Brian Gongol
![Business and Finance](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/biz.png)
Some very serious and intelligent economists are advocating for a permanent reduction in or elimination of the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which would quite obviously have a direct and immediate effect on Americans' take-home paychecks -- after all, we're talking about around 15% of income. But we certainly can't abruptly stop paying for those programs, and they're about to get a lot more expensive than ever before. The idea is now being floated that a permanent greenhouse-emissions tax ought to be put into place to take up the slack. But to work, that tax would have to be enormous -- and it would imply that greenhouse gases are among the worst possible pollutants created in a modern economy. What happens, though, if it turns out that the science is just a little bit off -- not catastrophically wrong, but just a little wrong -- but wrong enough that it turns out that other things are far worse threats to human life? What if, just five years from now, someone discovers and deploys a substitute for energy sources we use today, and suddenly we need to produce few or no greenhouse gases without sacrificing our standard of living? Then what would we tax?
![Agriculture](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/ag.png)
It'll be interesting to see if any significant share of the public responds to the recession by growing food at home
![Science and Technology](http://gongol.com/assets/icons/2005icons/sci.png)