By request: consumption taxes

Reader Scott asks: Why isn't your tax plan consumption based? (IRA's without restrictions) Because with a decent tax code, there's no reason for the government to artificially bias peoples' choices towards savings and away from consumption. The bourgeois moral affection for savings is a socially useful cultural belief, but it is not actually a moral law. Savings is just time-shifted consumption. I see no moral difference between consumption now and consumption later. As Anatole France said, "If the hangover preceded the inebriation, drunkenness would be a virtue."

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2008/06/by-request-consumption-taxes/3691/