Unexpectedly warm and insightful portrait of the Baby Boom Generation. (5 stars)
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2025
Verified PurchaseI gather that the GOP score of the Senate tax bill DOES show budgetary costs as being lowered by the expiration of new provisions (such as the higher standard deduction) that it would add to the Internal Revenue Code. This blatantly contradicts its use of a "current-policy" baseline for 2017 provisions.
The Senate GOP's refusal to use a current-policy baseline for NEW provisions means that, the day after enactment, they could pass a new law making all of those expiring provisions permanent, and claim a budgetary cost of zero.
But why stop there? From now on, they should simply make ALL new tax breaks that they enact expire in a week. This would create next to zero revenue loss no matter what they were doing. Then, the next day, they could pass a new law making the same provisions permanent, at a zero revenue cost under the current-policy baseline. They could even, under this approach, repeal all U.S. federal taxes, and claim a zero budgetary cost.
Good work, guys.
The paperback version of my memoir, Now Is Now and Then Is Then, is now available on Amazon for $7.99. Kindle version is $4.99 or free if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.
Today I self-published my memoir, Now Is Now and Then Is Then, on Kindle Direct Publishing. Kindle price $4.99, but not available for perhaps another 72 hours. I'll add a print-on-demand paperback option next week; couldn't do so today due to formatting issues.
Over the last few months, I've written a fairly interesting and unique literary work (if I do say so myself). It's a memoir, covering the period from my very first memory through age 29, when I both met my wife and got my first academic teaching job. Tentative title: "Portrait of an Academic as a Young Man."
The distinctive thing about is that it consists entirely of vignettes, which average about 500 words each. There are 114 in all, and the total is just under 58,000 words. I aim at a very rounded self-portrayal - as the cliche goes, warts and all. It focuses broadly on my emotional, social, romantic and intellectual development, culminating in my finding myself, and coming to understand why the path I ultimately chose was right for me. Each vignette places the reader in the room with me, and they generally end with a twist or payoff that brings out the essence of each of the rendered experiences.
The initial feedback that I've gotten from readers is extremely positive. E.g., I have been told that reading it is like having potato chips or chocolate chip cookies on the table – it’s always easy to read just one more vignette, and then the one after that.
Naturally, I would like to publish it. But my initial efforts have been frustrating. The university presses that I've contacted, where they have some idea of who I am, all said that it's not within their scope. And here are a couple of responses from agents to whom I sent it unsolicitedly:
"There is much to enjoy here .... But regardless of my personal feelings, I'm afraid this strikes me as a challenging project for which to find a publisher, your interesting insights notwithstanding. Afraid I'm going to pass here."
And: "You have an interesting idea for a book and there’s a lot to like about your approach. But, in the end, I’m afraid I [won't be able to interest a publisher.]"
I totally understand. These folks are trying to make a living by successfully placing books that will make money. And I suppose it's naive of me to think that literary merit and high readability wouldn't count for more. But still, it's disappointing re. the current state of the publishing world (not to mention, for the book's prospects).
Fingers crossed, as there are still other agents and book publishers to whom I've sent it. But I'm not enormously optimistic. My fallback plan is to self-publish it on Amazon Kindle, a free service that would offer it electronically (at a price of my choosing) andl as a print-on-demand physical book.
I'd love to hear from anyone who is interested in the manuscript or has any thoughts to offer about the project.
With the start of NYU's fall 2024 semester, I thought I should offer an update here on the public sessions at our 2024 Tax Policy Colloquium.
All sessions will meet on Tuesdays, from 4:15 to 6:15 pm, in Furman 310, and most or all will be followed with small group dinners that generally include the speakers.
Here is our schedule:
1) Tuesday, September 10 – Ellora Derenoncourt, Princeton University Economics Department. Wealth of Two Nations: The US Racial Wealth Gap, 1860-2020.
2) Tuesday, September 24 – Andrew Hayashi, University of Virginia Law School. The Federal Architecture of Income Inequality.
3) Tuesday, October 8 – Manasi Deshpande, University of Chicago Economics Department. The (Lack of) Anticipatory Effects of the Social Safety Net on Human Capital Investment.
4) Tuesday, October 22 – Louis Kaplow, Harvard Law School. Optimal Income Taxation and Charitable Giving.
5) Tuesday, November 12 – Alex Zhang, Emory University School of Law. Fiscal Citizenship and Taxpayer Privacy.
6) Tuesday, November 26 – Natasha Sarin, Yale Law School. Broken Budgeting.
An exciting change for this year, compared to the last couple of years, is that the sessions will be on Zoom, and Zoom attendees will be able to participate live. The key change here is that New York State has changed its rules for live class attendance such that a class isn't disqualified as live instruction just because a remote participant asks a question.
I had stopped putting the sessions on Zoom, because that rule made the whole thing just too crazy and hard to manage. Under the prior regime, all that Zoom attendees could do was post a comment that I would then have to read for them. That I found just too difficult while also running a live queue, but I can certainly handle combining my live queue with Zoom attendees raising their hands to ask questions.
