Flat Tax on Wealth

When I was a kid, Dad said, "You can have any thing you want-anything in the world-as long as you can pay for it."

"Want a pair of roller skates? No problem How about a scooter?" (He built me one, as did most dads of our era, out of a couple of boards and the wheels from an old pair of roller skates.) "A bicycle?" (On the way back from the Jersey Shore when I was six, he bought me a bicycle a man was offering on his front porch for $9, dickering the seller down, first to $7, then to $5.) "Car? Boat? Airplane? It's yours, as long as you can pay for it."

Of course, the corollary was his real message:

If you can't pay for it, you can't have it.

In later years that wisdom was supplemented with:

Get out of debt.

Stay out of debt.

Later on, I myself added one more caveat: don't borrow to bet Those timeless words form the premise of this book.