Jon Bakija

Peter Lindert

Lane Kenworthy

Jeff Madrick

Can government help? -- Are government social programs bad for economic growth? -- Would a bigger government hurt the economy? -- Thinking sensibly about the size of government

How Big Should Our Government Be?

Joel Slemrod

The new edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, presented in a clear, nontechnical, and unbiased way. To follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is often forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the oversimplified and the arcane, presenting the key issues clearly and without a political agenda. Tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy and offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems—both the current tax system and proposals to reform it. This fifth edition has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest data, empirical evidence, and tax law. It offers new material on recent tax reform proposals, expanded coverage of international tax issues, and the latest enforcement initiatives. Offering historical perspectives, outlining the basic criteria by which tax policy should be judged (fairness, economic impact, enforceability), examining proposals for both radical change (replacement of the income tax with a flat tax or consumption tax) and incremental changes to the current system, and concluding with a voter's guide, the book provides readers with enough background to make informed judgments about how we should tax ourselves. Praise for earlier editions “An excellent book.” —Jeff Medrick, New York Times “A fair-minded exposition of a politically loaded subject.” —Kirkus Reviews

A Citizen's Guide to the Debate over Taxes

Taxing Ourselves, fifth edition

The size of government is arguably the most controversial discussion in United States politics, and this issue won't fade from prominence any time soon. There must surely be a tipping point beyond which more government taxing and spending harms the economy, but where is that point? In this accessible book, best-selling authors Jeff Madrick, Jon Bakija, Lane Kenworthy, and Peter Lindert try to answer whether our government can grow any larger and examine how we can optimize growth and fair distribution.

The fourth edition of a popular guide to the key issues in tax reform, discussing the current system and alternative proposals clearly and without a political agenda. As Albert Einstein may or may not have said, "The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax." Indeed, to follow the debate over tax reform, the interested citizen is forced to choose between misleading sound bites and academic treatises. Taxing Ourselves bridges the gap between the two by discussing the key issues clearly and without a political agenda: Should the federal income tax be replaced with a flat tax or sales tax? Should it be left in place and reformed? Can tax cuts stimulate the economy, or will higher deficits undermine any economic benefit? Authors and tax policy experts Joel Slemrod and Jon Bakija lay out in accessible language what is known and not known about how taxes affect the economy, offer guidelines for evaluating tax systems, and provide enough information to assess both the current income tax system and the leading proposals to reform or replace it (including the flat tax and the consumption tax). The fourth edition of this popular guide has been extensively revised to incorporate the latest information, covering such recent developments as the Bush administration's tax cuts (which expire in 2011) and the alternatives proposed by the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform. Slemrod and Bakija provide us with the knowledge and the tools—including an invaluable voter's guide to the tax policy debate—to make our own informed choices about how we should tax ourselves.

Jon Bakija

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