Not long ago, I paid $25 at an antiques store to buy an old $1,000 bond that now hangs, framed, in our office in Scarsdale, N.Y.

The beautifully engraved bond was issued by the Lehigh Valley Terminal Railway Company, a newly organized subsidiary of the Lehigh Valley Railroad, on Oct. 1, 1891. It recites that the railroad “acknowledges itself indebted to the bearer hereof in the sum of One Thousand Dollars in gold coin of the United States of America of the present standard weight and fineness, of which sum the said company agrees to pay in like gold coin to the bearer” on Oct. 1, 1941.

In other words, this was a 50-year bond. It carried a coupon interest rate of 5 percent, together with that promise to repay principal, in gold coin, a half-century after it was issued.

That promise was never kept. In fact, it could not legally have been. In 1933, one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s first acts was to nationalize all American gold holdings. He devalued the dollar by 75 percent and ordered all U.S. citizens and companies to exchange their gold for the paper money that was declared legal tender for all debts, public and private. So, by 1941, the railroad could not have redeemed its bonds for U.S. gold coin, but only for paper money. It did neither.

Having survived the Great Depression, the railroad apparently did not find itself in a position to retire the bonds. Britain was struggling to hang on against Hitler’s Third Reich, and America was shipping Lend-Lease goods for the Allies as fast as they could be hauled and loaded. The bond was extended to 1951.

But it was not repaid in 1951, either. The railroad’s key freight business, hauling anthracite coal from the Pennsylvania mines, went into a steep decline after World War II. Passenger service also became unprofitable as travelers took to the new turnpikes in their equally new automobiles. Somehow, the railroad prevailed upon bondholders to grant another extension, to 1979.

By 1962 most of the Lehigh’s operations had been folded into the Pennsylvania Railroad, which staggered into a 1968 merger with the New York Central to become the Penn Central. The Penn Central itself went bust in 1976, when the federal government combined it with five smaller lines to form Conrail. By that time, my bond’s only value was decorative.

If you think this tale is just a bit of quaint economic history that has no relevance today, note that railroad titan Norfolk Southern Corp. recently sold $250 million worth of 100-year bonds with a 6 percent interest rate. The company had originally planned to sell only $100 million of the bonds, but investors were so eager to hand money over to the railroad for a century that it decided to increase the size of the offering.

Although they have enjoyed occasional periods of limited popularity, century bonds are rare. The last time an American company offered such long-term bonds was in 2005, when Norfolk Southern sold an earlier round of $300 million in century bonds.

There is a good reason why these bonds are so uncommon: A hundred years is a long time. As my old bond demonstrates, even half that span brought world-changing events that nobody could have imagined in 1891, including two global wars, an unprecedented depression, the rise of totalitarianism and the outlawing of gold currency.

Why would anyone want to lend money for a century? And, especially, why would anyone today lend money for 100 years to a railroad, a 19th-century business that will need to survive well into the 22nd century to repay the debt?

To be fair, railroads remain the most efficient means of moving bulky, heavy freight across long distances over land. Warren Buffet’s 2009 decision to acquire Burlington Northern Santa Fe (like Norfolk Southern, one of the country’s four major transcontinental lines) for $26 billion was, if not wise, at least not irrational. But Buffet bought an entire railroad. Norfolk Southern’s bondholders are merely buying a 100-year promise.

Even if the railroad industry remains strong, the fates of individual railroads can rise and fall. Railroads, after all, are prisoners of their route systems. When economic growth shifts to new geographic areas, the railroad can’t just pick up its tracks and follow the customers. Betting on a specific railroad for an extended time, therefore, carries extreme risk. The largest railroads are counting on their geographic reach to diversify this risk. But, of course, even the largest North American railroads are mainly confined to one country. If economic activity moves overseas, the railroads can do little to make up for the lost business.

In the present low-interest-rate environment, companies have good reason to lock in long-term financing. They must pay a little extra to investors compared with short-term financing, but they do not need to worry about having to refinance the debt later when rates might be less favorable. Nofolk Southern spokesman Robin Chapman explained: “We decided to reopen these 100-year bonds based on the current low interest rates and the strong appetite among buyers for them.”

That “strong appetite” basically shows that bond buyers are, at present, delusional. They are chasing high yields in today’s low-yield environment, heedless of all the economic, credit and interest rate risk (these bonds’ values will plunge when rates rise) they are assuming. Because those risks are not factors today, bond buyers are convincing themselves they will not arise in the future — even though, over a century’s time, they assuredly will. Investors foolishly persuade themselves that a single company’s 100-year promise is less risky than a diversified basket of stocks. Many of these investors are pension funds and insurance companies that are, absurdly, pretending that a 100-year bond aligns well with their own cash needs over the next two to seven decades.

They won’t even get a pretty wall hanging to show for it. Modern bonds are issued in “book entry” form, existing only as bytes of data. No beautiful engravings. No 119-year old piece of paper to remind future investors of all the things that are going to change, even if today’s investors want to imagine that the 22nd century will look just like the 21st.

