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Progressive Taxation: An Aesthetic and Moral Defense,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1980731 (January 6, 2012)
The power to tax is at once the power to create and the power to destroy. If the United States government hopes to discharge its primary duty as creator and protector of its citizens' wealth, it must be willing to destroy wealth, from time to time, by redistributing it. More than any other tool, the means by which government finances and depletes its treasury affects the societal distribution of wealth. Differential taxation and targeted spending are the most significant and most effective m
REVISION: Modern Disaster Theory: Evaluating Disaster Law as a Portfolio of Legal Rules,
http://www.ssrn.com/abstract=1910669 (September 21, 2011)
Disaster law consists of a portfolio of legal rules for dealing with catastrophic risks. This essay takes preliminary steps toward modeling that metaphor in quantitative terms made familiar through modern portfolio theory. Modern disaster theory, by analogy to the foundational model of corporate finance, treats disaster law as the best portfolio of legal rules. Optimal legal preparedness for disaster consists of identifying, adopting, and maintaining that portfolio of rules at the frontier of ef