Interesting post by my MoneyLaw colleague Ted Seto (Loyola-L.A.): Echo-Chamber Scholarship:
Over the past two decades, a group of about a dozen very smart, very productive "elite professors" has engaged in a debate about the relative merits of income vs. consumption taxes. A recent article by a member of this group — a scholar whose work I regard very highly — begins: "Recently, a consensus seems to have emerged in favor of a consumption, or cash flow, tax."
A consensus? Really? Among whom? Members of Congress? The electorate? Members of the tax academy? No, to all of the above. The author in question was referring rather to an emerging consensus within the small group reading each other’s articles on the issue. That "consensus," in turn, strongly influenced the recent recommendations of President Bush’s Tax Reform Panel. Those recommendations, unfortunately, turned out to be completely out of sync with the electorate’s views and were pronounced DOA.
In tax, the problem goes even deeper. For the past half century, opinion-shapers in the tax academy have viewed "ability to pay" as irrelevant to tax policy analysis. Congress, by contrast, views it as the starting place for almost all such analysis. … In consequence, a colorable argument can be made that elite tax scholarship has actually contributed to the mess that is now the Internal Revenue Code.
