Vulgar Economics

Death and Taxes

Karl Marx in Das Kapital (up there with Mises' Human Action and Smith's Wealth of Nations as the treatise on political economy) described how the mainstream economists before him practiced "vulgar economics" which put commodity production ahead of people. There is a newish study that verifies these results. The study shows those who have the most to gain by having children before the end of the tax season (eg December 31 as opposed to January 1) do so. Eg people are planning the birth of their children to minimize taxes!

This is indeed per Marx' definition vulgar. But of course as Workers has mentioned before do not hate the players, hate the game. The wealthy (most of them it is presumed anyway) worked hard and had good ideas to earn their money. It's the tax system which sucks. It just takes too much money from those that earn it and it sets up incentives for game playing and tax minimization (not to mention untold hours - billions of them - needed to fill out the tax forms) as opposed to a low steady predictable rate. I would much rather be named January than December.