosperity. Decade after decade you encountered its mantra, like the rituals of a cargo cult, on the website of the Cato Institute, the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, broadcasts of The Rush Limbaugh Show, and the platform of the

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