News, Opinions & Events
Deadly fire at DC senior living apartment – wusa9.com
Latest example of the safety risks posed by housing seniors and people with disabilities in tall buildings. Hope that members of the Falls Church City Council read this letter to the editor:
Could have been worse:
Congress must not wait to refinance Social Security – Karl Polzer/Washington Examiner
Thanks to the Washington Examiner for running this op-ed which discusses CCSE’s recent analysis:
“Could long-term Treasury bonds and Fed financing help close Social Security’s funding gap?”
Radical tax simplification: The impossible dream? – Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center
“On March 19, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center Co-Director William Gale reviewed issues with tax simplification and analyzed four major revenue-neutral proposals for federal income tax reforms, each of which would create a simpler and more progressive system. The event featured a demonstration of a new page on the Tax Policy Center website that allows anyone to compare their filing requirements and tax burdens under the current system as well as the proposed alternatives. A panel followed, featuring Ariel Greenblum (Tax Notes), Margot Crandall-Hollick (Urban Institute), and Natasha Sarin (Budget Lab at Yale), moderated by Wall Street Journal Reporter Richard Rubin.”
Democrats look for new ways to tax the super-rich – WaPost
“President Biden is pitching a 25 percent tax on unrealized gains on assets for households worth more than $100 million.”
“Warren and others on the left want to change the definition of income. They point to very wealthy people, with almost no wage income, who live off their investments by obtaining tax-free loans before passing on tax-advantaged appreciated assets to heirs. This strategy — called “buy, borrow, die” — was detailed in a 2021 ProPublica investigation that helped focus fresh attention on the idea of taxing wealth rather than income.”
related CCSE articles:
A wealth tax could be both fair and enforceable
How much can we tax the wealthy to finance long run social and physical infrastructure needs?
The American Appetite for Government – American Compass
“Republicans do not support cutting the major entitlement and safety-net programs that conservative politicians and think tanks have long targeted.
- Social Security is overwhelmingly popular: 81% of Republicans call it ‘one of our nation’s greatest achievements’ rather than ‘a disaster’; only 22% consider it ‘welfare’; only 7% say the federal government should ‘do less’ in ‘support for the elderly through Medicare and Social Security,’ compared with 57% who say it should ‘do more.’
- Pluralities of Republicans also support more safety-net and health care spending, with fewer than 25% saying government at any level should ‘do less’ in ‘support for the poor, disabled, needy’ or ‘medical care for those who need help affording insurance.'”
“A pro-family policy package should:
“Support children in need. Poverty has a detrimental impact on children’s development and later life outcomes. The 2021 expansion of the CTC was responsible for a major reduction in child poverty. The provisions increasing the generosity of the credit and eliminating the earnings requirement were the most important drivers of this reduction.2 The main lesson is that future proposals should continue to focus on boosting benefits for the lowest-income families.
“Support marriage. Children do best when raised in two-parent families. Family formation is a complex process, but one of the factors that hinders marriage are penalties in our tax and transfer system, particularly for couples with children.3 Reducing or eliminating these marriage penalties should be part and parcel of future proposals to expand family tax benefits.
“Support parental choice. Parents have a range of options when it comes to balancing work and family life. In some households, both parents work full-time, while others prefer one parent to work full-time while the other cares for children at home. Some households prefer center-based care while others prefer home-based or relative care. Reforming tax benefits to avoid privileging some arrangements over others and achieve child care pluralism is an important goal for family policy.4
“Support upward mobility. The proliferation of income-tested programs, which phase out as household earnings rise, has helped reduce child poverty but also increased implicit marginal tax rates (IMTR) on poor and working-class families. Reforms to the tax and transfer system in the 1990s reduced IMTRs on those moving from welfare to work but increased them on working families striving to join the middle class.5 Reducing these high implicit marginal tax rates should be a priority in the overhaul of family tax benefits.”
Americans also should receive credit toward Social Security eligibility and benefits for hours they work caring for young children at home.
Nothing Defines America’s Social Divide Like a College Education – Atlantic
Nothing except income, which is heavily correlated with education.
Share of education expenditures in household income by income – China
“In China, families in the highest income quartile allocate 10.6% of their income to children’s education. However, what is even more striking is that families in the lowest income quartile spend a significantly larger proportion of their income (56.8%) on education, leaving very little for other expenditures (Figure 5). Most of these burdensome expenses are not attributed to private tutoring but rather to in-school costs, which is ironic considering that the majority of schools in China are publicly funded and provided.”
This Small New Jersey Town Became a Different Kind of Suburb – DNYUZ
“Palisades Park is one of the few places in the New York metropolitan area where it is legal to replace a single-family home with something other than another single-family home. Over the last few decades, developers have bulldozed many of the old houses and replaced them with bigger, fancier duplexes.
“There have been some growing pains, but many more people are now able to live in Palisades Park. Since 1990, the population has increased by 40 percent. The main street has revived and flourished, becoming a destination for Korean food. And the growth has allowed Palisades Park to reduce its tax rates.”
After Appalachian Hospitals Merged Into a Monopoly, Their ERs Slowed to a Crawl – KFF Health News
Facility Fees 101: What is all the Fuss About? – HealthAffairs
More examples of monopoly power sucking the marrow out of the US health care system. And how “capitalism” – valuing profit over all else – does not result in well-functioning markets.
