Paying tax

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The wealthiest households are paying tax at the lowest rate in 50 years, some paying just half of the Federal income tax that top earners paid in 1960. They are, of course, still complaining.  Trump is very concerned for them.  On the other end of the scale we were approached for help and advice some years ago by a poor immigrant lady whose income was $18,000 p.a and who had had a tax demand of $6000. Ouch! I am not suggesting that this is typical – I don’t know. But it helps to show how chaotic and unfair the US tax system is.

Only yesterday my wife was talking to a Latino lady who cleans houses for a living.  She told us that Trump was great.  He was going to reduce taxes for people like her. Halleluyah!  “No”, my wife replied, “that isn’t correct.  He has promised to reduce taxes for the very rich, in the expectation that they invest, create jobs and that the wealth trickles down to people like yourself.”

Of course, we have heard this canard many times before and people still fall for it.  Actually, most of the tax breaks enjoyed by the super-rich go towards yachts and luxury items, or buying villas in exotic countries. There are some super-rich with hearts who do good things with their money, create foundations and fund good things in healthcare etc.  But they are a minority.  Most of them are represented by the sort of people in the Trump cabinet.

Why should the huge disparity in wealth between the rich and poor concern Epicureans? Because if you care about your fellow human beings, situations like this are bad for everyone’s peace of mind (except the greediest), and  bad both for national morale and long-term political stability. Lobbyists have secured exceptions for the wealthy in national budgets, allowing them to use offshore tax havens and other scams dreamed up by the big accountancy firms. In return they fund the election expenses of politicians, who are effectively owned by them.  This they call, tongue in cheek, “democracy”.

Sensible people believe in paying tax. Minimize it legally by all means, but if there is no tax system we have no roads , no schools, no police, no law courts, no food and drugs testing, no defense….I won’t go on. The anti-tax people are short-sighted, selfish freeloaders and their self-centered beliefs have nothing in common with Epicureanism, or Christianity if it comes to that.

Oh ocean tide, retire! It is your King’s command!

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Yesterday’s edition of the Washington Post carried an article by George Will.  He pointed out that loss of manufacturing jobs was the tip of an iceberg – it is the continued loss of retailing jobs that is an even greater worry.  There isn’t a lot you can do about manufacturing, if only because what is left of it in the West, that hasn’t been moved overseas, is rapidly being automated.  Employment in that sector will continue to decline. The loss of conventional shops is also occurring.  Macy’s and Sears, once major retailers are in real trouble, and where I live the shops are constantly changing hands as new companies come, find their efforts are uneconomic, and leave.  I remember traveling through Florida, north to south, observing among other detritus of junky building the number of derelict shopping centers, boarded up and weed-infested, and wondering why.  No need to wonder now -Amazon and other online shopping companies are decimating bricks-and-mortar retailing at a huge rate.  Amazon only the other day announced the recruitment of a large number of staff in the expectation of further growth, although it is a drop in the ocean compared with the overall decline in retailing jobs, and the wages are dreadful, apparently. Now they are in food delivery as well as everything else. But at least they do sell items made in America.  Walmart grew huge by sourcing most of it products from China, Vietnam and other countries, accounting for a massive movement of shipping to and fro.

I admit to being one of the many culprits.  I ordered some cartridges for the printer from Amazon.com yesterday afternoon;  by this evening they had arrived.  No need to get in the car and spend time visiting the nearest appropriate shop (15 minutes there and 15 minutes back).  All too convenient.  Soon drones will deliver almost before you click “confirm order”.

What can Trump do about jobs in this sector, the number of which is/was huge?  Not a lot.  I am reminded of King  Canute (1015 to 1035) who commanded the tide to stop coming in in order to demonstrate to his courtiers that he was not omnipotent.  Regrettably, Trump is not that modest;  the tide will come in regardless.

Google has been hijacked by racists

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Type the question “Did the Holocaust really happen?” into Google and the first answer you get (the one you take to be the most authoritative) is headlined: “Top ten reasons why the Holocaust didn’t happen.” The origin is so-called Stormfront Radio, featuring Don Black, Paul Fromm and David Duke.

