Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Recommended Buying

Here's an easy review: If you have any interest in EC Comics, you need a copy of Foul Play, a fine new book by my pal, Grant Geissman. It's an overview of the artists who worked for the company. There's a bio, art samples and one complete story for each of them, plus you get a lot of little extras, like drawings done for company stationery and office parties. There's also one story that was never published 'til now. I just received my copy, sat down to read a little and got hooked, working my way through the entire thing before I put it down. Grant knows the topic well and quotes liberally from interviews with the men (and one woman) who did such lasting work. Click here to buy it from Amazon.

• Posted at 10:31 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

E.J. Dionne discusses the looming repeal of the Estate Tax. I'm actually a big fan of tax cuts but this one, I think, has been sold to the American people with a lot of fraudulent information, including calling it the "Death Tax" to load the emotional argument. It's really a loophole for the super-rich to pass on wealth to their heirs without anyone ever paying taxes on it.

Here's a link to a 2000 article by Michael Kinsley about why this is, and here's an excerpt for the benefit of folks who are too lazy to click on that link...

The truth is that most of the accumulated wealth that is subject to the estate tax was never taxed at all as income. Repeat: never taxed at all. If the estate tax is abolished, the average billionaire's billion-and-first dollar will be subject to a cumulative tax rate of zero. By comparison, the very first dollar earned by someone frying burgers at McDonald's is subject to the FICA tax of about 15 percent. (Investment income is exempt from FICA.)

[snip...]

The reason most inherited wealth was never taxed as income is that it consists of so-called "appreciated property." The simplest example is shares of stock. If you buy at $100 and die at $120, your $20 profit is never taxed as income. When your heirs sell the stock, their profit is calculated as if they bought at $120.

Like I said, I like tax cuts. I'm just skeptical that tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy won't eventually translate into tax increases in some form for the average working guy. Has anyone ever seen any of these crusaders for lower taxes ever expend much energy on lowering payroll taxes?

• Posted at 10:24 PM · LINK