Rumi Nations

What business books to read? Andrew Ross Sorkin lost a lot of the regard I had for him when he opined that Glenn Greenwald should be 'almost arrested' for exposing NSA spying through the whistle-blower. That is the problem with 'experts' in one domain butting into other domains which are not their bailiwick. Sorkin is good in finance though and he wrote this column about the best business books for this 'summer' in America. He lists some good books and readers have added their own favorites in the comments. The list includes everything from The Art of War to Machiavelli to Warren Buffett, Michael Lewis, Michael Porter, Malcolm Gladwell, to Andrew Sorkin himself. The well known books such as Barbarians at the Gate and books about insider trading feature in the list.

In any modern nation that has a taxation system, the poor don't pay taxes. In India, more than 90 percent do not pay taxes. But that makes sense. The poor in India do not use as much of the infrastructure. The poor in India do not use airports. The poor in America do not use private planes. One should be taxed at a rate commensurate with one's level of income. This is obvious and does not need debating. When the super rich have to pay taxes at a lower rate as Warren Buffett has reiterated so often, it's clearly unfair. Millionaires need to be taxed at a higher but fair rate. A 90 percent rate of income tax is clearly unfair. But a 30 percent or 35 percent rate of tax seems fair enough. Those in the 10 million to 50 million bracket can correspondingly be charged at a higher rate than the mere single-digit millionaires. Those in the 50 million to 100 million bracket need to pay even higher taxes. The tax rate can increase by 5 percentage points for every tax bracket. The ot...