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“I find it strange that the Republican position on this law is still stuck in the same place that it has always been. They still can’t bring themselves to admit that the Affordable Care Act is working. They said nobody would sign up; they were wrong about that. They said it would be unaffordable for the country; they were wrong about that.”
He continued:
“I know every American isn’t going to agree with this law, but I think we can agree that it’s well past time to move on as a country. …”
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Of course, ordinary Americans also are eligible for preferential tax rates on dividends and capital gains, and for most of us they remain at 15 percent. The catch is that few of us have a lot of investments in taxable accounts and therefore derive little benefit from those breaks. In 2011, the average taxpayer earning less than $500,000 received just 2 percent of his or her income from dividends and long-term capital gains. Most of that money went to people earning more than $100,000.
Most ordinary Americans, if they have investments that produce dividends and capital gains, have them in tax-deferred retirement accounts, either individual retirement accounts or 401(k) plans. When they draw out the income from those accounts, they will pay ordinary income tax rates, regardless of whether the profits came from dividends and capital gains.
If Congress ever gets serious about increasing tax revenue enough to pay for the spending bills it passes, the big tax advantage given to unearned income may have to be reduced, if not eliminated. Eliminating it would mean that the private equity executives who manage to pay very low tax rates — because they classify their salaries as capital gains — would be taxed like the rest of us. The “carried interest” issue would vanish.
This year, that tax advantage has been reduced, even if only for some of the highest-paid Americans. It is a start toward a tax policy that no longer discriminates against people who have to work for a living because they do not have dividend checks to support them.
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General Mills, the maker of cereals like Cheerios and Chex as well as brands like Bisquick and Betty Crocker, has quietly added language to its website to alert consumers that they give up their right to sue the company if they download coupons, “join” it in online communities like Facebook, enter a company-sponsored sweepstakes or contest or interact with it in a variety of other ways.
Instead, anyone who has received anything that could be construed as a benefit and who then has a dispute with the company over its products will have to use informal negotiation via email or go through arbitration to seek relief, according to the new terms posted on its site.
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Today, the “four letter” words traditionally termed profanity in American English are more properly just salty. As late as 1920, the lowlier word for excrement rarely appeared in print; its use has increased a hundredfold since. The uses of “damn” and “hell” in print are higher than ever in written history. No anthropologist observing our society would recognize words used so freely in public language as profanity.
At the same time, consider the words we now consider truly taboo, that we enshroud with a near-religious air of sinfulness. They are, overwhelmingly, epithets aimed at groups.
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“CORPORATE profits are at their highest level in at least 85 years. Employee compensation is at the lowest level in 65 years.”
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The real losers in the McCutcheon case are the vast majority of average Americans without barrels of cash to dump on elections. Even the now-invalidated aggregate caps were extremely high, and only very few contributors ever reached them. In 2012, 1,715 donors gave the maximum to political party committees, and 591 gave the maximum to candidates.
Thanks to Wednesday’s decision, the interests of the very few wealthiest Americans — which differ significantly from those of most Americans — will now get even more outsize consideration by legislators. As former Senator Alan Simpson testified in an earlier campaign-finance case, “Who, after all, can seriously contend that a $100,000 donation does not alter the way one thinks about — and quite possibly votes on — an issue?”
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Last May, Whole Foods recalled two types of curried chicken salad that had been sold in some of its stores in the Northeast.
The retailer’s kitchens had accidentally confused a batch of “chick’n” salad made with a plant protein substitute with one made from real chicken, and reversed the labels.
Consumers buying the version labeled as having been made from actual chicken were instead eating vegetarian chicken salad — and thus inadvertently were exposed to soy and eggs, allergens that must be identified on labels under federal regulations.
“None of the customers apparently noticed the difference,” said Ethan Brown, founder and chief executive of Beyond Meat, which made the substitute in the product that was recalled.
The error demonstrates just how far “fake” meat — producers hate the term but have not come up with a catchy alternative to “plant-based protein” — has come from the days when desiccated and flavorless veggie burgers were virtually the only option for noncarnivores.
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Lawmakers on the tax writing committees — like Ways and Means — can benefit, too, as they become a magnet for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, even though Mr. Camp’s early legislative drafts of the tax proposal included provisions that would have hurt some of his top donors.
Donors to Mr. Camp’s political action committee this election cycle — and some of the guests at the Park City event — include PACs run by MetLife, Koch Industries, Bank of America, the Altria Group, Pfizer, Home Depot, PricewaterhouseCoopers and AT&T, among dozens of others. It is money Mr. Camp can pass on to other Republican candidates, now that he has announced he is retiring from Congress after 12 terms in the House.
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Some people say that because it’s so hard to put a dollar figure on such benefits, this principle is of little practical use in Detroit. But the benefits must be substantial — how else to explain the extraordinary efforts of private donors to save the collection?
Fortunately, costs are easier to estimate, and those for displaying a painting derive largely from its market value. Consider “The Wedding Dance,” a 16th-century work by the Flemish painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Detroit museum visitors have enjoyed this painting since 1930. How much would it cost to preserve that privilege for future generations?
A tidy sum, as it turns out. According to Christie’s, this canvas alone could fetch up to $200 million. Once interest rates return to normal levels — say, 6 percent — the forgone interest on that amount would be approximately $12 million a year.
If we assume that the museum would be open 2,000 hours a year, and ignore the cost of gallery space and other indirect expenses, the cost of keeping the painting on display would be more than $6,000 an hour. Assuming that an average of five people would view it per hour, all year long, it would still cost more than $1,200 an hour to provide the experience for each visitor.
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“What’s irreplaceable — what you should ideally be paying for — are the chef’s judgment and palate; the difference between good and great may be a half teaspoon of lemon juice. The point of having a chef in situ is that a brilliant one isn’t going to allow a dish to be sent out unless that half teaspoon of lemon juice is there. Not everyone can do that; only a few can. And even fewer great chefs can afford to hire other great chefs to work for them, and when they do, most of those No. 2s will go off on their own before long. In 95 percent of the world’s restaurants, where dishes are standardized and even corporatized, this doesn’t matter. But it does matter at the very narrow top.”
shaun james bockert 