Enlightened Public Finance

This book helps readers understand the world of public finance well enough to make wiser political decisions. Political candidates, their campaign staffs and their supporters are encouraged to learn from it. Journalists, unaffiliated voters and students can become fiscally literate by using this text as a handy and informative reference guide. Unlike a college textbook, it is written for Democrats and Independents, by an Independent Democrat who once served on the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and worked for decades in the financial and investment industries as a qualified financial expert.

As the Democratic campaign shapes for for the 2020 election, candidates and supporters will be debating key issues of health care reform, tax policy, infrastructure replacement and funding strategies, budget deficits and the national debt. To avoid being branded as socialists, Democrats must devise a platform and campaign themes that ordinary Americans can understand and trust. This book explains what is and is not possible in the world of public finance, taxation, education finance, and health care policy. Social Security and Medicare tax increases and benefits changes are inevitable and must be addressed. Tax policies to reverse the Trump tax cuts for the rich are presented logically, with insights to the opportunities and also the limits to taxing One Percenters, Wall Street and the super-rich.