The Benefit and the Burden begins with a short history of American taxation and a description of the core issues in the definition of income. It follows with some discussion of the principal economic arguments that have flowed around the relationship between taxes, growth and fairness, and then proceeds to examine the issues surrounding preferences in our tax code – for housing, for charitable contributions, for capital gains, and the problem of taxing corporate profits. It ends with a discussion of reform proposals, and Bruce makes his case for a VAT to close the revenue gap and fund the government that we will need, among other things, to support an increasingly elderly population.

Dylan Ratigan is well positioned to author a book, designed to be an enjoyable and informative read by normal humans, on the ongoing financial crisis. He is the wunderkind who became Global Managing Editor for Corporate Finance of Bloomberg, the premier news service that specializes in finance, at an exceptionally young age. He was at CNBC while that network was hyping the housing bubble as a non-bubble offering fantastic investment opportunities.

We’re getting our first indication of how the President will use the State of the Union address. With Speaker John Boehner behind him, President Obama will address a solidly Republican House of Representatives and a Senate with a 53-47 Democratic split. In his press conference yesterday he alluded to his persistence and unfinished business on a variety of issues, particularly surrounding the federal budget, the first wave of which will need to be completed by March to avoid a government shutdown. According to spokesman Robert Gibbs, the State of the Union will have a focus on the budget and deficits.

Yesterday on Dylan Ratigan’s show, he asked Austan Goolsbee a question I submitted via Twitter. It’s something I’ve been asking here as well: how are you going to perpetuate the stimulative effect of this bill, when you have deficit hysteria breaking out in Washington and a new Tea Party caucus bound and determined to cut spending next year? Goolsbee’s answer made it seem like he never considered the question…