Limit Forest Service's Role Expansion to Informing Policy

摘要

Agood friend of ours, Professor Warren Flick, often stated that taxes are the most direct manifestation of government policy on citizens' lives, and thus are an important area of study. The fact that he was often saying this to undergraduate policy students who had often never even paid taxes did not necessarily endear him to his students, but the point was well-taken. Only governments can tax the general population and these taxes are often imposed or not imposed with the express intention of altering people's behavior. Citizens can analyze (sometimes only with the assistance of a tax professional) the financial implications of existing and proposed tax policies and factor this information into their decisionmaking, including how they manage theirforests. But their choices may well be predetermined because of the government's tax policy decisions.