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Category Archives: Taxation

Charity begins at the IRS

May 18, 2013 – 1:15 am

The head of the US tax agency has quit after it emerged his staff singled out conservative groups for extra scrutiny, President Barack Obama has announced. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had asked for and accepted the resignation of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Acting Commissioner Steve Miller, he said. “I will do everything in my power [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Funnies, Law, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (13)

Paid Parental Leave v Income Splitting

May 6, 2013 – 8:17 pm

Two things have come to my attention in the last 24 hours. First, in Australia, both Labor and the Coalition are introducing/plan to introduce a form of paid parental leave to replace the baby bonus. Labor’s policy is set at the minimum wage and is therefore cheaper to the taxpayer and less onerous on the [...]

By skepticlawyer | Also posted in Australia, Economics, Law, Welfare | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (17)

Against free markets

April 26, 2013 – 10:30 am

The term that is. There seem to be few usages that are a greater barrier to clear thought and debate than free markets. Whether used as a term of sneering abuse to create straw-person arguments or as a slogan of the right and proper, it is ready-made to close minds and abstract away from the issues [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in Economics, History, Law, Marriage, Middle east, Personal liberty, Public Policy, Racism, Religion, Sexuality | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (23)

Check your expectations (1) right-wing wimps and left-wing weaponistas

April 8, 2013 – 10:30 am

There is a joke in modern American politics–the Republicans want a big defence force they don’t want to use anywhere and the Democrats want a small defence force they want to use everywhere. Implicit in the joke is that the Republicans like military spending and the Democrats don’t. Because the right is “strong” on defence [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in Britain, Defence, Economics, History, Politics, Public Policy, The Left, The Right | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (15)

The real convenience of money

March 29, 2013 – 10:40 am

I recently read Adam Fergusson’s history of the early 1920s hyperinflation in Weimar Germany–which also covers contemporary hyperinflations of Austria and Hungary. (Well-spotted if you noticed that they were the losing Powers of the Dynasts’ War–aka WWI; this was not a coincidence.) One of the striking things about the period is how misguided conventional wisdom [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in Economics, History, Public Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (8)

Value and ambit

February 8, 2013 – 9:15 am

ADDENDA: I have added in three extra paragraphs, because I came to realise a key part of the argument, and a key relevant distinction, was missing. As economist Frank Mehrling has observed (pdf): All monetary theories (at least all those of which I am aware) build from some underlying parable about the nature of money. One [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in Economics, History, Law, Wales | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (7)

Going for Gold

August 14, 2012 – 7:47 am

Well, the Olympics are over. One of the primary news items here for the last two weeks has been Australia’s comparatively lacklustre performance in the gold medal stakes in the Olympics. Australia won 16 gold medals at the 2000 Olympics, 17 gold at the 2004 Olympics and 14 gold at the 2008 Olympics. In the [...]

By Legal Eagle | Also posted in Australia, England, Society, Sport | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (16)

Debt and boom

July 19, 2012 – 11:02 am

The slogan for this post is: don’t think debt, think safe assets. (This post is partly provoked by this post by Paul Krugman responded to by Scott Sumner and by Marcus Nunes.) In my Debt, Doom and Despair post I noted that a hugely debt-burdened post-Napoleonic Wars UK (where the national public debt was probably about [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in Australia, Britain, Economics, History, Public Policy, Technology, Welfare | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Imperialism, it is what rulerships do

July 10, 2012 – 10:20 pm

I came across (via) this very silly statement: The very idea of empire was created in ancient Rome … That would be news to the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Hittites, the Egyptians, the House of Ur, the Gutians, the Akkadians, the … And that is just the Middle East. When revenue was [...]

By Lorenzo | Also posted in History, Middle east, scotland, Society, Technology, Wales, Welfare | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (18)

The Artless Dodger

June 21, 2012 – 5:31 pm

Comedian Jimmy Carr says he has “made a terrible error of judgement” over using a tax avoidance scheme. In a statement on his Twitter account, Mr Carr said he was no longer involved in the K2 tax shelter. Prime Minister David Cameron on Wednesday called Mr Carr’s use of the scheme “morally wrong”. The tax [...]

By DeusExMacintosh | Also posted in Britain, Funnies, Politics, Popular culture | Tagged , , , , | Comments (7)