I think I'll write slightly more commentary than usual.
Oh, and SAFETY FIRST:
The Links:
Tomorrow Greece gets to vote in a referendum which many see as a decision to remain pat of the EU. What amazes me is just how post-modern this whole situation is. A yes vote means the public is accepting the terms of a two part deal which expired at midnight Tuesday. A no vote means they don't accept the expired off-the-table deal and many think it means Greece exits the EU. Moreover, the IMF, which has been steadily opposed to any new debt restructuring for the past year suddenly comes out with a paper on Thursday stating their support, albeit tepid, of debt restructuring. So maybe a no vote puts a new deal together for Greece. Literally nobody knows what's going to happen because nobody understands what the vote even means.
Here is an astoundingly stupid idea. (Link goes to .pdf) It comes from Cato so we shouldn't be surprised. The short version is that states can completely nullify the federal income tax by issuing tax credits and outright cash payouts equal to the amount of federal tax paid by each citizen. This would be financed by not by a state income tax but by a state sales tax. I don't think they thought their clever plan all the way through.
- This does nothing to deprive the federal government of revenue, so any ideological gains are null and void. You're still pay taxes to the feds, you just get a rebate.
- Goods and services subject to sales taxes will become very expensive and the tax will have to float based on the expected reimbursement payouts or...
- The state's revenues will decline cause the state to run a huge deficit because
- When goods and services are more expensive, people consume less of them.
- People will take advantage of offsetting capital gains driving up even more costs for the state.
- Obviously this would hurt the poor who have less federal tax rebates to offset the increase in sales taxes.
Your July 4th must read: These Disunited States.
Examine a wide range of phenomena at the county level—presidential voting results, indices of health, income inequality, education, social mobility, dialects and religiosity—and you’ll see a recognizable pattern of regional ideologies and political preferences going back a century or more. It isn’t and never has been as simple as North versus South, urban and rural, or the effete coasts set against the rugged interior. Rather, our most abiding geographic differences can be traced back to the contrasting ideals of the distinct European colonial cultures that first took root on the eastern and southern rims of what is now the United States and then spread across much of the continent in mutually exclusive settlement bands, laying down the institutions, symbols and cultural norms later arrivals would encounter and, by and large, assimilate into.
June employment report: 223k jobs, 5.3% unemployment.
Although there wasn't an official policy of austerity in the US, at the state level there were huge cuts to state employment (especially teachers!). It is still holding back our recovery. Here's a great chart:
China's annual report on the US's human rights record.
The excessive use of force by police officers led to many deaths, sparking public outcry. …After the grand jury of both Missouri and New York decided to bring no charges against the white police officer, massive protests broke out in more than 170 cities nationwideThe average Texan is 3 time more likely to have committed a sex crime than an undocumented immigrant. I'm all for putting a wall around Texas and severely limiting the flow of people into the rest of the US.
Is it time to give up on computers in schools.
Take one step into that massive shit-show called the Expo Hall and it’s hard not to agree: “yes, it is time to give up on computers in schools.”
Dispatches from our Silicon Valley utopia:
Movie films:As the cleaner laid out his tools, we made small talk, and I asked him where he lived. "Well, right now I'm staying in a shelter in Oakland," he said. I paused, unsure if I'd heard him right. A shelter? Was my house cleaner — the one I'd hired through a company that has raised $40 million in venture-capital funding from well-respected firms like Google Ventures, the one who was about to perform arduous manual labor in my house using potentially hazardous cleaning chemicals — homeless?He was, as it turned out. And as I told this story to friends in the Bay Area, I heard something even more surprising: Several of their Homejoy cleaners had been homeless, too.
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