Across the country, families have been packing their children (and a roomful of their children’s possessions) into trucks and SUVs and heading for college. It’s a big day for parents and students alike.

For the colleges, though, it’s just one more start to one more school year. Some of them wish the parents would just go home already. This, at least, is the gist of a recent New York Times article.

I will grant that there is some separation anxiety. The classic symptoms – tears and tantrum-filled goodbyes – are not unusual outside freshman dorms at this time of year. Especially the tears. Yes, I know separation anxiety is a developmental stage that is supposed to occur in toddlers, not aging Baby Boomers, but underneath our graying hair, are we that different?

The colleges don’t seem to think so. Some have instituted formal parting ceremonies or hard deadlines for parents to remove themselves from campus. The colleges know the students are ready. They seem to think that if they can just make the parents let go, the grown-ups will begin adjusting to a healthy and independent life while their kids are away.

One administrator’s comment, reported in The Times, particularly rubbed me the wrong way. “These are the baby-on-board parents, highly invested in their students’ success. They do a lot of living vicariously, and this is one manifestation of that,” suggested Houston Dougharty, vice president of student affairs at Grinnell College.

While some parents do live vicariously through their children, most are not lingering out of some desire to relive their own college experience. “Invested” might not be the precise word Dougharty wanted; “involved” would be more accurate.

The schools mentioned by The Times are mainly selective or highly selective four-year colleges, many of which have a sticker price as high as $50,000 per year. These incoming students are not putting themselves through college.

In fact, sending a child to this sort of school is a multi-generation commitment that begins almost at birth. I vividly remember watching two mothers, standing outside our daughter’s preschool classroom, discussing how lacrosse and field hockey would help their girls stand out from the crowd of Ivy League college applicants.

Not that sports alone (other than big-time football or basketball) will get anyone into a highly competitive university. In large part because these schools themselves compete for higher rankings in various publications’ “top schools” lists, they want applicants who have developed a diagnostic test for a deadly disease, or who have written a sonata that has been performed by a major metropolitan symphony. At the very least, they expect students to have provided potable water to an impoverished African village.

These are 18-year-olds.

Such students exist only through an intense team effort that is usually quarterbacked by their parents. Colleges seem to expect parents to sign a form, hand over a large check, and then evaporate. That is not going to happen. If, say, a bureaucratic problem should arise, not many parents want to leave a teenager in charge of battling a tenured and imperious administrator.

You don’t hear much about a “generation gap” anymore. Today’s kids talk to their parents. Sure, they have their private Facebook lives (private from us, anyway), but these students, the lucky ones attending the best schools in the country, have a support network that they have relied on to make it to this point. They don’t have to face the world alone.

They even know that, should they need it, they can rely on this same support after college. Between the recession and the cultural shift toward spending more of the 20s experimenting with jobs and relationships, more of them are doing just that.

There are other students, of course, who are not as fortunate. These students must make their way through school and through life entirely on their own abilities, without the parental wingmen at their side. They are the ones who must make certain they have everything they need on that first morning of college, because they don’t have parents who will do it for them.

Most of them will be fine, just like most of the more fortunate kids. But they have a tougher road ahead, and they deserve respect and empathy.

College is certainly, in part, about independence. But it will never again be as it was in my era, when my parents were 2,500 miles away and I only had one expensive 10-minute phone call with them per week. That was enough for me to get by, but life would have been easier if the world were as small then as it is today.

Today’s parents and their children can decide, together, how often they should communicate. Some students might still be happy with a weekly phone call, though evening and weekend cell phone plans mean they probably get more than 10 minutes. Some students may instant message their parents every night. But the choice of how much contact is appropriate belongs to families, not college administrators.

The colleges can relax. All those parents will go home eventually. They will be fine and so will their kids. Colleges need to understand, as parents are coming to understand, that adulthood is an evolution rather than an event. When we ask this much of students, we need not ask them to do it alone.

For 15 years, I have taken pride in paying the full cost of health insurance for every full-time Palisades Hudson employee who wanted it. This month marks the last time I will do that.

Beginning in October, our 20 employees will make their own decisions, and their own arrangements, regarding health coverage. They can stay on our company’s plan, but they will have to pay the entire cost – ranging from $574 to $683 per month – themselves, through payroll deductions. Though I am raising everybody’s salary by $3,000 per year, or $250 per month, as a partial offset to the loss of company-paid health coverage, those who remain on the company plan will have a significant new out-of-pocket expense.

Some will undoubtedly make other arrangements instead. A few can elect to be covered under a spouse’s or domestic partner’s plan. In New York, where a state law already requires insurers to cover family members through age 29, some may be able to join a parent’s plan. These staffers may end up benefiting from the pay raise.

My employees could opt to go uninsured. The new federal requirement for all adults to have insurance or pay a penalty does not take effect until 2014. I hope nobody makes this choice, but they are adults, and the decision now is in their hands.

