There was much talk in this pre-election year about radical reform of the tax structure--from Dick Armey and Steve Forbes's flat tax (cf. Firing Line #FLS125), to a value-added tax, to Mr. Frank's proposal: a consumption tax, which he defends engagingly here. It is not, please note, a luxury tax, despite the title of his book (Luxury Fever: Why Money Fails to Satisfy in an Era of Excess): "The government is just not well equipped to decide what's a luxury and what's not a luxury. Suppose I'm a schoolteacher and I love to sail, and I want to buy a $100,000 sailboat, and I have saved all my life to do it and I buy a good one. Who is some bureaucrat to tell me that that's a luxury I shouldn't buy? ... The tax I'm talking about makes no attempt to identify how you are spending your money. It just says the rate you pay on your consumption goes up the more you consume."