The greedy hand

The Greedy Hand is an illuminating examination of the culture of tax and a persuasive call for reform, written by Amity Shlaes of The Wall Street Journal. This book is a cultural examination of the way taxes influence our behavior, how they force us into an arbitrary system that punishes families and individual enterprise.

Shlaes unveils the hidden perversities of our lifelong tax experience: how family tax breaks do little to help the family, and can even hurt it. She demonstrates how married women pay a special women's tax rate, higher than anybody else's. She shows how problems that engage and enrage us - Social Security issues, or the inadequacies of our schools - are, at heart, tax problems. And she explains why the solutions Washington offers merely prolong a vicious cycle.

Finally, Shlaes shows us a way out of this madness, endorsing a number of commonsense reforms that will give all Americans a fairer and simpler tax system.