Our employees in Florida and Georgia have checked out the market for individual insurance. In those states, they may be able to purchase acceptable, if not ideal, coverage with the $250 per month raise I am giving them. There are adverse tax consequences, which we may address later with some type of flexible benefits program, but our workers in those states need not take a big economic hit to stay insured.

New York is another story. It has a broad range of mandates for individual insurance policies that make such coverage in the Empire State very expensive. Our Scarsdale staff is likely to find that the company plan, expensive as it is, is cheaper than individual insurance even for a healthy young adult.

My actions are not coming as a surprise to anyone. I wrote in this space in March that the Affordable Care Act, which was enacted later that month, is likely to make health coverage anything but affordable for those who actually pay the bills. I have no desire to stand next to the tracks in order to watch this train wreck unfold at close range. Though the most significant impacts are delayed until 2014 and beyond, I have no guarantee that the law at that time will make it economically practical to change my company health plans. So I am making the changes now.

When they wrote this year’s legislation, policymakers had a choice: They could emphasize near-universal coverage, or they could emphasize controlling costs. They opted for near-universal coverage. As a result, business owners and higher income Americans (many of whom, like me, are one and the same) will soon pay an array of higher taxes to finance the broader coverage that President Obama and congressional Democrats mandated.

So I now find myself responsible for paying for health insurance for more than 30 million strangers. Yet the cash needs of my business, which is growing despite the difficult economy of the past few years, are not going to decline. Nor are my personal financial commitments going to decrease. The only way to make financial room for those 30 million strangers is to stop paying for insurance for the 20 people I work with every day.

Politics mandated that Obama and his fellow Democrats at least pretend that their legislation will constrain runaway spending. The new law’s very name is part of that pretense. But there is little in the actual legislation that has any real prospect of controlling spending; instead, the law attempts to control premiums by fiat through new regulations and oversight. Government may be able to prevent insurers from pricing policies in ways that make sense, but it can’t force them to operate at a loss. The other shoe, in the form of higher premium prices or a rollback of the new law’s mandates, is certain to drop. Higher prices are the more likely outcome.

I am not the only employer reaching this conclusion. AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar and Deere have all contemplated dropping their health benefits as a result of the health reform legislation. About 63 percent of businesses intend to shift a higher percentage of premium costs to employees in 2011, according to a survey recently released by the Washington-based National Business Group on Health. The survey included 72 companies that employ more than 3.7 million people. In most cases, the change will likely be a gradual one rather than an immediate move from fully employer-paid health care to fully employee-paid health care. But, over time, companies around the country will probably reach the same endpoint that I did. It is far easier for a small business owner like me to make a drastic change than it is for a global corporation.

The law’s supporters will portray employers like me as bad guys who are using the new law as a smokescreen to make changes we wanted to make anyway. Though the accusation is false, it has a germ of truth: Runaway health insurance costs have been a burden for every business that pays them. Every sensible manager has at least considered steps to stem this financial hemorrhage. Many of us were just holding on so as not to disrupt employees’ lives while we waited for policymakers to do something.

Now they have done something, and it only made the problem worse. There is no longer any reason to wait.

Want to blame me for cutting my employees’ health insurance? Go ahead. Just keep in mind that the only power I have is to sign checks. I did not create our broken system, and I am not the one who wasted an excellent chance to fix it.

Financial advisers often discuss investors who are “risk-averse.” But people, on the whole, are not terribly averse to risk.

We are, on the other hand, extremely averse to loss.

Imagine the following game show scenario: You are offered the choice of receiving $3,000 in hand, right away, or the potential for $4,000 with a 20 percent chance of getting nothing at all. There are some daring souls who would go for the $4,000, but many of us would be just as happy to take the $3,000 and be done.

But now imagine the inverse. You can either lose your $3,000 for certain, or you can risk losing $4,000 instead, but with a 20 percent chance of not losing anything. That 20 percent is starting to look much more attractive for most of us. And the decision is more likely to be one we’ll sweat over.

(For those who dislike number-crunching, I will point out that the choice we expect most people to make in each case is, statistically, wrong. On the receiving end, you have an 80 percent chance of winning $4,000, so the mathematically expected benefit of the second option is $3,200. In the losing scenario, an 80 percent chance of losing $4,000 yields an expected loss of $3,200, so the rational course is to take the certain $3,000 loss.)

This is exactly the sort of question posed by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky in their well-known 1979 study. Prospect theory, as developed by Kahneman and Tversky, suggests that in most cases, people are risk-averse when it comes to gains, but risk-inclined when that risk might prevent losses. More subjectively, it feels almost twice as bad to lose $100 as it feels good to win the same amount.

Being wary of loss is understandable, and not necessarily a problem. Some losses are too big to withstand, while the costs of avoiding them are tolerable. Buying fire insurance on your house, for example, is likely to be a losing proposition. Few houses have fires, and not every fire is catastrophic. But the cost of fire insurance is tolerable, while, for most people, the cost of replacing an uninsured home is not.

Still, we can make better choices if we understand why we are inclined to make the decisions we make.

