In the rush to come up with a plan of spending cuts and tax hikes, both democrats and republicans have missed the essential detail that makes our current economic circumstances different from any we have previously experienced since World War II–it’s a trap. A liquidity trap, that is, and it’s going to make any spending cuts and tax hikes the US government enacts mean serious pain for millions of people.
The Lottery and Reverse Redistribution
I recently read a Salon article by Natasha Lennard drawing attention to the statistical tendency for lottery tickets to be purchased in quite disproportionate numbers by the poorest in society. The article brings up several interesting statistics–households that earn $13,000 or less in the United States spend an average of 9% of their income on lottery tickets, people who feel poor buy twice as many lottery tickets as those who do not, and those earning less than $40,000 in South Carolina make up 54% of the state’s lottery players despite only constituting 28% of its total population. This brings forward to my mind the question of whether or not it is ethical to permit the poor to voluntarily give significant portions of their income to the government so that statistically negligible numbers of them might get extremely lucky and hit it rich.
How to Stop Tax Avoidance
Recently, as countries have sought to shrink deficits, the question of tax avoidance has come up, and how to put a stop to it. In Britain, Google, Amazon, and Starbucks are being questioned by parliament as to why they pay such small amounts of tax on their UK incomes. Much of the public is in uproar over the fact that Google, Amazon, and Starbucks paid effective tax rates of 0.4%, 2.5%, and 0% on their respective 2011 earnings. All of this begs one very important question, one that no one seems to be attempting to answer seriously–what do we do about this? How do we stop it?
Fox News, War on Men, and Benghazi
It has been a rough news cycle for the Fox network, with two recent stories, neither of which would quite, on its own, merit a response on my part but which, taken together, are sufficient to constitute a piece. The first, a recent piece written by Fox’s Suzanne Venker, entitled “The War on Men“, made the accusation that the feminist movement has made marriage less desirable for men by changing the nature of women in our society. The second, an interview conducted with Thomas Ricks, an award-winning military journalist, was cut short when Ricks gave an answer the network was displeased with. Rather than engage in prototypical left-wing Fox bashing, which you can find all over the internet and do not need this blog for, I will attempt to rationally dissect the two pieces in question to find where Fox’s problem lies, if indeed it lies anywhere. Continue reading “Fox News, War on Men, and Benghazi”
When is Civil Disobedience Ethical?
When civil disobedience comes up, we often think of Gandhi, King, Mandela, men who are heroes to many and who fought great injustices. However, it must be recognised that civil disobedience is a tool and not an end in itself–it can be used for bad as well as good. So how does one determine when it is ethically permissible to use civil disobedience? It is a question the answers to which I frequently find unsatisfactory, so today I will attempt to unpack it myself.
Benjamin Studebaker 