In August of 2014, I wrote a post called Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics. I penned it because, at the time, I was seeing a lot of situations in the media in which data was being used to push a political agenda on either the far right or the far left. I’m now seeing this same sort of deception in discussions about wealth inequality.
As many of you know, Elizabeth Warren has been getting a lot of press lately after proposing a wealth tax equal to 2.00% on fortunes above $50 million and 3.00% on fortunes above $1 billion. As an academic exercise, it’s useful to consider what that would mean for the United States.
In recent years, the United States Federal Government has found itself in the fortunate position of collecting more inflation-adjusted, real purchasing power tax revenue than it has during any other period of its 242 year history. For the government’s 2019 fiscal year, tax receipts at the Federal level are expected to balloon to an almost unfathomable $3.422 trillion.
In recent months, I’ve found myself reflecting upon what I consider to be one of the most important and moral documents written in the history of civilization, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”. It comes up at the most unexpected of times; something in the back of my mind that makes…
Senator Bernie Sanders has released his tax proposal in his bid for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I’ve finally made my way through it. Here are my thoughts.
By now, you are no doubt aware that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia passed away unexpectedly in his sleep. At 79 years old, in generally good health, and seemingly as sharp as ever, the news came out of nowhere.
Throughout your life and career, you are going to face many situations in which you are dissatisfied. Often, these situations will arise because of legitimate grievances you have about a person, behavior, policy, or system. There are a few strategies that, used judiciously, can exponentially increase your effectiveness.
I’ve publicly written many times about my extreme discomfort with the direction of certain technological innovations; how, left unchecked without explicit guarantees of privacy, they could lead to what one Supreme Court justice described as a turn-key totalitarian state. In the wrong hands, there would be nowhere to run, no place to hide. It’s not…
I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom of speech, and the first amendment in general, lately. Between the uproar over the Confederate Battle Flag, an unprecedented user and moderator revolt at Reddit after the decision to shut down certain groups (the CEO, whom many blame for the ugly affair, wrote an op-ed piece in The Washington Post), a very vocal minority of Americans upset about the Supreme Court granting equality to gay Americans in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, and world-class comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock publicly airing their concern about the sanitation of humor for fear of offending people, talk shows, newspapers, radio programs, books, and blogs have all been discussing the limits of personal expression to which an American is entitled under our constitution.
Marriage Equality Declared a Fundamental, Constitutional Right: My Personal Reaction to Obergefell v. Hodges It’s been almost a week since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges declaring marriage equality a fundamental right under both the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. I’ve…
