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Sometime around 2033 or 2034, SS benefits will drop by ca. 23% if nothing is done.   One frequent proposal is to remove the cap on payroll taxes. There are at least two problems with this: (1) the wealthiest Americans derive most of their income from non-salary sources, and (2) this just turns SS into welfare, and we already know what Congress does with welfare. SS is retirement insurance paid for by workers. Let’s keep it that way. Another proposal is to cap benefits:   “The very highest income couples can now collect $100,000 a year in Social Security benefits.” That’s gross income, not net income. Couples making $100K/yr pay income taxes on 85% of that. They don’t pocket all $100K, and the more taxable income they have outside of SS, the more tax they pay on the SS income as that income puts them into a higher tax bracket. Furthermore, the Federal income taxes on SS benefits *don’t* go into the General Fund like the rest of federal income taxes. These funds are directed *en...

Mike Brock has a long piece up at his substack on Milton Friedman. For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the money quote: “ The honest historical record is that Friedman made substantive contributions that the contemporary American left has absorbed without recognizing and that the contemporary American right has invoked without honoring. Both receptions are defective. The historical figure is more interesting than either.”   I’ve never taken an economics course. What little I know of the subject I’ve picked up on the fly while reading history. I certainly don’t know enough to criticize Friedman’s writings. But from what I gather in Brock’s article, much of what passes for praise or attacks on Friedman in the popular press are as wide of the mark as praise and criticism of Karl Marx. I’ll just post a couple of nut grafs from the Brock piece. “The contemporary American left’s framing of Friedman as an opponent of human freedom requires the audience not to read what he actually wrote. He wrote...

It’s the grimmest moment in my political lifetime. Not only do we have a president devoting to enriching his friends and starting a brutal, mad war––we’ve had those before––but he’s one who doesn’t even pay lip service to democracy. Why did we get here? Because people voted for him. Why did they vote for him? Because he brilliantly and falsely convinced them he would address their grievances. ~Adam Hochschild  

I’ll admit that gas prices at the pump have no significant effect on me. I live close to everything I need to be in person (food, healthcare), and I drive a sub-compact fuel-efficient car. I combine trips and keep my tires inflated.   The reality is that oil prices affect much more than your personal mobility. Much of the retail in the US depends on trucking, which is highly sensitive to oil prices. The GOP’s indifference to this is a major campaign issue for Democrats it they choose to use it. It’s not going away anytime soon. “ SCHIPPER: People shouldn't actually expect gasoline prices to be back down to where they were at the beginning of the year until after 2027. So, we could be talking about 18 months to 2 years before we start seeing gasoline prices like they were at the beginning of 2025.” I’ll confess to being ambivalent about this. I don’t want working-class Americans to be hurt, but ultimately America needs to wean itself from hydrocarbons. If you seriously want to hurt ...

There’s no question about the safety and efficacy of vitamin K shots in newborns. They’re not vaccines. “Amid a rise in broader anti-vaccine sentiment, some influencers and media figures have cast doubt on the routine vitamin K shot given to newborn infants – and new reporting from ProPublica suggests such rhetoric may have had deadly consequences.” *snip* “For years, some influencers and media figures have described the warnings of potential health consequences of not getting a vitamin K shot as “emotional blackmail” and claimed those that refuse the shot are “more responsible” parents.” As usual, this is right-wing projection. The anti-vitamin K conspiracy theorists are the blackmailers, and they are killing American children. Feh. https://www.mediamatters.org/propublica/new-reporting-links-skepticism-vitamin-k-shot-newborn-deaths-influencers-and-media

Academic tenure is a commitment by a college or university to award permanent employment status. Most faculty contracts stipulate that tenure can only be removed for cause or for financial exigency.   In the last year of my postdoctoral fellowship, I applied for tenure-track positions at various universities around the US. Tenure-track means that the university is looking to hire someone they believe will end up getting tenure. It’s not a guarantee of tenure; I’ve known plenty of people hired on the tenure track who were later denied promotion and tenure and had to leave for failing to meet performance criteria. In the event, I accepted an offer as an assistant professor and was tenured as an associate professor six years later. Recently, some universities have tried to work around the tenure commitment by cutting faculty salaries. Particularly at medical schools, non-clinical faculty are expected to recover 50% or more of their compensation from extramural grants. Faculty who fail...