A lucid, thorough reflection on the income tax that manages to be both rigorous and accessible.
A bold assessment of the toll that the income tax has exacted on the American economy, coupled with a plan to replace it.
A father and son, in their debut, proffer a brief but densely packed analysis of the income tax. Unlike many treatments of income tax opposition, they don’t dwell on its constitutionality—an argument whose ship has sailed. Instead, they marshal empirical evidence against the tax, arguing that its replacement by a national sales tax would benefit all American citizens. Helpfully, the book begins with a synoptic account of the history of the income tax, which didn’t exist prior to the Civil War and was passed following World War II. It was initially designed to remain a modest measure, the authors write; however, it ballooned into the primary source of the government’s revenue, and the authors assert that it gradually strangled the prospects of fair competition in an increasingly global economic theater. Now, according to the authors, it ranks as an “economic natural disaster.” They devote much of their discussion to dispelling what they consider to be commonly held misconceptions about the income tax. For example, they argue that the tax is actually regressive, not progressive, and that the brunt of it is ultimately paid by consumers who absorb the cost through inflated prices and deflated salaries. Also, they say, the tax is effectively a self-imposed tariff that disadvantages American businesses competing with foreign rivals: “The income tax raises the cost of domestically produced goods sold in the U.S., but it does not apply an equal tax to foreign-produced goods sold in the U.S.” Although they narrowly confine the scope of their investigation to the income tax, their analysis always involves the U.S. economy as a whole, as they contend that the tax is “the major impediment to America’s economic prosperity.” They also judiciously consider the tax’s political context and realistically acknowledge the many obstacles facing the tax’s elimination.
A lucid, thorough reflection on the income tax that manages to be both rigorous and accessible.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0-9860436-04
Page Count: 78
Publisher: Mountain Home Publishing
Review Posted Online: March 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An extraordinary true tale of torment, retribution, and loyalty that's irresistibly readable in spite of its intrusively melodramatic prose. Starting out with calculated, movie-ready anecdotes about his boyhood gang, Carcaterra's memoir takes a hairpin turn into horror and then changes tack once more to relate grippingly what must be one of the most outrageous confidence schemes ever perpetrated. Growing up in New York's Hell's Kitchen in the 1960s, former New York Daily News reporter Carcaterra (A Safe Place, 1993) had three close friends with whom he played stickball, bedeviled nuns, and ran errands for the neighborhood Mob boss. All this is recalled through a dripping mist of nostalgia; the streetcorner banter is as stilted and coy as a late Bowery Boys film. But a third of the way in, the story suddenly takes off: In 1967 the four friends seriously injured a man when they more or less unintentionally rolled a hot-dog cart down the steps of a subway entrance. The boys, aged 11 to 14, were packed off to an upstate New York reformatory so brutal it makes Sing Sing sound like Sunnybrook Farm. The guards continually raped and beat them, at one point tossing all of them into solitary confinement, where rats gnawed at their wounds and the menu consisted of oatmeal soaked in urine. Two of Carcaterra's friends were dehumanized by their year upstate, eventually becoming prominent gangsters. In 1980, they happened upon the former guard who had been their principal torturer and shot him dead. The book's stunning denouement concerns the successful plot devised by the author and his third friend, now a Manhattan assistant DA, to free the two killers and to exact revenge against the remaining ex-guards who had scarred their lives so irrevocably. Carcaterra has run a moral and emotional gauntlet, and the resulting book, despite its flaws, is disturbing and hard to forget. (Film rights to Propaganda; author tour)
Pub Date: July 10, 1995
ISBN: 0-345-39606-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.
The renowned writer offers advice on information-gathering and nonfiction composition.
The book consists of eight instructive and charming essays about creating narratives, all of them originally composed for the New Yorker, where McPhee (Silk Parachute, 2010, etc.) has been a contributor since the mid-1960s. Reading them consecutively in one volume constitutes a master class in writing, as the author clearly demonstrates why he has taught so successfully part-time for decades at Princeton University. In one of the essays, McPhee focuses on the personalities and skills of editors and publishers for whom he has worked, and his descriptions of those men and women are insightful and delightful. The main personality throughout the collection, though, is McPhee himself. He is frequently self-deprecating, occasionally openly proud of his accomplishments, and never boring. In his magazine articles and the books resulting from them, McPhee rarely injects himself except superficially. Within these essays, he offers a departure by revealing quite a bit about his journalism, his teaching life, and daughters, two of whom write professionally. Throughout the collection, there emerge passages of sly, subtle humor, a quality often absent in McPhee’s lengthy magazine pieces. Since some subjects are so weighty—especially those dealing with geology—the writing can seem dry. There is no dry prose here, however. Almost every sentence sparkles, with wordplay evident throughout. Another bonus is the detailed explanation of how McPhee decided to tackle certain topics and then how he chose to structure the resulting pieces. Readers already familiar with the author’s masterpieces—e.g., Levels of the Game, Encounters with the Archdruid, Looking for a Ship, Uncommon Carriers, Oranges, and Coming into the Country—will feel especially fulfilled by McPhee’s discussions of the specifics from his many books.
A superb book about doing his job by a master of his craft.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-14274-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2017
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