Rational Tax Reform: Using the Systems Engineering Process to Fix America's Broken Tax System - Softcover

Hartung, Jim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1949642313 ISBN 13: 9781949642315

Publisher: Authority Publishing, 2020

Synopsis

America's tax system is a mess--and our political system is broken. In this groundbreaking book, an expert systems engineer shows how to fix both using systems engineering, the process engineers use to develop complex products such as aircraft and spacecraft.

Systems engineering is a nonpartisan process that considers the needs of all stakeholders and uses facts and data to optimize a product or system. It seeks to balance opposing interests, conflicting objectives, and many constraints.

In Rational Tax Reform, Jim Hartung shows how systems engineering can be used to optimize social, economic, and political systems, using tax reform as an example. This book uses systems engineering to develop a comprehensive tax reform proposal that:

• Balances the federal budget, funds universal health care, and restores Social Security to financial health without increasing the burden on taxpayers
• Simplifies the tax code and makes it fairer by eliminating all itemized deductions and most tax credits, tax preferences, and loopholes
• Stimulates economic growth by decreasing tax rates and replacing the corporate income tax with a more efficient value-added tax
• Includes features to control government spending, address climate change, reduce political corruption, improve the education system, and increase infrastructure investment

The proposed tax reform is only one example of many possible alternatives--yet it clearly illustrates how systems engineering could enable rational, enlightened, and nonpartisan tax reform.

Rational Tax Reform also describes how systems engineering can be used to address other problems in addition to tax reform. Systems engineering can be used by anyone to address any problem, but it is most useful for addressing complex problems where the best solution is not obvious.

This book was written before the Covid-19 pandemic and the George Floyd killing. Nevertheless, lawmakers and policymakers can use systems engineering to develop comprehensive "systems solutions" for difficult and interrelated problems such as those exposed by these events. 

About this title

About the Author

Jim Hartung has nearly forty years' experience as a systems engineer, manager, and executive in the aerospace and energy industries--primarily at Boeing, United Technologies, and Rockwell International. As a result, he understands how all these companies apply systems engineering to complex challenges. His website (JimHartung.com) provides additional information regarding tax reform and the use of systems engineering to address societal problems.

Edition details

• Publisher: Authority Publishing
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1949642313
• ISBN 13: 9781949642315
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 128