Stephen Moore (1)

This *SHOULD* be a quick read. Its simple, mostly straightforward, has blank pages, is only 122 pages total, and has a lot of graphs and charts. ...but it took me FOREVER to read this. There is partial reasons for that - one, this isn't my type of book, two, the author is clearly biased and pretty smug and arrogant, three, its boring as all hell, four, considering everything going on (coronavirus / COVID-19) this just seemed.... so.... more daunting, annoying, elitist, and unnecessary.

I also wish he would have just led off with the Flat Tax rate; rather than making that basically a coda and what the entirety of the book leads to. Rather he led off with that as his main point, since that seems to be the point of the entirety of the book anyway is to lead to it, why not just state outright that the point of the book was to say we should be using a flat rate tax system rather than taxing based on total income.

Eh. This is as far from essential reading as possible, even in its own genre, especially now; moving on towards 6-7 years later after it was written. I have a feeling this book was forgotten about the day it was published and will only be further pushed away as time travels us by.… (altro)

This book was written by the team that influenced Donald Trump's economic program. And as such it is a cheerleading tome that dissects and explains its anticipated long term success.

Economics and its applications will be tweaked and debated to the end of time of course but most of us will judge the effects in the short term. Like presidential term. So far the plan has seen results and those results have fattened the wallet for many. Some would argue for the less than many at the top. But overall we have seen growth and expansion, shrinking unemployment and new opportunity.

Where this will lead us is yet to me determined but one can argue that freeing up markets to work their magic, works for the most part. And of course the extremes of the freeing brought us the abuses and criminal (yet unpunished) of the housing meltdown of '08.

So take your side, wave your banner, don your cap, whatever gets you through the night. The markets will still be here tomorrow and we shall see what they bring or don't bring. This book will get you up to speed on what has been underway and what to expect.… (altro)

One hundred pages of charts should be boring, but this thorough survey of modern trends is absolutely inspiring. The analysis frequently shows that the doom-and-gloom we hear in the news is based on a relatively short time horizon. For example, the U.S. has not been losing forest acreage. To the contrary, forested land has been growing throughout the last century and the growth has been steadily accelerating. They show similar improvements in range of economic and cultural indicators that demonstrate our quality of life has been improving by orders of magnitude.… (altro)