Taxes are a complex subject. Part of that complexity may be a result of the loopholes ram-rodded through congress by the wealthy desperately trying to hold onto their wealth. But I believe much of it is caused by a helter skelter effort to not make anybody mad and still get the bills paid. Hence those in the lower half of the financial scale, who tend to pay the least attention to the doings of politicians, probably get shafted the most. (One of the objectives of this book is to get more of us common folks involved in politics.) I don't know anything about taxes, but I do know what I want to accomplish with them. I want to use tax breaks as incentives to help make some small changes in the direction of our society, but getting us out of debt is also a stated objective, so we've got to come up with around 4 trillion dollars (2011 update:  I think that figure is now around 10 or 12 trillion) somewhere eventually, and preferably within 4 years. I doubt that one can sit down and write up a solution to this problem that is guaranteed to work first go. But I believe we can make an outline, plan our first steps, keep thinking and working as we go, and that each step will bring opportunities and ideas for the next steps. The objective is that everybody suffers the same and nobody suffers much. My approach comes from my own personal, successful experience dealing with debt. The first step is to cut expenses to subsistence levels. The second step is to put my little brain in gear, mash the accelerator all the way to the floor, and start churning out money any way I can. I intend to hire some really good folks to help with the thinking, and I want to turn it into a sort of national forum in a series of articles on our Sunday night show, to get all vested parties involved, give'em a couple of weeks to chew on it, present final drafts to them and then to Congress.

Although I do believe the tax structure can and should be altered to encourage long term research and development of American business foundations, I don't expect a miraculous economic recovery from some sort of magical shift in the tax structure. I paid about 25 % of my salary in taxes in 1962 and about 25 % of my salary in taxes in 1992, so I feel pretty certain that taxes responsible for the bulk of our government's income haven't changed much over the last 30 years, (2011 update:  Since the Bush tax cuts, I think this is no longer true) while Americas' position in the global economy has. I have the distinct feeling that there are some things wrong with some American business that no amount of tax shuffling is going to fix.

Some examples from personal experience: I bought a wood chipper from a company that'd been in the business forty years. When wood bark burned out the ungreasable, uncleanable bearing in three weeks, I put a 50 cent washer behind the made-in-Brazil $40.00 replacement they sent me and it lasted until an ear broke off it because of a big air bubble in the metal. Finally I obtained a made-in-America replacement from a local bearing company that had a grease zert and that was literally nearly twice the weight and only cost $25.00. After replacing two chipper blades in quick succession at $20.00 a piece I had another small striker plate welded into it that stopped that problem. It is difficult for me to believe these frailties were unintentional and their solutions overlooked by the company's professional engineers.

I bought a rototiller from an American company that had also been in business for half a century. The belt needed adjusting every hour or so and cost three knuckles and thirty minutes to accomplish. I usually used at least one belt a year. The throttle lever was so weak it broke off every couple of years. The side panels were only spot welded on and simply fell off after 50 hours use or so. The tines would only travel in one direction, it was impossible to move the tiller without the tines rotating, (which is dangerous), cleaning the weeds out of the tines after each use was essential to avoid bearing damage and took a sledge hammer and a couple of hours. Turning the thing around was not only dangerous but took a great deal of strength and agility. I finally ran into a Japanese made tiller that looked as if someone had made a list of all these obvious shortcomings and designed a tiller to overcome them. It cost the same price as the American made machine. The questions that come to my mind are, why haven't any Americans started a company to build a better chipper or tiller, why is that American company still making that same inferior machine, eight years after the Japanese tiller came out ?  (2011 Update:  American company no longer in business, and neither is the Japanese one!)

I had a  US made automobile #1(USMA 1)  lover friend 25 years ago who had owned several of them. His only complaint was that they kept melting down starters. I overheard a guy just the other day telling someone how much he liked his new USMA 1, but he had starter problems they were trying to fix. Of four personal friends that own USMA 1, three are having transmission troubles the company can't or won't fix, and only 1 of these owners plans to buy another USMA 1.  Instead of fixing these and other obvious long time defects, USMA 1 is trying to dazzle the American public with glitzy new designs and colors, and trying to appeal to their sense of patriotism. (2011 update:  USMA 1 is now nearly out of business) .  I rode an '88 USMA 2 from Seattle to Portland and listened to the driver lament the car's maladies and the companies insensitivity the entire trip. When the window next to me exploded, he responded with "good, now maybe they will believe me when I tell them there's been something wrong with that window ever since the car was new". I bought an '87 USMA 2 because it had the best reliability rating of any American made pickup at the time. I had so many problems (most of which I had to fix at my own expense) that I wrote the Ford company a long letter describing my complaints and offering suggestions to fix them. Are the big three and their unions collaborating with the government to stifle innovative aggressive competition in Americans, or have Americans simply observed what happened to guys like Tucker and lost their spirit to even try ? I really don't know, and probably no one does. But I intend to find a way to recreate an environment in which Americans are inspired to compete, not only with each other, but with the world.

One suggestion is to do some real in depth soul searching into the flaws in American industry, perhaps on the TV show, to find out just why things aren't changing as fast as they should be, and try to get some feedback from both sides of the fence.