Gas lighting – the abusive relationship tactic you need to know about
What Happened When I Was Gaslit By My BossIn the museums you will find acres of the most strange and fascinating things; but all museums are fascinating, and they do so tire your eyes, and break your back, and burn out your vitalities with their consuming interest. You always say you will never go again, but you do go. (Mark Twain, Following the Equator, 1897, Ch. 16)
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Via Literary Hub, author Rumaan Alam reflects on his experience working in advertising and how he thinks society’s best storytellers might be the people making TV commercials.
Light pollution: Night being lost in many countries BBC
THIS month Schumpeter visited the Barnes Foundation, a gallery in Philadelphia full of paintings by Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh. Albert Barnes, born in 1872, is notable for two things. He made a fortune from an antiseptic that cured gonorrhoea. And he stipulated exactly how his art collection should be posthumously displayed. The result is hundreds of paintings jammed together nonsensically, often in poky rooms, and the creepy feeling of a tycoon controlling you from the grave.
Barnes’s string-pulling comes to mind when considering today’s prominent tycoons, who often hail from technology, e-commerce and media. At the moment they seem omnipotent. But many founders are gradually cashing in shares in their companies. The consequences will vary by firm, with some tycoons gradually ceding control, and others clinging on to it.
A flurry of selling activity has been in evidence of late. On September 13th Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce Control Freaks in IT
The Paradise Papers show accountancy firms are engaged in wilful and organised hypocrisy
THIS month Schumpeter visited the Barnes Foundation, a gallery in Philadelphia full of paintings by Picasso, Matisse and Van Gogh. Albert Barnes, born in 1872, is notable for two things. He made a fortune from an antiseptic that cured gonorrhoea. And he stipulated exactly how his art collection should be posthumously displayed. The result is hundreds of paintings jammed together nonsensically, often in poky rooms, and the creepy feeling of a tycoon controlling you from the grave.
Barnes’s string-pulling comes to mind when considering today’s prominent tycoons, who often hail from technology, e-commerce and media. At the moment they seem omnipotent. But many founders are gradually cashing in shares in their companies. The consequences will vary by firm, with some tycoons gradually ceding control, and others clinging on to it.
A flurry of selling activity has been in evidence of late. On September 13th Jack Ma and Joe Tsai, co-founders of Alibaba, a Chinese e-commerce Control Freaks in IT
The Paradise Papers show accountancy firms are engaged in wilful and organised hypocrisy
Why Are Our Buildings So Tightly Sealed?
"Gorsuch Takes Aim at Regulations with Humor, 'Love'": Patrick Gregory of Bloomberg BNA has this report
Is there a city, country or place that inspires you every time you’re there?
A Better World is Possible:
This week saw a quiet, private celebration for the 50th
anniversary of the Gatsby Foundation. In case you haven’t heard of it, Gatsby
is the charity through which David (Lord) Sainsbury has given away over £1bn. He was the first
Briton ever to pass this threshold.
Set up when he
was just 26, the Foundation that has gone on to give so much was named after
David’s favourite Fitzgerald book - and perhaps stands in strange contrast to
the characters and time the book portrays.
It is typical of
David’s modest manner, and his wife Susie, a fellow philanthropist, to have a
low profile event, but it is a shame that this extraordinary milestone – a
billion pounds given to charitable causes - has not attracted more attention.
Studies show that generosity is contagious. When we see others
donating to charity and contributing to
public goods, we are inspired to do the same and increase our
own donations.
Fortunately, to
coincide with the 50th anniversary of Gatsby Foundation, the science writer
Georgina Ferry has published A
Better World is Possible, an account of how and where Sainsbury’s
money has been spent.
David’s lifetime
of giving is characterised by thoughtfulness. He studied hard in each of the
areas he has given to, and, when reaching the edges of his knowledge, hired
leading experts to help him give it away more effectively. Targets of his
funding have included agritech; neuroscience; technical education; and
improving the quality of government.
Ferry’s book
details these efforts and shows how he pioneered and refined ‘doing good
better’ a generation before its
current profile.
She explains why
this often led David to support causes that were off the beaten path, and
sometimes even unpopular. For example, while many funded food aid, David funded
plant science, including GM. His logic: better to find ways of increasing crop
yields across the world, and to boost local African economies through targeted
investment, than pump food aid into famine-hit regions year after year. No
wonder that the recommendation quote on the front cover is from Bill Gates.
Jackson Pollock Man with knife 1940
The tensions in Theresa May’s government intensified on Sunday night ahead of this week’s vital votes on the Brexit bill, as ministers accused Boris Johnson and
Michael Gove of sending an “Orwellian” set of secret demands to No 10. As an increasingly weakened prime minister faces the possibility of parliamentary defeats on the bill, government colleagues have said they are aghast at the language used by the foreign secretary and the environment secretary in a joint private letter.
The leaked letter – a remarkable show of unity from two ministers who infamously fell out during last year’s leadership campaign – appeared to be designed to push May decisively towards a hard Brexit and limit the influence of former remainers. It complained of “insufficient energy” on Brexit in some parts of the government and insisted any transition period must end in June 2021 – a veiled attack on the chancellor, Philip Hammond.
