Profiles

The telephone tax initially was a penny a call — a single cent. Writes Ted Roberts: Eventually there was real money to be made from a phone tax.

If there's a cyclical event in economics as dependable as the rising sun in the natural world, writes Ted Roberts, it's the regularity of postal rate increases.

The concept of taxation well deserves its partnership with death. Death and taxes, you know. Two vultures. Both, to say the least, deadly.

Russia, like the US, has a tax law. It is their current substitute for the knout of Czarist days, writes Ted Roberts.

Ted Roberts asks why his president, my congressman, my governor, the Postmaster General, or the county tax assessor isn't as eager to hear his opinions as a manufacturer of sugared, cola-flavored water? Politicians seem oblivious to the charms of consumer prejudices, but giants like Pepsi, and even...