Americans Love Paying Taxes →

For my doctoral research on Americans’ experience of taxpaying, I conducted interviews with 49 people in 21 states about their sentiments on taxes. The single most surprising thing I learned is that Americans feel a deep pride about being taxpayers. “It feels good to be able to contribute,” said a 28-year-old from Utah, “and to know that you’re part of the reason why there’s an infrastructure in place.” A woman from Florida agreed. “I feel like it’s a contribution to society and for the future,” she said. “When I’m gone, maybe my little bit of money that I’m putting in is paying somebody else’s Social Security or Medicare or whatever.” (Because the interviews also covered tax evasion, all respondents were promised anonymity in exchange for their participation in the study.)

These respondents are not exceptional. In national surveys, over 95 percent of Americans agree with the statement, “It is every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes,” and more than half see taxpaying as “very patriotic.” One man from Ohio called it a responsibility to “the Founding Fathers.” A former Marine said taxpaying is “the cost of being an American,” while a man from California said tax avoidance is the equivalent of “shorting the country.”

The feeling is bipartisan. Surveys show that Republicans are significantly more likely than Democrats to agree that taxpaying is a moral responsibility...

Why the FDA doesn't really know what's in your food →

Lupin is considered a "major food allergen" in Europe and must be labeled accordingly on packaged foods. In the United States, where lupin is less commonly used, there is no such requirement, leaving Fattell and others who suffer from peanut allergies vulnerable.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has known about lupin’s effects since at least 2008, but has made no move to require companies to identify it as an allergen on products sold in the United States.

Lupin is just one of thousands of ingredients companies have added to foods with little to no oversight from the FDA. They’ve taken advantage of a loophole in a decades-old law that allows them to deem an additive to be “generally recognized as safe” — or GRAS — without the agency’s blessing, or even its knowledge.

Why C.E.O. Pay Reform Failed →

Say-on-pay is the latest in a series of reforms that, in the past couple of decades, have tried to change the mores of the executive suite. For most of the twentieth century, directors were paid largely in cash. Now, so that their interests will be aligned with those of shareholders, much of their pay is in stock. Boards of directors were once populated by corporate insiders, family members, and cronies of the C.E.O. Today, boards have many more independent directors, and C.E.O.s typically have less influence over how boards run. And S.E.C. reforms since the early nineteen-nineties have forced companies to be transparent about executive compensation.
These reforms were all well-intentioned. But their effect on the general level of C.E.O. salaries has been approximately zero. Executive compensation dipped during the financial crisis, but it has risen briskly since, and is now higher than it’s ever been. Median C.E.O. pay among companies in the S. & P. 500 was $10.5 million in 2013; total compensation is up more than seven hundred per cent since the late seventies. There’s little doubt that the data for 2014, once compiled, will show that C.E.O. compensation has risen yet again. And shareholders, it turns out, rather than balking at big pay packages, approve most of them by margins that would satisfy your average tinpot dictator. Last year, all but two per cent of compensation packages got majority approval, and seventy-four per cent of them received more than ninety per cent approval.
Why have the reforms been so ineffective? ...

What $29 A Week For Food Looks Like For Actual Low-Income People (And Not Gwyneth Paltrow) →

Gwyneth Paltrow was tapped by Mario Batali to do the#FoodBankNYCChallenge and eat on $29 a week. She tweeted a picture of her groceries: ...
I know other people are critiquing this already, but this bothers me on a basic level because eight of those 16 items are not calorically significant. Nutritionally speaking, this is a vitamin bonanza. But people who live on SNAP benefits don’t just have to get nutrients, they have to get actual calories, because they tend to have very physical lives, doing service labor and taking care of children and not necessarily being able to afford acar and so forth.
I mean, let’s break this down to calories, right? ...
Altogether, that’s 7059 calories. That means that Gwyneth will be surviving on about 1000 calories per day this week. That is, by all means, possible for a week for someone who has the option to be physically active or not. It’s possible for a week for someone who doesn’thave that option, too, actually, but it’s not sustainable over the long term for someone who has limited transportation options, negligible assistance with childcare, and probably a minimum-wage-or-less service job. The average sedentary adult burns at least 1600 calories in a day. Supposing that the average woman in America is 5’4” and weighs 165 pounds, she’d burn about 2400 calories a day even if she was moderately active, meaning that she worked a service job and took care of kids. She would be working at a 1400-calorie deficit on Gwyneth’s diet.

Why Hillary Clinton Is More Vital to the Democratic Party’s Future Than Even Democrats Realize →

Now, she’s one of the most popular political figures in the country. HuffPost Pollster’s average gives her a 48 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable rating.  As an isolated number, that sounds just OK. But consider this: President Obama has a 48 percent favorable rating and a 48 percent unfavorable rating.  Vice President Joe Biden has a 42 percent favorable rating and 45 percent unfavorable rating, and outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid—albeit less well-known than the president and vice president—has a 23 percent favorable rating and a 43 percent unfavorable rating. Even Warren—crusader of the Democratic left—has just a 30 percent favorable rating (and a 33 percent unfavorable rating as well). If Clinton were unknown, this might be a problem. But she’s among the most known figures in politics. An almost 50 percent favorable rating, put differently, is fairly impressive.

Among Democrats, there’s no competition. In the most recent average, Clinton takes nearly 60 percent of the primary vote. Her next two competitors—Warren and Biden—take 12 percent each. By contrast, in 2007, she was just a modest favorite for the nomination.

...

And as for Clinton versus Republicans? Neither Jeb Bush (33 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable), Scott Walker (26 percent favorable, 27 percent unfavorable), nor Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (30 percent favorable, 31 percent unfavorable) have comparable ratings. Indeed, there’s no one of Hillary Clinton’s visibility and prominence who is as popular as she is.

Alternatives to the FBI's Manufacturing of Terrorists →

John Mueller suggests an alternative to the FBI's practice of encouraging terrorists and then arresting them for something they would have never have planned on their own:

The experience with another case can be taken to suggest that there could be an alternative, and far less costly, approach to dealing with would-be terrorists, one that might generally (but not always) be effective at stopping them without actually having to jail them.

It involves a hothead in Virginia who ranted about jihad on Facebook, bragging about how "we dropped the twin towers." He then told a correspondent in New Orleans that he was going to bomb the Washington, D.C. Metro the next day. Not wanting to take any chances and not having the time to insinuate an informant, the FBI arrested him. Not surprisingly, they found no bomb materials in his possession. Since irresponsible bloviating is not illegal (if it were, Washington would quickly become severely underpopulated), the police could only charge him with a minor crime -- making an interstate threat. He received only a good scare, a penalty of time served and two years of supervised release.

That approach seems to have worked: the guy seems never to have been heard from again. It resembles the Secret Service's response when they get a tip that someone has ranted about killing the president...