Weekend Reading

GOP Lawmakers To Write Blank Check To Hire Lawyers
Donald Trumps Economic Inheritance In 7 Charts
Janet Yellen Debunks Trump's Case For Killing Dodd-Frank
The Chair Of The Federal Reserve Just Fact-Shamed Donald Trump
Banks Are Lending A Ton, Despite Trump's Claims
Walker Proposes Eliminating Labor, Judicial, Education Oversight Commissions
Four Milwaukee County Retirees Receive Pension Backdrops Topping $1 Million
A Short History Of The Trump Family
Updated Figures Show Manufacturing & Agricultural Tax Credit Is Inefficient, Costly
Pharma's Inflated Claim About Drug R&D Costs
How Drug Companies Inflate Research Costs To Justify Absurd Profits
Walker Proposes New Welfare Work Requirements In Wisconsin
Wilbur Ross And The Era Of Billionaire Rule
The Illusions Driving Up Asset Prices
How Statistics Lost Their Power - And Why We Should Fear What Comes Next

Debt As A Share Of GDP Joke

Source: Congressional Budget Office.

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Obama’s Stock Market Legacy

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The Robot That Takes Your Job Should Pay Taxes, Says Bill Gates

Robots are taking human jobs. But Bill Gates believes that governments should tax companies’ use of them, as a way to at least temporarily slow the spread of automation and to fund other types of employment. 

It’s a striking position from the world’s richest man and a self-described techno-optimist who co-founded Microsoft, one of the leading players in artificial-intelligence technology. 

In a recent interview with Quartz, Gates said that a robot tax could finance jobs taking care of elderly people or working with kids in schools, for which needs are unmet and to which humans are particularly well suited. He argues that governments must oversee such programs rather than relying on businesses, in order to redirect the jobs to help people with lower incomes. The idea is not totally theoretical: EU lawmakers considered a proposal to tax robot owners to pay for training for workers who lose their jobs, though on Feb. 16 the legislators ultimately rejected it. 

“You ought to be willing to raise the tax level and even slow down the speed” of automation, Gates argues. That’s because the technology and business cases for replacing humans in a wide range of jobs are arriving simultaneously, and it’s important to be able to manage that displacement. “You cross the threshold of job replacement of certain activities all sort of at once,” Gates says, citing warehouse work and driving as some of the job categories that in the next 20 years will have robots doing them. [source]

87-Year-Old Woman Trolls Trump From The Grave With Her Obituary

“Liz is smiling now, not to be living during the Trump presidency,” it reads. [source]

Milwaukee Subsidizes The State

Milwaukee Subsidizes The State

In fact, even as Walker was libeling the state’s biggest city, the reality is the opposite was true: it was Walker’s state that was the relative loser, that was leeching off the city. By 2012, the data shows, the city’s economy had become so successful that Milwaukee got back just 88 cents in total state aid for every dollar in total taxes it paid to the state. 

That includes every category of state dollars flowing to Milwaukee, from state aid to Milwaukee Public Schools to shared revenue to cities, transportation aid and other smaller categories, and also includes every form of taxes flowing from Milwaukee to the state, including sales taxes and personal and corporate income taxes paid by city residents and businesses. All this information is tracked by the state Department of Revenue (DOR) and it shows Milwaukee is a net contributor to the state.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

Symphony of Destruction

You take a mortal man
And put him in control
Watch him become a god
Watch people's heads a'roll
A'roll, a' roll