Debt Bomb: The updated app

Kyle Smith is the developer of the Debt Bomb application for mobile devices. We posted an item on the app when it was released this past spring. Developer Kyle Smith now writes to let us know that he has just updated the app:

Thank you so much to those who downloaded Debt Bomb when I released it last spring. For those who are unfamiliar with Debt Bomb, it is an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad app that allows users to input basic demographic information about a household. The app then produces projections of how much more that household would have to pay in taxes if the federal government were to forgo spending cuts and resort to tax increases to stabilize the debt or balance the budget. As you can imagine, the results are sobering.

One of the suggestions I received when I initially released Debt Bomb was to improve its model by accounting for the dynamic effects of tax increases. Version 1.0 assumes “static effects,” just like the Congressional Budget Office does when it makes long-term deficit projections. In short, static effects mean that taxpayers do not change their behavior in response to higher tax rates. We know intuitively that this is unrealistic, so in light of this issue and the current debate in the presidential election over America’s fiscal troubles, I have created an update to Debt Bomb. The app’s input page now has an “Advanced” option that allows the user to specify to what degree taxpayers would respond to higher tax rates.

You will probably want to maximize your Roth IRA contributions after seeing the updated app’s results.

Readers can download the updated app here.

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