As an investor, you may eventually face a steadily failing stock. Recognizing the failure early and getting rid of the investment can mitigate your losses. But selling comes at the cost of admitting that the stock is not likely to recover. You might be more inclined to cling to the unlikely prospect that you won’t lose anything than to accept your loss early, even though doing so probably will minimize the damage.

Knowing this, it is wise to make some decisions before emotions can get in the way. For example, setting a maximum acceptable loss when you first buy a stock will let you decide how much loss you can stand with a cool head, when the loss is purely hypothetical. Should the worst happen, the emotional bump will still be there, but you won’t make your losses worse by clinging to risk in the faint hope of a return. (Or you can do as we typically do, by diversifying your portfolio so much – through mutual funds or other mechanisms – that even a total loss on an individual stock position is acceptable.)

It is also important to consider what prospect theory calls “framing,” or the way a problem is presented. And the decision involved may not always be a strictly financial one.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine examined the importance of framing in a medical context. Researchers framed the exact same data about comparative mortality rates two different ways when offering lung cancer patients the choice between surgery and radiation. When framed in terms of life (surgery carries a 90 percent immediate survival rate, and a 34 percent five-year rate; radiation offers 100 percent and 22 percent), patients overwhelmingly chose surgery. However, when the same data were reframed as mortality rates, (i.e. 10 percent of patients die during surgery, etc.), the majority chose radiation.

Comparing the two frames side by side makes it clear that not only are they precisely the same choice, but that surgery offers the better overall chance for survival. But most people do not tend to reframe a question when the original way it is presented is reasonable. This side-by-side comparison happens seldom in real life.

Clearly, paying attention to how questions are framed can be crucial for making rational and sound decisions. It can also put you on your guard against tactics used by everyone from advertisers to politicians in presenting choices a certain way.

Everybody’s perception of risk is different. Some people find skiing too risky; others enjoy sky-diving. Some people will ride an airplane, but not a motorcycle, while some people do the reverse. Some people play the lottery regularly. Others (like me) find it not worth the time, let alone the money it will nearly always cost. What we consider “too risky” and why comes from a variety of factors, some rational, some less.

Risk is an unavoidable part of life. Understanding how we react to risk can help us make life more rewarding.

Medical researchers who are furiously trying to develop new tests, vaccines and treatments for Alzheimer’s and other devastating brain diseases have pointed us toward something we can use immediately: a helmet.

We are not talking about some type of super-helmet with miraculous prophylactic powers. Just an ordinary helmet, suited to the activities many of us like to engage in. A bicycle helmet when we ride. A ski helmet when we ski. The ever-unpopular motorcycle helmet when we tool down the interstate to Bike Week in Florida or New Hampshire or South Dakota.

Researchers in Boston recently published a study suggesting that many cases of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also called A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease) are in fact a related but separate condition caused by repeated head trauma. Dementia pugilistica, or punch-drunk syndrome, has long been a prospect professional boxers face. Some medical professionals have suggested that Muhammad Ali’s case of Parkinson’s disease was precipitated by the abuse he took in the ring. And studies now show that small head injuries over time can dramatically raise the probability of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Ann McKee, the lead neuropathologist on the recent A.L.S. study, was also a leader in recognizing a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), which mimics the pathology of Alzheimer’s. McKee noticed a disproportionately high incidence of C.T.E. among professional football players and boxers. Though her sample size was initially small, it has grown steadily over the last few years. In autopsy, the athletes’ brains showed the “plaque and tangles” of proteins that are the signature of Alzheimer’s disease.

McKee explained, “To get this number in a sample this small is really unusual, and the findings are so far out of the norm. I only can say that because I have looked at thousands of brains for a long time. This isn’t something that you just see.”

Recently, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania solidified the link between repeated head injury and full-fledged Alzheimer’s. While it has long been understood that severe head trauma can trigger or hasten the condition, this study showed that mild, repeated trauma speeds up the disease’s process as well. For those studying a disease whose exact causes are still nebulous, it is a discovery that’s both sobering and potentially helpful.

Early detection is one of the biggest concerns in Alzheimer’s research today. A recent study published in the Archives of Neurology demonstrates the potential accuracy of testing cerebrospinal fluid, for example, which could prove a major boon. Knowing that patients who have suffered even mild head trauma are at risk can help ensure that early testing occurs. For years, there has been no way to tell that a patient has Alzheimer’s with certainty until post-mortem examination, but that is slowly beginning to change.

Part of this recent progress is the result of an unusual decision by researchers to make all their findings instantly available to one another. Several major organizations, including the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, formed an alliance in 2003 when they realized that no one company or institution would be able to make the rapid progress necessary to gain traction against Alzheimer’s.

And while this collaboration flies in the face of the typical way that medical research is conducted, it did not come a moment too soon. The cost of Alzheimer’s disease is immense. According to a recent report by the Alzheimer’s Association, the U.S. spends $172 billion annually on Alzheimer’s in patients 65 and over. Current trends and an aging population imply that the figure could reach more than $1 trillion annually by 2050. The potential out-of-pocket costs for families, and the current uncertainty about who could be affected or why, are also the driving forces behind the long-term care insurance industry.

