tax breaka and the Wall Street Journal

[Brad De Long]

>A reporter for the Wall Street Journal has posted requests for crazy taxes
>that
>have been levied over the last 1000 years.  I responded that there has
>also been
>considerable craziness in tax breaks.
>
>I wonder if you might have some suggestions to pass on to the paper.
>
>--

My favorite (although my memories of the details are hazy, and it wasn't a
tax but a form of borrowing) episode took place in France during the
eighteenth century: the "thirty young girls of Geneva."

Brad DeLong