http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Harry Potter
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/23/hidden-messages-of-harry-potter_n_1695705.html?utm_hp_ref=books&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009
In a 2005 Time Magazine article, Lev Grossman pointed out that the Hogwarts school is a progressive bastion: secular, multicultural, multiracial and gender-integrated.
In a 2005 Time Magazine article, Lev Grossman pointed out that the Hogwarts school is a progressive bastion: secular, multicultural, multiracial and gender-integrated.
Apple (corporations) hidding billions overseas
On Tuesday, Apple is set to report financial results for the second quarter. Analysts are expecting net income of $9.8 billion. But whatever figure Apple reports won't reflect its true profit, because the company hides some of it with an unusual tax maneuver.
Apple Inc., already the world's most valuable company, understates its profits compared with other multinationals. It's building up an overlooked asset in the form of billions of dollars, tucked away for tax bills it may never pay.
Tax experts say the company could easily eliminate these phantom tax obligations. That would boost Apple's profits for the past three years by as much $10.5 billion, according to calculations by The Associated Press.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/apples-phantom-taxes-hide-billions-profit-16838828
How Apple's Phantom Taxes Hide Billions In Profits
AP
Progressive taxation
Economists generally agree that the best measure of whether a tax
change is progressive or regressive is the percent by which it changes
the after tax-incomes of various income groups. Across-the-board rate
cuts raise after-tax incomes by a larger percentage for those at the top
of the income scale than for those at the middle and bottom, meaning
they are regressive. (Cutting all rates by the same number of percentage points, rather than the same percentage, is also regressive.)
To understand why cutting rates by an equal percentage produces unequal results, consider a simple tax system with two rates: 20 percent and 40 percent. Assume that both tax rates are reduced by 50 percent, so that the new bottom rate is 10 percent and the new top rate is 20 percent. These rate cuts enable taxpayers to keep 90 cents — rather than 80 cents — of each dollar taxed at the bottom rate, generating a 12.5 percent increase in after-tax income. [3] But, for each dollar taxed at the top rate, taxpayers will keep 80 cents, rather than 60 cents, generating a 33 percent increase in after-tax income.[4]
Thus, even though both tax rates fall by the same percentage, the result is a regressive tax cut that benefits people in the top bracket the most, not only in dollars but in the percentage increase in their after-tax income.
Estimates from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC) starkly illustrate this. (See Figure 1.) A 20 percent cut to all current marginal income tax and AMT rates[5] would raise average after-tax incomes by 4.4 percent among millionaires but by only 1.7 percent among taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000. As Table 1 shows, these percentages work out to average tax cuts of $92,400 for millionaires and $919 for middle-income taxpayers.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3807
Where do federal dollars go? http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Who pays taxes: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505
The fact that most people who don’t owe federal income tax in a given year do pay substantial amounts of other taxes — and also are net income taxpayers over time — belies the claim that households that do not owe income tax in a given year will form bad policy judgments because they “don’t have any skin in the game.”
To understand why cutting rates by an equal percentage produces unequal results, consider a simple tax system with two rates: 20 percent and 40 percent. Assume that both tax rates are reduced by 50 percent, so that the new bottom rate is 10 percent and the new top rate is 20 percent. These rate cuts enable taxpayers to keep 90 cents — rather than 80 cents — of each dollar taxed at the bottom rate, generating a 12.5 percent increase in after-tax income. [3] But, for each dollar taxed at the top rate, taxpayers will keep 80 cents, rather than 60 cents, generating a 33 percent increase in after-tax income.[4]
Thus, even though both tax rates fall by the same percentage, the result is a regressive tax cut that benefits people in the top bracket the most, not only in dollars but in the percentage increase in their after-tax income.
- Low-income taxpayers who have all of their income taxed at the bottom rate will get a 12.5 percent increase in their after-tax income.
- For taxpayers with incomes high enough to face the higher tax rate, the percentage increase in their after-tax income will be somewhere between 12.5 and 33 percent: they will take home 12.5 percent more of their income taxed in the lower bracket and 33 percent more of their income taxed in the higher bracket. The more income they have taxed at the higher rate, the closer their total increase in after-tax income will be to 33 percent.
