Welcome to the Tax Blogosphere: Dan Shaviro

A hearty welcome to the newest member of the Tax Prof blogosphere: Dan Shaviro (NYU) has started a blog called Start Making Sense. He promises

Unfair but balanced commentary on tax and budget policy, contemporary U.S. politics and culture, and whatever else happens to come up.

He notes that "[t]hese days I call myself a New Yorker rather than an American."

Check out his maiden tax post on tax and social security reform (Interesting Times). Here is the opening:

The Bush Administration's two main domestic policy initiatives for 2005 are ostensibly tax reform and Social Security. As these are among my main areas of professional interest, you can guess that I will be all over the action, as it develops, like a cheap suit. Perhaps I should say if it develops; tax reform may be headed straight for a blue ribbon commission, meeting somewhere underneath the Potomac River.

Since I consider markets and incentives to be important, although also favoring progressive redistribution, I would be a sure bet to have partial sympathy with intelligent and well-designed conservative proposals in these areas. But the Administration's track record does not inspire confidence, to say the least. These guys like to do things on the cheap in the Rumsfeld sense, if not in the budgetary sense.