Find out why your health insurer denied your claim. – ProPublica
Why We Risk a Cartoon Version of Capitalism – WSJ
Jack Welch, The Man Who Broke Capitalism – Forbes
“I’m not an academic who has studied inequality in a deep way. But those who have, including most famously Thomas Piketty, draw a direct line between executive compensation and its absolutely relentless upward trajectory over the last decades, and the widening gap between the haves and have-nots.
“Welch’s own enormous executive compensation was immense. He was on the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans simply for being a people manager. He didn’t invent anything. He didn’t own the company. He was hired help. And yet, he became something close to a billionaire. By doing so, he set a precedent for hundreds of other managers over the past several years to do the exact same thing. Now we don’t even blink when a CEO is rewarded with a $20- or $50 million-a-year pay package.
“As all that is happening, what’s happening to his workers? They’re getting laid off en masse. He’s outsourcing them to contractors who don’t pay nearly as good of wages as GE once did. He’s sending jobs overseas in search of low wages and taxes. At the same time, look at what’s happened to the American minimum wage: It’s stuck at $7.25 an hour. If it had just kept pace with inflation over the last 20 years, it would be closer to $25. But we live in this world that was shaped by Jack Welch’s priorities. And we’re still trying to dig out of that hole.”
Welch preached the primacy of increasing stock value over all else. When his lieutenant took over Boeing, cost cutting trumped the quality of engineering and safety:
Killer software: 4 lessons from the deadly 737 MAX crashes – Fierce Electronics
Featured
Missing the obvious: life expectancy in the U.S. is closely related to income – Karl Polzer
“The underlying theory is simple: More income and wealth allow people and governments to support more years of life. Fewer resources put them at a disadvantage. Some politicians who see the connection may be leery of talking about it. Doing so would lead to awkward questions about improving working and living conditions for millions of Americans and dealing with growing economic inequality.
“The strong relationship between income and longevity is clear when comparing states… (E)ight of the nine states with the lowest median household income also are among the bottom nine in longevity. Similar clustering occurs comparing the highest ranked states across the two categories. Seven of the nine states with the highest median household income also are among the top nine in life expectancy.
“Realizing they are rowing in the same economic boat could prompt states to join forces on policy changes, particularly Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, New Mexico, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Tennessee, and others ranking at or near the bottom…
“Presidential candidate and former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley strongly proposes raising the program’s retirement age on the premise that increased life spans are undermining Social Security’s long-term solvency. If long-held assumptions about longevity were challenged, and potential losses to low-income workers and low-income states caused by raising the eligibility age came to light, would she change her position? Republican candidate Donald Trump, by the way, opposes cuts in Social Security as do most Democrats…”
Thanks to the Washington Examiner for running this op-ed:
Senate minimum wage bills make bipartisan compromise possible – Washington Examiner
For longer version with references, see:
Previous work on this issue:
Yes, raise the minimum wage, but don’t stop there – op-ed
“More Americans are rightly asking if Israel could neutralize Hamas without massive destruction and loss of civilian life. Indiscriminate air attacks by the Netanyahu regime already have killed and injured tens of thousands of Gazans with no end to the violence in sight. To put this in perspective, imagine how Washington, D.C., would look if a foreign government with the power to fence in the District of Columbia dropped a comparable number of bombs here while shutting off access to water and food and destroying most of the capital area’s housing and medical system. UN officials say conditions in Gaza are catastrophic.”
Thanks to the Washington Post for publishing our letter to the editor:
One way to make living easier in Virginia – Karl Polzer/letter to WaPost
“Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) told reporters he is ‘concerned about the cost of living in Virginia and we’re continuing to evaluate how best to address that,’ as reported in the Nov. 26 Metro article ‘Budget battle looms in Virginia. Facing a tighter fiscal environment and Democratic control of the legislature, Mr. Youngkin and fellow Republicans could help working families without denting the budget by making an expected Democratic push for a higher minimum wage a bipartisan affair.
“The GOP has been trying to attract more minority and working-class voters. However, party leaders have stopped short of addressing core economic issues, such as supporting higher wages and better benefits, and mainly stress cultural issues…”
Background Information on these issues provided to Virginia legislators
McCarthy & Co. offer themselves up on the cross to help motivate lazy poor people back to work
Work requirements are a policy failure: Why are they still an option? – The Hill
Thanks to the Washington Post for running our letter:
“Letting Americans Down”
“How can House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), President Biden and Senate leaders claim to represent the working class and poor when Medicaid work requirements are a focal point in the debt ceiling standoff and the Trump-era tax cuts are not? According to the Congressional Budget Office, the work requirements in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would have a tiny impact (about $5.6 billion in fiscal 2025) on the nation’s $31.4 trillion national debt, but they would increase the number of uninsured and state costs and have no effect on hours worked by Medicaid recipients.
“In contrast, ending the Trump-era tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy, could put a major dent in the national debt….”
Because most of this site’s readers won’t be able to get through the newspaper’s pay gate, here’s the draft of the letter sent to the Post:
Debt ceiling negotiators focus on a ‘speck’ in benefits for the poor, ignore the ‘logs’ in their own eyes.
“Legislative Choices for Paying Promised Social Security Benefits”
Statement of Karl Polzer, Center on Capital & Social Equity,
U.S. Senate Budget Committee hearing: “Protecting Social
Security for All: Making the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share”
Has DT crossed the line into delirium tremens?
“It came out of his mouth during a campaign speech last month.”