This is, of course, to say nothing of the enormous personal impact Alzheimer’s has on individuals and their families. Dementia caused by C.T.E. and Parkinson’s can be equally devastating. But early diagnosis may be able to help with treatment, and can certainly help with costs. Prevention is better still.

Earlier generations underestimated the importance of head protection. I myself was initially skeptical of the trend among modern parents to strap helmets to their children before every bike ride around the neighborhood, though I did it with my own kids. I was also once a helmet-less skier, until my daughters joined me on the slopes. By that point, there were too many serious or fatal skiing accidents to ignore. (Actress Natasha Richardson recently provided a tragic example of the deadliness of seemingly benign head injury.)

Gone are the days of Lou Gehrig, who was notorious for playing through injuries that would bench even N.F.L. players today. And as more information about the long-term effects of head trauma becomes available, we are going to have to evaluate how we protect athletes, soldiers and children with an even closer eye. The cost of redesigning a helmet can’t compare to the staggering cost of Alzheimer’s alone.

For now, it seems the simplest and earliest preventative treatment for Alzheimer’s is to make an effort to protect the heads of children and young adults. We’ll take the ounce of prevention for now, and hope that the pound of cure is not too far away.

It cost $47,102 to house an inmate in a California state penitentiary in 2008. For 13 years, Gregory Taylor was one of the people Californians paid to keep locked up.

Taylor was jailed for trying to break into a church kitchen to find something to eat.

Taylor was homeless at the time and was coping with drug addiction. He had previously received food at the church and occasionally slept there, the pastor, Rev. Alan McCoy, testified. Taylor’s target was the kitchen, rather than any place where valuables would be kept, and his crime was nonviolent.

Despite these mitigating circumstances, Taylor was sentenced to 25 years to life in 1997. He had two prior convictions for robbery: one for stealing a purse that contained $10 and the other for attempting to rob a man on the street. Both were from the 1980s and neither resulted in injury. But, according to California law, three strikes mean you’re out. The law requires judges to hand down a minimum sentence with little room to consider individual circumstances.

Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza recently amended Taylor’s sentence to allow for his almost immediate release. It is time that we amend the laws that create cases like Taylor’s as well.

The trend toward mandatory minimum sentences began on a state level in the 1970s and gained momentum in the 1980s, when the federal government imposed mandatory sentences for gun- and drug-related crimes. At the time, high crime rates threatened to turn many American cities into hollowed-out slums. Violent crimes committed by individuals who had already passed through the criminal justice system triggered alarm and indignation within communities.

It is impossible to argue with the results. Keeping criminals locked up longer leaves us with less crime. New York state’s minimum sentencing laws, known as the Rockefeller Drug Laws, contributed to the transformation of New York City from a murder capital to a relatively safe tourist town. In 2007, there were fewer than 500 murders committed in New York City for the first time since records began in 1963. In 1990, the city had 2,245 homicides.

But a sustainable system of criminal justice cannot rely on keeping as many people as possible locked up for as long as possible. For one thing, doing so is simply unaffordable. As states struggle to meet basic expenses, massive prison expenditures continue to eat away at large chunks of their budgets. A May version of the California 2010-2011 annual budget allocated $9 billion to corrections and rehabilitation, more than 7 percent of the total budget. While the amount set aside for K-12 education dropped 2.1 percent from 2009-2010, the budget for corrections and rehabilitation was increased by 9.7 percent.

Mandatory minimum sentences lead to senseless non-decisions in which huge sums of money are spent and lives are ruined simply to comply with statutes, without allowing for any analysis of the particular situation.

The system was originally intended to reduce sentencing discrepancies to promote greater fairness. Instead it often leads to similar offenders being treated unequally. Federal laws, for example, distinguish between crack cocaine and other forms of the drug, even when the behavior in question is similar. This discrepancy has disproportionately affected African Americans, according to the California State Conference of the NAACP. The Conference reports that, before mandatory minimums for crack cocaine offenses came into effect, the average federal sentence for African Americans was 11 percent longer than the average sentence for Caucasians. After the implementation of the new laws, sentences for African Americans were 49 percent longer.

So why do these laws remain on the books? Largely politics. Officeholders and candidates are reluctant to oppose mandatory minimums for fear of being seen as soft on crime. Another factor is the failure of most people to empathize with petty criminals who run afoul of harsh sentencing laws. If you don’t know a Gregory Taylor, chances are good that you don’t care very much when he gets tossed in jail for decades for literally trying to steal a crust of bread.

Imprisonment and justice are not the same thing. We do not want to live in the sort of society depicted in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables.” Crime must be deterred and punished, but a harsh, relentless law that takes no account of the human condition can cost society far more than criminals do.

We need to return control to judges, who are in a position to consider the specifics of each case. Judges are not perfect. We will inevitably get many questionable and inconsistent sentences. But at least the legal system will be geared to dispense justice with understanding and common sense. Draconian and robotic sentencing laws predictably yield draconian and robotic results.

