Texas’ best golfer of the moment

Choi%20011708.jpgThere are only four PGA Tour players who have won a tournament in each of the past four seasons. Three of those four are easy picks — Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh. Who is the fourth?
None other than K.J. Choi of The Woodlands (previous post here), who just won his seventh PGA Tour event in the past eight seasons over the weekend. Choi now has over $17 million in career earnings.
Stu Mulligan over at Waggle Room makes the case that Choi has quietly become one of the elite PGA Tour players even though there is not any area of his game that stands out statistically in comparison to other Tour players. The tortoise still does beat the hare sometimes.

Becker on health care finance reform

medical%20finance%20011608.jpgGary Becker proposes four common sense reforms for the American health care finance system, one of which is unassailable:

Eliminate the link between employment and the tax advantage of private health insurance. Since much of the spending on health are investments in human capital, there is good reason to exempt these expenditures, along with other investments, from income taxes. However, this employment link is inequitable because it does not provide the same tax advantages to families without employment-based insurance. It also encourages expensive employer health plans that have significant consumption components since the government picks up much of the cost of such coverage.

What’s missing in the tax debate

income%20taxes.jpgWouldn’t it be nice if at least one of the Presidential candidates would embrace the basic reform that is really needed in the U.S. tax system? Simply simplification. Previous posts on tax simplification issues are here. Interestingly, one of my least favored Presidential candidates — Rudy Giuliani — has the best tax simplification proposal that I’ve seen so far during the campaign.