Worrying about how we fund federal spending, I noticed that in 1960, federal excise tax revenue funded 11.6% of federal spending, but, in 2015, it…
Excise Taxes, Lobbying, and Our Future
Posted in Deficits, Government, National Debt, and Taxes
Permanent Fixes Posts
I’m so far out of touch that I didn’t even realize sociologists had abandoned the idea of The United States as a “melting pot,” most…
Language, Culture, and Mosque Difficulties (8/16/2010)
Posted in Culture and Diversity, and Terrorism
(The difficulties have not improved since I wrote this six years ago.) I recall a conversation with my Japanese assistant during my early 1990’s Tokyo…
USA Student Loan data are not as easy to pin down as our total National Debt (~$19.3T) or the amount we owe the Social Security…
Married Filing Jointly
Posted in Culture and Diversity, and Marriage and Family
The Federal Income Tax was established in 1913 by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, but it was not until 1930 that the Supreme Court…
Buckets and Trash Cans
Posted in Personal Stuff
Reference to “bucket lists,” lists of things a person wants to do before dying, seem to be trending these days, especially for any of us…