Imagine a fairy tale where I offer you a choice between two jobs. You can have a tax free job or a job with a 90% tax on its income. You might jump at the tax free job, but a smart person would ask what are the salaries of the two jobs. I’d say the…
Tag: Inequity
New York Values Aren’t America’s (Politicians) Values
It wasn’t Ted Cruz who said, “Who needs Manhattan when we can get the electoral votes of eleven Southern states?”; Kevin Phillips a Richard Nixon’s campaign strategist said it. Ted Cruz is just the latest politician to complain about New York values not being his. They are right, New York values of hard work (working…
Scary Tax Stories From Beyond the Grave
[I]n this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. Benjamin Franklin Letter to Jean-Baptiste Leroy (13 November 1789); reported in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) Yesterday when I wrote about income inequality it may have seemed like I implied the solution to the problem would only come when people…
Net Neutrality
I’m urging everyone to go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and use their form to comment to the FCC on net neutrality. The open comment period as been extended once again until Sept. 15th. The Internet is one of the greatest tools for freedom, and like other such tools (printing presses to swords) the powerful…
The Shared Delusion of Money
The lack of money is the root of all evil. -MARK TWAIN, Mark Twain’s Notebook I was explaining Bitcoin in an econ class the other day, and that drove home an idea that I’ve been thinking about for a while. That is the value of our money is based on a shared delusion. The delusion…
The Spiritual Poverty of the Rich
The 1% are in the news, and everywhere you turn people are talking about them (mostly themselves talking about themselves). The greed and selfishness they exhibit is staggering and disheartening: The latest is the idea that rich should have more say in government than the poor, put forth by a crazed rich white dude, “You…