As we conclude this hard-times summer of the “stay-cation,” New Yorkers who are contemplating divorce can finally end their marriages in a civilized way, without leaving home.

Until this month, New York was the last state to require a divorcing spouse to prove that the other party was guilty of cruelty, adultery or abandonment. Every other state has had no-fault divorces for decades. As a result, New Yorkers had to suffer through needlessly prolonged, contentious and expensive marital litigation.

Draconian divorce laws once were commonplace. Reno, Nev., created an entire tourist industry around divorce after Mary Pickford won her divorce there in 1920 under Nevada’s then-unusually lax divorce law. The state even changed the required length of residency from six months to six weeks in 1931, hoping to draw more potential divorcees.

This culture of divorce-vacations continued until 1969, when California became the first state to pass a no-fault divorce law. In the next 15 years most other states followed, leaving Reno to those looking for skiing, gambling or pork ribs.

Absurdly, New York stood alone as the last state to demand proof of fault in divorce cases. At best, this encouraged mutually-agreed-upon perjury from husband and wife. At worst, and more often, it led to huge and messy legal battles, especially for those without means to go elsewhere to get their divorce. (In addition to Reno, Mexico was also popular in the 1960s.) Lawyers profited, but spouses suffered.

Opponents of no-fault divorce claimed that the practice made divorce too easy, so that couples who might have worked things out gave up too soon. Others feared that women especially would be in danger of being abandoned or impoverished by their husbands. These arguments were often, if not always, tied to religious beliefs. Dennis Poust, the spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference, complained that New York’s new law would make it “easier to get out of marriage than it is to get out of a cell phone contract.”

New York’s divorce laws led to other evils, however, beyond perjury and inconvenience. The prior law often gave one partner unwarranted leverage in divorce proceedings. No-fault divorce mitigates that danger. “It removes the financial incentive for one party to keep the other in a bad marriage,” according to Paul Talbert, a partner at Chemtob Moss Forman & Talbert, LLP.

Financial planners often see divorce as one of the most serious threats to a couple’s financial security. To some extent this is unavoidable, since divorce creates two sets of household expenses where one previously existed. But much of the financial damage is self-inflicted by unnecessary fighting. New York’s system of contested divorces aggravated the situation. When people are trapped in unhappy relationships, they ought to be able to get out as painlessly as possible.

Marriage is really two institutions – civil and religious. New York was the last remaining battleground for religion in the civil divorce arena.

Religious institutions can handle divorce in any way they see fit. A number of faiths, including Orthodox Judaism, do not consider a mere civil divorce sufficient to terminate a marriage. That’s their business. But religion has no business dictating the way civil marriage is administered.

It took New York awhile to catch up, but New Yorkers now have one less reason to plan a vacation away from home.

You don’t hear this very often, but I hope my taxes go up next year – and yours, too.

I do not have a burning desire to send more money to Washington. I don’t have a ton of disposable cash and no better place to use it. I do not buy the patently silly argument, propounded by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and others in the Obama administration, that a tax increase on business owners like me will have no effect on employment. I think a tax increase is going to set back economic recovery, perhaps substantially.

Yet I have concluded that a tax increase, and a hefty one at that, is essential to make the point that the money our government spends really comes from someplace, and that ultimately that “someplace” is all of us. Our paying higher taxes will not encourage politicians to just spend more, because they already spend without constraint. Higher taxes will, instead, create the public pressure to receive value for every dollar spent. A tax increase is the only way to break the current mindset in which $1 trillion has become the new $100 billion – an amount that, only a few years ago, seemed like a whole lot of money.

Too many social costs these days are hidden. A large proportion of wage earners pay little income tax except for Social Security, and they are told, falsely, that they will get that Social Security money back from a “trust fund” that consists of government IOUs. But through lower cash wages or longer searches for work, those same wage earners indirectly pay for a host of burdens that their employers shoulder: pre- and often post-retirement health care, pensions, unemployment insurance, disability insurance, and in some cases, mandatory time off.

Politicians tell us that a handful of rich people and corporations can carry the load for everyone, or that we can keep taxes far below what we spend and trust economic growth to take care of the difference. Neither is true. (The latter argument reminds me of the merchant who bought socks for $5 a pair, sold them for $4 and explained to a customer, “I make it up on volume.”)

So I hope everyone’s taxes will go up, to restore spending sanity. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans want to grant my wish. You might think this disappoints me, as it means my only real hope is for a long stretch of gridlock to prevail after the November elections. But I kind of like my chances.

The Bush income tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2010, the same time the estate tax will return, if Congress doesn’t take action before then. In this case, everyone’s taxes will rise. The estate tax will be 55 percent and will have a lower exemption than it did when it was suspended ($1 million, down from the former $3.5 million).

President Obama wants to extend the tax cuts only for individuals who make less than $200,000 a year, and for couples who make less than $250,000. The Republicans, on the other hand, are pushing to extend the tax cuts across the board. Former Sen. Fred Thompson is heading an ad campaign in which he argues that letting the tax cuts expire would be devastating to the economic recovery. Those who would preserve the tax cuts argue that the American economy is too fragile to sustain an increased tax burden, and that even Obama’s proposed extensions are too limited to support job growth.

