Anthony Trainum
The book Taxing ourselves: a citizen’s guide to the debate of taxes is written to be a
summary and a survey of the U.S tax system and proposed alternatives. The authors use
economic concepts and statistic to argue their points. The data they present can be somewhat
biased due the selective use of their references and data. An example of this happens when the
authors show a negative relationship between savings and the rate of return for time adjusted for
conditions (Page 109-112). In this example they selected a series showing relationships between
interest rates on BAA corporation bonds, average marginal tax rate and net private savings as a
percentage of disposable income. The statistical problem here is that interest rates on the BAA
corporate bonds are not representative of the rates on saving options, also they do not take into
account other factors that can lead to saving decisions which may have offsetting magnitudes.
