THE LEGS THAT HAVE THE HAMPTONS up in arms.
Archive for 2012
August 7, 2012
AT AMAZON, an Outlet Sale on Storage & Organization.
MORE ON making guns with 3D printers.
FINALLY: A Pedal-Powered Washing Machine For Third-World Countries. “Human-powered washing machines are not a new idea, but the challenge here was to design a one that’s cheap, portable and easy to use, yet gets the clothes clean and relatively dry.”
SCIENCE: FDA Approves Ingestible Sensor That Tracks Health From The Inside. “The US Food and Drug Administration has approved an ingestible digital sensor that can be swallowed in a pill to track health data from inside the body. The idea is that the data can be used not only by patients themselves, but also by caregivers and doctors to individualize their care. The ingestible sensor, formerly known as the Ingestion Event Marker or IEM, is already approved for use in Europe.”
RICHARD EPSTEIN: Thomas Friedman’s Fracking Fallacy.
IN THE MAIL: The Third Generation Roadway.
MICHAEL WALSH: President Dinkins and the Real Election of 2012. “You remember Dinkins — he defeated Rudy Giuliani in their first head-to-head match-up in 1989, then lost in 1993 after the Crown Heights riot and other disasters finally brought the citizens to their senses and, holding their noses, they called the cops and elected a law-and-order Republican in place of a liberal Democrat.”
RACISM IN HIGHER EDUCATION: What Columbia Is Doing Is Illegal.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loan Debt Weighs Down Recovery. “Finally, we have some (arguably) good economic news: Americans’ credit levels have returned to their pre-recession peak of $2.58 trillion. This is usually a good sign for the economy. Higher credit means more consumers are shopping, more banks are lending, and confidence in general is up. But as the Wall Street Journal points out, this news comes with a caveat, and it’s a big one.Sstudent loan debt accounts for nearly one-third of that figure and is now second only to mortgage debt as the leading form of debt held by Americans. This seriously undercuts the otherwise good economic news, as student loan debt provides a considerably smaller boost to the overall economy than other forms.”
MOE LANE: Why Obama Hates Romney On A “Visceral” Level. “It’s not that Mitt Romney was born rich, gave it away, and got rich again that infuriates Barack Obama so. It’s that Mitt Romney had a father who loved him. And that is a thought that fills me with a terrible pity towards Barack H. Obama, Jr.”
ANDREW KLAVAN: A Mainstream Media Glossary: “After watching and listening to mainstream media news reports of the presidential race, you may have begun to realize that our journalists use words in a different way than the rest of us. This is because they are highly trained news experts who have developed a precise technical language in order to explain things more exactly. So to help you decipher their coverage, I’d like to offer a partial glossary of terms that may come in handy over the next couple of months.”
LIKE NIXON WITH THE MOON LANDINGS: Obama hails NASA’s Mars rover program as he’s cutting it 40%.
IN RESPONSE TO MY EARLIER LINK ON THE “HAPPINESS INDEX,” Virginia Postrel recommends that I link This debunking by Deirdre McCloskey.
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Incivility Looks the AFT in the Eye Again: Leo Casey Department. “As I said last year, there is nothing wrong with thoughtfully calling things as they are and engaging in strong advocacy. But once again, Casey (along with Weingarten) has shown that he is more interested in demanding civility from others that he doesn’t practice himself, than in advancing systemic reform that can help children and high-quality teachers alike. This doesn’t reflect well on the AFT itself.” No, but it’s typical of all sorts of folks in dying blue-model enterprises these days.
I’VE GOT A PIECE IN POPULAR MECHANICS: U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Economic outlook falls to a new 2012 low: Economic Confidence Slips in July, for Second Month in a Row.
MY PROPOSAL TO REPEAL THE HOLLYWOOD TAX CUTS gets more attention.
UPDATE: Reader Philip Zanco writes:
Great op-ed on taxing the “rich.” I’ve been saying the same thing for years, but no one seems to pay attention. Let me suggest a few more items:
1. Eliminating the charitable deduction for all estates exceeding $500 million in gross value (Buffett, Gates)
2. Since salaries in excess of $1 million to executives are not deductible, extend this same provision to businesses paying such sums for television and motion picture acting, directing, and production. Extend the same provision to the music industry royalties, etc. (Geffen, Redstone, Spielberg, and a host of other left-coast lefties).