The second entry refers to “the Holocaust hoax”. In fact, seven of the top ten all insist the murder of six million Jews is a made-up story. Yet such malign outcomes are by no means a one-off. So proficient have far-right groups become at colonising the internet, they’ve been able to game the Google algorithm and hijack its search results. Google, however, is so wedded to the image of itself as a neutral platform, it will “hand-tweak” the worst cases, but refuses to take a moral stand and eliminate hate speech in all contexts, together with deliberately bogus news.  (this post originated with an article by Carole Cadwalladr of The Observer)

My father was the front line liaison officer between the RAF and the Polish Air Force in Northern Germany in 1945, and was the first to enter one of the Nazi death camps. I have a leather whip he took from an SS officer and gave to me in memory of the piles of bodies marked with the Star of David. “Never forget,” he said to me. I haven’t.  The thongs of the whip are disintegrating, but not the meaning of what is left.

To allow these racists free rein on the internet under the bogus rubric of “free speech” is utterly immoral. Google should be held to account. They invented this system and should be answerable for its mis- use.  Too much is justified in the name of ” free speech”.  Free speech isn’t free ; it has consequencies.

Meanwhile Trump right-hand man, Steve Bannon, at the very least a sympathizer with people like Fromm, Black and Duke, is esconced in the White House, working alongside Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, an champion of Israel and all that it does.   Intriguing.  How long will it last?

For those who know no history

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His education was sketchy, his knowledge of the world even more so.

He was a bully from his earliest years, vain and consumed with the urge to win.

He started life as a socialist but later became an ardent nationalist, founding the fascist movement.

On becoming ruler he removed political opposition, establishing an elaborate and powerful secret service that did his bidding.

After the  world slump his aim was to create jobs. This he partially did, but strikes were declared illegal.

His aim was a totalitarian state. He ruled constitutionally until 1925, when he dropped all pretense of democracy.

So self-confident was he that at one point he held seven ministerial posts simultaneously.

He sought to restore the greatness of of his country in the time of the Emperor Augustus.

There was no self-doubt. He posed as a new ubermensch, and promoted the idea that he had quasi-divine attributes.

His support came chiefly from the countryside and the small towns, not the cities.

He gave rousing speeches in which facts were what he said they were.

To maintain power he created “Blackshirt” armed militias, who terrorized opponents.

He had to have a Great Enemy to attack and berate in order to give a focus for his supporters:  in this case it was communism.

Who was he?

 

 

 

 

Why it’s better to study in America (or is it?)

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“A minefield of drunken gropings and sexual assaults.” That’s the picture painted of American universities, and it’s partly true, says Amanda Foreman. But there’s something even more striking about US campus life: it’s “jaw-droppingly luxurious”. To take two examples: the University of Missouri boasts an indoor beach club, modelled on one in the Playboy mansion, with its own waterfall and grotto; while Texas Tech has a two-acre water park. The fact is, US colleges are far richer than British ones; and they compete in an “amenities arms race”. Cambridge, our richest university, has almost £5bn ($7.5bn) in endowments; by contrast, Harvard and Yale have $32bn and $20bn respectively. US colleges also offer students another enviable luxury – “total freedom of intellectual exploration”. In the UK, students have to specialise: there, they can select courses from a range of disciplines. As an undergraduate in the US, my studies included philosophy, music and chemistry. Leicester University is now switching to this more flexible system: let’s hope others follow. If we can’t give our students water slides, let’s at least give them a rounded education. (Amanda Foreman, The Sunday Times).

The problem with this interpretation is that there is an arms race among American universities to provide amenities that are (excuse me, Ms. Foreman) quite unnecessary to actual education and which push up the cost to students and their worried parents.  The Great Further Education Bubble involves chasing the increasingly fewer people who can afford them.  If and when some of these outfits go bust they cannot use the facilities for anything else – there is no “resale value” to a college campus.  Yes, I like the more rounded educational possibilities (in theory), and wish I had not specialised as much in my time.  But at $50-60,000 a year, (unless you get a scholarship  and depending whether we are talking about public or private colleges), then yes, the American system is great;  if Mum and Dad have the money; if you don’t mind lectures given graduate students and part- time, underpaid adjunct teachers;  and if you seldom even see a professor, let alone hear words of wisdom from him or her.  No quite as attractive as Ms. Foreman makes out!