Tax “reform” – a question for readers

Last updated on: November 29, 2017 at 12:37 pm By Jane the Actuary

Every year, Gallup asks the question, is the amount of taxes paid by low-, middle-, and upper-income people fair, or too much or too little. Regarding the last of these three groups, the percent of people replying that they pay too little started at 77% in 1992 and 1993 (the first two years of data), dropped to 68% in 1994, and has been more or less bouncing around in the 60s since then; in 2017, 63% of Americans answered that... Read more

Temperance and taxes

Last updated on: November 30, 2017 at 12:31 pm By Jane the Actuary

Remember the Women’s Christian Temperance Union? I should remember more of it than I do, from my grad school days, but it seems to me I’ve got a book somewhere down in the basement, unless it made its way to a donation bin by now. I recall two things: that they had genuine concerns about drunk fathers failing to care for their children, rather than a puritanical obsession with Demon Rum and alcohol in general; and that the activism of... Read more

Is “sex in crisis” in Venezuela?

Last updated on: November 30, 2017 at 12:32 pm By Jane the Actuary

That’s the headline at the Washington Post today: “Even sex is in crisis in Venezuela, where contraceptives are growing scarce.” The report, in many respect, is “old news” — two years ago, a spate of articles described the lack of contraception in the country (e.g., Breitbart, as a non-paywalled version) due to the economic crisis, and earlier this year, papers reported on the increasing degree to which women sought out sterilization (here, from the Miami Herald). Three years ago, the... Read more

The anti-Democratic CFPB

Last updated on: November 27, 2017 at 9:31 am By Jane the Actuary

This is all over the news this morning, e.g., at the Wall Street Journal (an article inexplicably outside the paywall) An Obama-era official at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued the Trump administration on Sunday night to block budget director Mick Mulvaney from taking control of the agency. Leandra English, a career staffer appointed Friday to lead the CFPB by former director Richard Cordray, filed the lawsuit in federal court the night before the bureau was set to reopen with... Read more

Jerry Brown, pension reform hero?

Last updated on: November 26, 2017 at 10:08 am By Jane the Actuary

Here’s the background: Back in 2015, the Illinois State Supreme Court ruled that a 2013 public pension reform, which attempted to reduce pension benefits for existing employees by stopp[ing] automatic, compounded yearly cost-of-living increases for retirees, extend[ing] retirement ages for current state workers and limit[ing] the amount of salary used to calculate pension benefits. was unconstitutional because our state constitution prohibits any reduction in benefits, not just for existing benefits, but for any benefits that would ever be earned in the... Read more

A few comments on the German elections (or, What to talk about tomorrow that’s not Trump)

Last updated on: November 22, 2017 at 10:58 pm By Jane the Actuary

So I’ve generally been a fan of proportional representation in elections. After all, imagine if our primaries had operated on proportional representation. On the Republican side, Trump might have gotten the plurality of the votes in various states, but he wouldn’t have had an absolute majority, and thus, wouldn’t have gotten entire states’ delegate slates, in winner-take-all states. We might then have had the contested convention after all, and if the anti-Trump side was truly NeverTrump, they’d have compromised on... Read more

Grad student Chicken Littles — sort of right, sort of wrong

Last updated on: November 18, 2017 at 2:55 pm By Jane the Actuary

So last week I wrote a little blogpost expressing my irritation at the Chicken Little reporting over a provision in the House tax bill, which would remove the exemption/”loophole” in which, at present, grad student-employees are exempt from paying taxes on the tuition waivers they receive that are conditioned on that employment. No, it will not destroy higher education, I wrote, since universities can either remove the work requirement from the tuition waiver, or can gross up the stipend accordingly.... Read more

Update on college marketing

Last updated on: November 16, 2017 at 10:35 pm By Jane the Actuary

So we’ve finally made it past the college application process, coached my son through essays, made some campus visits, clicked “submit” 4 times, and are now waiting for the fat envelopes (or, yes, the virtual equivalent thereof) to come with my son’s name on them. But I wanted to share with you three items that came in the mail recently: This is just one of many mailings from the University of Chicago. Now, I have nothing against this university, but... Read more