The Earth's Eye

A lake is a temporary thing. It begins to die the moment it is born. This is especially true of a man-made or artificial lake. When you look at the beauty of the New Croton Reservoir remember that only a few generations will enjoy this privilege.
Photo: Hunter Brook arm of New Croton Reservoir in October from the new Route 129 Bridge (remember the old bridge?), Town of Yorktown, New York.
Words from Walden:
A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye.
A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It is continually receiving new life and motion from above. It is intermediate between land and sky.

Tax Day Thought

Today is the income tax deadline, and, while I tend to avoid topics of monetary, fiscal, budget, and taxation policy, I do have one thought that I’d like to throw out here. If you’re a wage earner you pay tax up front through the payroll tax deduction. If you overpay you get a refund in the following year. An investor whose income comes from buying and selling stocks or bonds gets to defer paying his taxes until the following year as well as receiving a break on the tax rate because of the lower capital gains schedule. To undo some of the unfairness in this system, I propose that capital gains taxes be deducted from the proceeds when an investment instrument is sold. This is a simple database problem requiring that the purchase and the sale be linked. Either the IRS or the brokerage house could be responsible for maintaining these records. In the current setup, the investor must match purchase and sale but the IRS almost never requires verification of the basis value. Whether intentionally or through error I imagine that a significant percent of basis values are overestimated leading to underpayment of capital gains tax. Deducting capital gains at the time of sale would thus greatly increase the accuracy of tax collection and reduce the headache that the individual investor faces at tax time because the match up of purchases and sales will have already happened. It will also help address our Federal budget deficit. Differential capital gains rates could be handled by either withholding at the lower rates and requiring the investor to cover the difference at tax time if he is in the higher bracket or the withholding could occur at the most common rate and any overpayment could be refunded – just like the poor wage earner.

Big Bridge Post

I've been on the road, visiting family in the Carolinas. I took the photo at left from the walkway on the new Cooper River Bridge which carries US Highway 17 from Mt. Pleasant to Charleston, South Carolina. Note the remnants of the old spans which are being taken down. I walked across the new bridge with my sister-in-law and nephew on the wonderful pedestrian lane that, while not a part of the original design, was added to the project after a public outcry. Would that our Tappan Zee Bridge had such a great feature. Let us make sure that the replacement bridge that is being planned for the Tappan Zee has a pedestrian and bike path. And while we're at it, one of the replacement options that feature light and/or heavy rail should be selected. If the people of South Carolina were truly far sighted they would have made dedicated public transportation lanes (road or rail) a part of the new Cooper River Bridge. Greater Charleston's expansion has reached the point that rail transit is needed to prevent future congestion and control sprawl. Note that Charleston appears on the American Public Transportaion Association list of cities for which light rail has been proposed. Bottom photo: A CSX freight heads south from Scarborough Station on Metro North's Hudson Line with the Tappan Zee Bridge in the distance.