There’s no consensus on the estate tax, either. Democrats would like to return to the 2009 rates; Republicans see an opportunity to further vilify their opposition, hitting them with the “tax-and-spend” stick, as I noted in here in December.

I detest the estate tax. But at a $1 million exemption level, it will affect enough people to refocus attention on the question of whether we really want to tax the hypothetical value of something (since many assets have no published value), in the absence of a sale that would provide funds for paying the tax, just because someone happens to die.

Experience has taught me a simple truth about budgeting: There is never enough revenue. No matter how much money is available, whether for a household, a business or a government, it is always possible to spend more. Budgets work only when they serve to restrain spending. Right now, this country spends as though it has access to a limitless supply of money. This must change.

You may have caught on to my dirty little secret, which is that I am part of that small club (the “wealthy” as defined by Obama) for whom taxes are going to rise, sooner or later, no matter what. So when I say I want taxes to rise for everyone, I’m really saying I want taxes to rise for someone besides me and my economic peers.

That’s exactly right. I’ll ante up when called upon. I just hope that, when I do, I’m paying for a responsible government that uses my money wisely, one that does not behave as though the country’s financial health beyond the next election cycle does not matter.

So I am rooting for gridlock and higher taxes. We could do a lot worse.

A quarter-century ago, only someone in desperate need of cash would take a second mortgage. Then Congress changed the tax rules, and today, millions of Americans have “home equity” lines.

Banks are losing $30 billion a year on these products, and untold thousands of families stand to lose their homes to foreclosure. Is this another example of a law’s unexpected consequences? Nope. This outgrowth of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 was perfectly foreseeable, and in fact, foreseen. But, then as now, Congress tended to tune out warnings that it preferred not to hear.

Prior to the tax reform, taxpayers could deduct nearly any sort of interest expense, including interest on credit card balances, automobile loans, and life insurance loans. After the tax reform, nearly all non-business interest expense was no longer deductible.

But a few exceptions remained. The most important was (and is) that taxpayers still can deduct the interest on up to $1 million of mortgage debt incurred to buy or improve a principal residence or a vacation home. The real estate industry lobbied hard to keep this benefit in the law.

The tax reform law also preserved a benefit for second mortgages. Taxpayers are permitted to deduct interest payments on up to $100,000 of debt, regardless of the purpose for which the debt is incurred, so long as they put their home up as collateral. The Internal Revenue Service explains: “Generally, home mortgage interest is any interest you pay on a loan secured by your home (main home or a second home). The loan may be a mortgage to buy your home, a second mortgage, a line of credit, or a home equity loan.” So, even if you plan to use the money for a big screen TV or a vacation, if you borrow against your home, you can take the deduction.

In recent years, many home equity lines of credit have greatly exceeded the $100,000 cap. Interest on the excess debt is nondeductible. However, the government has no easy way to know the size of the loan on which the interest is being paid. Over more than two decades in the tax business, neither I nor any of my co-workers have ever been asked to demonstrate that the interest deductions claimed on a tax return are for a loan within the allowable limits. We follow the law anyway, but we can safely assume that many taxpayers do not, either out of ignorance or otherwise. In practice, therefore, taxpayers can end up taking deductions for interest expense on debt well above the limits.

I was just getting into the tax business when the Tax Reform Act of 1986 passed. The rule on interest deductions made no sense to me, so I asked the experienced CPAs who were training me to explain it. It turned out the exception made no sense to them, either. Why would the government want to encourage an explosion of second mortgages, a term once used somewhat derisively? Wouldn’t the rule just prompt people to get into debt over their heads and then lose their homes? The answer was that it would, and it did.

The popularity of home equity debt soared. By 2008, the value of outstanding home equity loans had risen to more than $1 trillion, from around $1 billion in the early 1980s. Banks did their part to promote the trend, rebranding second mortgages with the more positive terms “home equity loan” and “home equity line of credit.”

“Calling it a ‘second mortgage,’ that’s like hocking your house. But call it ‘equity access,’ and it sounds more innocent,” Pei-Yuan Chia, a former vice chairman at Citicorp who oversaw the bank’s consumer business in the 1980s and 1990s, explained to The New York Times in 2008. High property values allowed borrowers to take on large amounts of debt, using their homes as collateral.

Then the recession came, real estate values plunged, and many borrowers were suddenly unable or unwilling to make their payments. Because of the collapse of the housing market, the homes that lenders held as security had, in many cases, lost their value. Borrowers who were unable to pay off the loans by selling their homes frequently had no choice but to default, leaving banks with the often impossible task of collecting the outstanding debt. In 2009, lenders had to write off $11.1 billion in home equity loans and $19.9 billion in home equity lines of credit as uncollectible. Borrowers lost their homes and emerged with damaged credit histories.

