The http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
It also estimated that 14% of Americans have extreme difficulty with reading and written comprehension.
Only 19% have a high level of literacy, 31.4% have a moderate level of literacy and 49.6% a low level of literacy.
They may have developed coping skills to manage everyday literacy demands but they find it difficult to face new challenges, such as job skills.
In this http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-01-08-adult-lite... USA Today article they stated that "about one in seven [adults] are saddled with such low literacy skills that it would be tough for them to read anything more challenging than a children's picture book."
About 15 years ago I worked with a 24 YO man who had married his high school sweetheart and they had 3 kids. Some guys would tease him that he missed out on so many things.
One day he said that these guys had it wrong, because when he is in his mid 40's, his house will be paid for and his kids will be in college.
IMHO, a constitutionally mandated flat tax of no more than x% (with war time and emergency exceptions) and no deductions, credits, exemptions or any type of offset allowed is the best solution.
Everyone pays the same % and can plan on that happening every year.
But this will probably never happen because politicians can make many things happen through the tax code and many special interests make extensive use of tax code. There is both good and bad that these lead to.
Anything else we do is tinkering, because new codes that close loopholes will eventually lead to new codes that create new loopholes. Still a tinker here and a tinker there and maybe your can create a teapot out of a cauldron. Tinkering a plane out of a car may be easier than tinkering our income tax into better system.
We have a Google Grant, but none of us has the marketing expertise to set up an effective campaign (ineffective we are pretty good at).
We have unsuccessfully tried to recruit SEM's as volunteers through Craiglist, Volunteer Match, and contacting local marketing professors (we don't have the money to hire anyone).
Does anyone have any suggestions how we can get help with this?