3. Keep the pre-Bush cut tax rates (possibly even raise them) on executives who led firms that either took TARP money in excess of $75 million or invested significant sums of money in special debt instruments or shares of firms that took TARP money, or who were paid significant bonus moneys from TARP firms during the periods immediately before they took funds from the U.S. (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, GM, Citibank, JP Morgan, etc.) Make these provisions also applicable to capital gains.
4. Excise tax on all premium television transmissions in excess of 2nd tier cable or satellite packages (HBO, Showtime, etc.) Make the tax non-deductible for income taxes.
5. Extending the corporate accumulated earnings tax to all non-profits having cash, investments, and securities in excess of $500 million (Ford foundation, Pew Foundation, Harvard, Yale, etc).I could have fabulous fun with this, while reinforcing a teachable moment that taxes enacted have real economic consequences – perhaps prompting discovery of the fact that pulling on someone’s hair really does hurt.
We can hope…
MORE: Reader Joseph Mooney writes:
Professor Reynolds: I read with interest your proposals to raise taxes and how it might especially hit Democratic constituencies. Here are a few more:
1. Quit putting off the full force and effect of the alternative minimum tax – this, of course, bites harder in States with high State and local property and income taxes as you’ve noted. I don’t really favor this, however, because the whole AMT idea is misbegotten – we should have one income tax that taxes income. We should lower rates and do away with the deduction for such taxes.
2. Repeal the long standing exclusion from income accorded interest on State and municipal bonds. This would need to be prospective and it would also sweep away the industrial bond issues that allow favored businesses to trade upon this tax exemption. Furthermore, it would also reduce a source of corruption in our State and local governments, e.g., “pay to play.” It would hit the high tax-spend-borrow jurisdictions which, presently, gain at the expense of the low tax-spend-borrow jurisdictions. It also would have the political virtue of being something that could be advertised as hitting very high bracket taxpayers and banks hardest — and low income taxpayers not at all. Presently when we see estimates of the income and taxes paid by the “rich” – the implicit tax in the lowered interest rate on such bonds is both excluded from the income estimate and from the tax rate as well. I thought one very notable thing about Romney’s one disclosed return was that he seemed, as I recall, to have had no reported interest income of this kind. For the rich who might object, one could argue back that their taxes weren’t being raised unless they were too chicken to take a chance on America by investing in stocks, small business etc. [as Romney seemingly has].
3. As far as limiting the home mortgage interest deduction, I agree. The higher housing costs in certain places are often the choice of the governments there. They create those astronomical housing markets via zoning laws, their choices regarding union shop vs. right to work etc. Once they make such choices, they should not be able to export the costs of those choices to other regions.
Well, it’s amazing what people think of once the subject is opened. . . .
ED DRISCOLL: The Obama Scandal Is At Columbia.
BUT REMEMBER, THEY’RE THE INTELLIGENT ONES: Left, duped by Onion parody, condemns Michele Bachmann for reaction to shooting.
MICKEY KAUS: Undecideds In The Floorboards?
I’ve never understood why pundits can confidently assert that Obama and/or Romney have a “floor” of 45%, 46%, or 47%. How do they know? Isn’t it possible that lots of people who tell pollsters they’re “for” Obama (or Romney) harbor grave doubts and might not do what they say (or might change their minds)? With Obama, I’m not talking so much about a racial “Bradley Effect” as a similar effect produced when voters are reluctant to admit openly that they’ve given up on whatever hopes they had when they elected Obama in 2008.
Hmm.
TAXING THE RICH: THE FACTS:
The top 5%, top 1% and top 0.1% of Americans have been getting a bigger slice of all the income and paying a growing share of federal taxes.
Average tax rates have come down for everyone. On average, the tax bite on the rich is bigger—except for those whose income mainly comes from capital gains and dividends.
The share of taxes paid by the bottom 40% of the population has been shrinking along with their share of income.
The tax system narrows the gap between economic winners and losers, but not enough to stop the gap from widening.
Much more at the link.