Congress claims to be shocked that such a thing could happen, and yet it was absolutely predictable. People did exactly what the tax code encouraged them to do. The system worked just how it was supposed to, but the tax code was encouraging people to behave in a way that, in the end, was bad for them and bad for the country.

To Form 1040 jockeys like me, the only shocking thing is that it took so long for the house of cards to fall.

Check the national debt clock: Our federal debt is $13.3 trillion, next year’s budget is $1 trillion in the red, and we have unfunded commitments for Social Security, health care and other programs as far as the eye can see.

Is the United States already insolvent? Yes, according to a recent Bloomberg column by Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff. After comparing the government’s obligations with its expected future revenues, he concludes: “Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt.”

But Kotlikoff’s analysis does not go far enough. He looks at all the government’s obligations, but he does not consider the value of all the federal government’s assets. We could sell off federal property to raise money to repay creditors or to support our spending, at least for awhile.

In other words, it will soon be time for some creative financing.

The Treasury has more than 147 million ounces of gold at Fort Knox, Ky. It just sits there, costing us money to store it. That gold is worth more than $176 billion at current prices. I remember when $176 billion was a lot of money. Now, it would plug the hole in next year’s budget for only about two months. Of course, dumping 147 million ounces on the market abruptly would depress the price of gold, so we would likely get even less for it. (Central bankers have an agreement among themselves to limit gold sales for exactly this reason.)

Okay, selling our gold isn’t going to get us very far. We have some other really good stuff in the attic. It’s hard to predict what the White House might bring at auction. We could sell it and then lease it back for any president who wants to occupy it. Or we could just pocket the money and elect rich people who can afford their own digs in the District of Columbia.

How much is the Statue of Liberty worth? What about the Washington Monument? Or the Capitol?

In a piece in Time magazine, Douglas A. McIntyre suggested that selling the timberland of Yellowstone National Park could bring in over $4 billion, but that doesn’t factor in what an eccentric billionaire might give to own Old Faithful.

In 1962, the British government got nearly $2.5 million when it sold the London Bridge, which was in disrepair, to American oil magnate Robert McCulloch. (He moved it to Arizona.) Our famous bridges, like the Golden Gate and the Brooklyn Bridge, are not federally owned as far as I know. Still, perhaps we could sell the Bay Bridge that links San Francisco with Oakland. Like London Bridge, the Bay Bridge has a tendency to fall down.

If selling any of our national crown jewels seems unthinkable, the federal government owns plenty of other land that we could more easily part with. A 2004 congressional study found that the federal government owned 28.8 percent of all the land in the country, a total of more than 653 million acres, most of it national forest and federal grazing land. The total includes nearly 85 percent of Nevada. We could sell some of that land We could sell Nevada. We could throw in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and make it a package deal.

While we are on the subject of selling sparsely settled states, the Russians have expressed interest in reversing the Alaska Purchase. One call to Messrs. Putin and Medvedev might be all it takes. We should insist, however, that they also take any adult Alaskan named Palin or Johnston who has ever appeared on national television.

In the nation’s urban centers, we really ought to look at maximizing value for the numerous old forts and other military installations that serve little purpose in the modern defense structure, but which sit on valuable real estate. We can no longer afford sweetheart deals like the $1 sale of much of Governor’s Island to the people of New York in 2003, and the similar conversion of the San Francisco Presidio to a public park.

Only 800 yards from the southern tip of Manhattan, Governor’s Island has 172 mostly wooded acres that, in private hands, would be a developer’s dream. But after serving as a U.S. military base for almost two centuries, it is now open to the public and serves as a playground for urban dwellers. Recently it hosted a “Commandos vs. Zombies” capture the flag game. There is a miniature golf course with holes that are also works of art.

This is all very nice, but we just can’t afford it. Before its one-dollar sale, the island was valued at $500 million. It would not have been hard to find a buyer eager to put up luxury apartments instead of a quirky miniature golf course.

On the other hand, there are some federal assets that we should give away just to avoid an endless stream of future losses. Amtrak jumps to mind. A study last year found that, in 2008, U.S. taxpayers kicked in about $32 in subsidies toward the cost of the typical Amtrak trip. Even in the Northeast, where passenger volume is highest, Amtrak lost almost $5 for each passenger who traveled on its Northeast Regional trains. The train between San Antonio and Los Angeles lost $462 per passenger.

Our leaders have not been talking about asset sales because, so far, foreign lenders have been willing to hand us vast sums of money at ridiculously low rates. And they have been willing to roll over that debt again and again. But eventually the rest of the world is going to realize that Uncle Sam is in debt way over his head, and the lending party is going to stop.

Other countries have already started putting assets on the market. European governments sold €13 billion worth of property (about $17 billion at today’s rates) in 2006, according to a report by CB Richard Ellis. The United Kingdom has announced plans to sell around £35 billion (about $53 billion) of assets over the next 10 years. Russia recently said it plans to raise around $30 billion by selling minority stakes in 11 state-run firms.

Our turn is coming. Take another look at that national debt clock. See how much it has increased in just the time it took to read this column? We may not be bankrupt yet, but we’re well on our way to being broke.