Topic: How To Invest

What is Pat's commentary for the week of August 14, 2012?

Article Excerpt

The U.S. needs to reform its tax laws if it’s ever going to restore its economic growth to the high rates of the past. The U.S. tax code is a mess thanks to the lobbying successes of a variety of special interest groups—multinational corporations, unions, the Washington bureaucracy, municipal and state governments, and others. They have lobbied hard and succeeded in carving out special deals for themselves, with unintended and perverse side effects that hurt other parts of the economy. From an economic growth point of view, the cost of all this special treatment is dead money. It’s coming out of the productive part of the economy, where people exchange value for private money. It’s going into a part of the economy where special interests can get government money or privileges. In exchange, the special interests provide political support, plus campaign contributions, to their friends in the House and Senate. This is weighing on the economy the same way that harboring too…