A decision as big and defining as Brexit should always have been executed by a government, or a coalition, in which as broad a spectrum of the population as possible is represented. It’s crazy to let just one party push through their version, especially when views are so divergent and tensions run this high. The Tories have just a slight majority.
But really, all Labour have to do is wait until May and Boris and Gove and all the others run out of gas and their engine seizes. They lost two ministers in a week and more will follow. So Labour makes a peace offer, knowing full well it won’t be accepted, but has to be made just for form.
As per tomorrow, May’s EU Withdrawal Bill will be discussed in Parliament and the next episode of Theresa May and the Holy Grail can start. John Cleese will be watching, thinking every five minutes: “Why didn’t I think of that?”. The Bill will be ripped to shreds, between a Hard Brexit and a No Brexit side, and hundreds of amendments, and May will be ripped along with it.
Even her chances of lasting just the week are slim. She has to turn to Labour for support, but she can’t. If she does, Boris will smell his opportunity for the top post. He might even get it, but that would lead to something awfully close to civil war; still, maybe that’s inevitable anyway, and perhaps it would be a good thing. Cards on the table.
Here is a thought experiment to determine whether you believe corporate taxes are incident on workers’ wages. Suppose employees at each firm were allowed to vote on their own firm’s tax rate. If you don’t believe that the corporate tax is incident on your own wages, then you should have no problem voting to increase your own company’s tax rate even if employees at other firms vote to exempt their own firms. After all, if the tax is paid by your firm’s shareholders and not you, then why not allow the government to collect that tax to pay for benefits, some of which will return to you as a citizen? Would you vote to have your employer pay a higher corporate tax then every other firm? I sure wouldn’t.
Here is an unrelated topic, but part of the general topic of tax incidence. Do federal employees pay income tax on their wages? I know they do nominally, but that tax goes back to their employer, the federal government. So, doesn’t that mean that, while their actual salary may be lower than their official nominal salary, they actually don’t pay any tax? (NB: this is quite different from a private sector employee whose after-tax salary is less than the pre-tax salary. In that case, the difference between the two does *not* go to the employer, creating a gap between what the employer pays and what the employee receives.) For example, suppose a private firm and the federal government both value a worker’s output at $100k/yr and the tax rate is 20%. The private firm offers the worker $100k and the worker receives $80k after paying taxes. The federal government, however, can offer the worker $125k in nominal salary, *knowing that it will receive $25k back in income tax*. The net result is that the federal government pays $100k and the worker receives $100k after taxes, i.e., the worker earns $100k tax free, $20k more than he or she would earn at the private firm. Another way of seeing this is to note that taxes paid by employees are economically equivalent to taxes paid by employers. So, if employers received rebates for income taxes paid by employees, then the net income tax would be zero. Well, the federal government *does* receive a rebate for all income taxes paid by employees!
Doesn’t this mean that taxes are doubly distortive? Not only do they discourage employment by creating a gap between what (private) employers pay and what workers receive — the usual cited distortion — they also distort the *composition* of the workforce by allowing the federal government to crowd out other employers. That is from BC.
Here is a thought experiment to determine whether you believe corporate taxes are incident on workers’ wages. Suppose employees at each firm were allowed to vote on their own firm’s tax rate. If you don’t believe that the corporate tax is incident on your own wages, then you should have no problem voting to increase your own company’s tax rate even if employees at other firms vote to exempt their own firms. After all, if the tax is paid by your firm’s shareholders and not you, then why not allow the government to collect that tax to pay for benefits, some of which will return to you as a citizen? Would you vote to have your employer pay a higher corporate tax then every other firm? I sure wouldn’t.
Here is an unrelated topic, but part of the general topic of tax incidence. Do federal employees pay income tax on their wages? I know they do nominally, but that tax goes back to their employer, the federal government. So, doesn’t that mean that, while their actual salary may be lower than their official nominal salary, they actually don’t pay any tax? (NB: this is quite different from a private sector employee whose after-tax salary is less than the pre-tax salary. In that case, the difference between the two does *not* go to the employer, creating a gap between what the employer pays and what the employee receives.) For example, suppose a private firm and the federal government both value a worker’s output at $100k/yr and the tax rate is 20%. The private firm offers the worker $100k and the worker receives $80k after paying taxes. The federal government, however, can offer the worker $125k in nominal salary, *knowing that it will receive $25k back in income tax*. The net result is that the federal government pays $100k and the worker receives $100k after taxes, i.e., the worker earns $100k tax free, $20k more than he or she would earn at the private firm. Another way of seeing this is to note that taxes paid by employees are economically equivalent to taxes paid by employers. So, if employers received rebates for income taxes paid by employees, then the net income tax would be zero. Well, the federal government *does* receive a rebate for all income taxes paid by employees!
Doesn’t this mean that taxes are doubly distortive? Not only do they discourage employment by creating a gap between what (private) employers pay and what workers receive — the usual cited distortion — they also distort the *composition* of the workforce by allowing the federal government to crowd out other employers. That is from BC.