It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

I would like to write a little bit about a wealth tax; motivated by, but not specifically in the context of, Elizabeth Warren's recently proposed tax on high net wealth individuals. The title might give away a bit of my feelings on the matter, but first, a bit of more general context. Taxes are a tricky subject, societally speaking. The first-level goal of taxation, of course, is to support the activities of the government: to pay salaries, to pay for services, to pay for defense, etc. However, how taxes are levied, and on what, can also have a fairly substantial impact on the trajectory of a society. Governments frequently use tax policy to encourage or discourage types of behavior, for example, as a short-term leverage point over societal trends. In another facet, tax policy can also have longer term indirect implications for societal trends, some of which may not be obvious to the majority of the public even years after the policies are implemented. To give a specific examp...

There are not too many things which I would give Trump credit for as the President so far. Initially, for example, I thought that perhaps his public persona of an uninformed, insensitive, abrasive jerk might have been somewhat contrived, in an effort to appeal to a specific subset of the population. However, as all of his personality traits have persisted far beyond the election, and there is no apparent evidence to the contrary, I've long since concluded that Trump actually is an uninformed, insensitive, abrasive jerk. In such, he is singularly bad at being in a diplomatic leadership position; in fact he's quite possibly objectively the worst President in the entirety of the history of the country. However, that being said, he has managed to do one thing which is somewhat impressive in context, even though I give no credit for purpose or planning in such. Trump has managed to weaponize stupidity, to remarkable effect. He has, in some sense, managed to take what for any other...

As a preface, this post is more about an opinion on the current state of events in the US, and less on-point to a specific topic. It was, in part, motivated by this piece  and related events, but my thoughts on the topic are a bit more general. The US is going through a period of transition currently, one which will likely span several generations. As this piece accurately notes, "as societies become more modern, they become less religious". This is, I think, generally accurate, as can be observed in the recent history of the world. It is also somewhat intuitive: as people learn more about how the world works, there is less need for superstition to explain how and why things happen, and hence less need for religion. Unfortunately, this is not something which can or will change overnight. Primarily, this is because so many people have so much of their own self-worth and self-identity inexorably associated with their religion, that it's practically impossible for them ...

So recently I've been thinking a bit about the old adage, meant to serve as sorta a litmus test for the longer-term value of decisions: try to leave the world a better place for your children. I don't honestly know the origin of the sentiment, and/or if it's American or otherwise, but it seems self-evident enough in meaning. Basically, you want the world to get better over time, and especially if you have children directly, you want them to live in a world which is at least as accommodating as the one you lived in. The thing is, though, that's not always easy to do. The world has quite a lot of "bad" people in it, and absent meaningful efforts toward positive change, there's certainly no guarantee that the world of the future will be better than the world of today. This seems especially true in the current time in the US in particular; the list of pending worrisome things is getting quite long indeed (eg: spiraling national debt, partisan divisiveness dr...

Since there's no end in sight for the current government shutdown, and both sides are giving indications that no progress is being made and no short-term end is likely, I have a few additional thoughts on the current state of political gridlock. As I said before, the system should really be more resilient against this sort of "using the American people as leverage" political fighting strategy; the current state of sorta absurd. Beyond that, though, in the context of Trump's Russian ties being investigated, I think the Republicans in Congress are doing a substantial disservice to their own political careers (not to mention the damage to the country) by not tossing aside solidarity with Trump, and his wall-funding tantrum. In my opinion, the Republicans in the Senate should pass a basic budget and dare Trump to veto it, and they should override him if he does. After all, Trump himself gave them an "opening" to do so, so to speak, when he raised the possibi...

Autonomous vehicles are a hot topic these days, as auto makers rush to add more self-driving and vehicle communication technology to their offerings. The state of the market is somewhat reminiscent of the internet boom, where tech companies rushed to produce every type of service/product they could imagine, and any consideration for societal impact (and/or hope of thoughtful regulation) was left hopelessly behind . It also reminds me of the rush to create AI for everything, where business and government interests are rushing far ahead of any consideration of the societal effects, even though the people closest to the technology have serious concerns about the direction the development is going. Let's get this out of the way first and foremost: Autonomous vehicles are going to kill people, and in ways which would have been avoided if humans were driving. Why do I feel entirely confident making that claim, when most proponents of the technology advocate the opposite (ie: that au...

So, normally I would comment on something like this, as it's sorta mundane politics and all, but it occurred to me recently that many pundits tend to only take stances on "easy" issues, and tend to dodge the harder ones (and/or take an oversimplified view on them, to avoid a possible admission that real-world issues can be "hard"). I've always thought of myself as a problem solver (first-order approximation and all), though, and to that end I think it's somewhat worthwhile to give a perspective on more messy issues also. So to that end, my thoughts on the current government shutdown conflict and impasse. First, the basics. Trump wants funding for the wall (well, really a down payment ; the actual wall is estimated to cost between $8B and $70B, although a reasonable guess is probably around $25B , and Trump is demanding $5.7B). The Democrats don't want to fund it, and that's had caused a budget related government shutdown. Next, some observati...

So, I really shouldn't have to say anything about how non-objective Paul Krugman is in his "economic analysis", but periodically he will spew something so egregiously absurd that it inspires a response. Case in point: The Economics of Soaking the Rich . Now, I'm not going to go into too much depth; hopefully anyone reading this blog will be intelligent enough to already be aware of how much of a biased shill Krugman is. But this piece is just obnoxiously misleading enough to really need a call out. To wit, a few points which Krugman fails to mention entirely (and indeed, might be too stupid to even comprehend, in fairness): Effective Tax Rate While the nominal tax rates have varied widely, that only tells half the story; the effective (real) tax rates are a combination of nominal rates and allowed deductions. When the nominal rates were high (eg: in the 70's), there were many more deductions, such that the "wealthy" paid basically the same effect...

It's hard to believe that Donald Trump has held the highest office in the United States for about two years now, but that's the current state of the world. Almost as hard to believe is that the country and world are still mostly in one piece; you could quibble about deteriorating security overseas and/or the current state of a non-operational US government with the budget impasse, but nothing overtly catastrophic has yet transpired. Victory? Well, no, not at all... it's more appropo to simply note that's some of the most generous praise which could be attributed to the Trump presidency: in spite of Trump being a failure in the role of President in effectively every measurable way, the country is (to date) still standing, and there's a reasonable chance we've made it at least halfway through this dark period in US history. ... At this point, I feel like I need to take a brief aside, and note that the abject failure I'm referencing is Trump the person, i...