Estimates from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center (TPC) starkly illustrate this. (See Figure 1.) A 20 percent cut to all current marginal income tax and AMT rates[5] would raise average after-tax incomes by 4.4 percent among millionaires but by only 1.7 percent among taxpayers with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000. As Table 1 shows, these percentages work out to average tax cuts of $92,400 for millionaires and $919 for middle-income taxpayers.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3807
Where do federal dollars go? http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Who pays taxes: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3505
The fact that most people who don’t owe federal income tax in a given year do pay substantial amounts of other taxes — and also are net income taxpayers over time — belies the claim that households that do not owe income tax in a given year will form bad policy judgments because they “don’t have any skin in the game.”
Sunday, July 22, 2012
Power, Inc.
The Catholic Church was the first global "private" enterprise. p.36
..history demonstrates that when the power of states is reduced, with alarming regularity, it does not benefit average citizens so much as it does big private actors well positioned to swoop in and take best advantage of the opening.
"We have since gone from a battle between communism and capitalism to something even more complex: a battle between differing forms of capitalism."
..history demonstrates that when the power of states is reduced, with alarming regularity, it does not benefit average citizens so much as it does big private actors well positioned to swoop in and take best advantage of the opening.
"We have since gone from a battle between communism and capitalism to something even more complex: a battle between differing forms of capitalism."
Friday, July 20, 2012
The importance of history
"Progressives should ask why conservatives are so eager to paint
themselves as the true heirs of the American tradition, and why those on
the left side of politics—usually ready to do battle with the right on
many fronts—have not felt the same sense of urgency when it comes to
popular understandings of the American story." http://www.democracyjournal.org/25/why-history-matters-to-liberalism.php
Public Investment: Economic History
Peter Lindert inquires as to whether social policies that redistribute
income impose constraints on economic growth. Although taxes and
transfers have been debated for centuries, only recently have we been
able to obtain a clear view of the evolution of social spending. Lindert
argues that, contrary to the intuition of many economists and the
ideology of many politicians, social spending has contributed to, rather
than inhibited, economic growth. http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Public-Spending-Economic-Eighteenth/dp/0521529166
Friday, July 6, 2012
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Nietzsche: the Uses and Abuses of History
"Schiller speaks of the understanding of the intelligent person: he does not see
some things which even the child sees; he does not hear some things which even
the child hears; these “things” are precisely the most important thing.
Because he does not understand this, his understanding is more childish than the
child and more simplistic than simple mindedness, in spite of the many shrewd
wrinkles on his parchment-like features and the virtuoso practice of his fingers
unraveling complexities. The reason is that he has destroyed and lost his
instinct. Now he can no longer let the reins hang loose, trusting the “divine
animal,” when his understanding wavers and his road leads through deserts." http://records.viu.ca/~johnstoi/nietzsche/history.htm
"...no one has a higher claim on our veneration than the man who possesses the drive and the power for justice. For in justice are united and hidden the highest and rarest virtues, as in a bottomless sea that receives streams from all sides and absorbs them into itself."
"...he wants truth, not merely as cold knowledge without consequences, but as the ordering and punishing judge, truth not as a selfish possession of the individual but as the sacred entitlement to shift all the boundary stones of egotistical possessions, in a word, truth as the Last Judgment and not at all as something like the captured trophy desired by the individual hunter."
"And thus I hope history can realize that its significance is not in universal ideas, like some sort of blossom or fruit, but that its value comes directly from reworking a well-known, perhaps habitual theme, a daily melody, in a stimulating way, elevating it, intensifying it to an inclusive symbol, and thus allowing one to make out in the original theme an entire world of profundity, power, and beauty."
"...a religion which is to be turned into historical knowledge under the power of pure justice, a religion which is to be scientifically understood through and through, is by the end of this process immediately destroyed."
"...no one has a higher claim on our veneration than the man who possesses the drive and the power for justice. For in justice are united and hidden the highest and rarest virtues, as in a bottomless sea that receives streams from all sides and absorbs them into itself."
"...he wants truth, not merely as cold knowledge without consequences, but as the ordering and punishing judge, truth not as a selfish possession of the individual but as the sacred entitlement to shift all the boundary stones of egotistical possessions, in a word, truth as the Last Judgment and not at all as something like the captured trophy desired by the individual hunter."
"And thus I hope history can realize that its significance is not in universal ideas, like some sort of blossom or fruit, but that its value comes directly from reworking a well-known, perhaps habitual theme, a daily melody, in a stimulating way, elevating it, intensifying it to an inclusive symbol, and thus allowing one to make out in the original theme an entire world of profundity, power, and beauty."
"...a religion which is to be turned into historical knowledge under the power of pure justice, a religion which is to be scientifically understood through and through, is by the end of this process immediately destroyed."
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