Wallace: Tax Policy And Democracy

The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long

 – “Dr. Eldon Tyrell” in Blade Runner*

 According to Michael Yon, the protesters didn’t “block” anything, the government used them as an excuse to close the airport: “Fake Drama at Hong Kong Airport as China calls peaceful Hong Kongers ‘terrorists’ There was no need to cancel any flights. I was there as were probably a hundred journalists. It was very safe. I live streamed video right here on Facebook. Remember: China says the Dalai Lama, and Falun Gong, are terrorists.”

Americans Say They Can’t Afford a Vacation Bloomberg

How good was John Clarke? Some reflections on his poetics of tinkering

Robert Phiddian, via The Conversation

The judgements of the passing parade of politicians, bureaucrats, and other spivs was both deadly accurate and utterly reliable.

FastCompany: “For just over a year, Google’s hardware design team has been working inside a new, highly classified design studio. Only a small fraction of Google’s employees are allowed inside this beautiful, birchwood-framed space—a team of around 150, who are hard at work designing the next Pixel phones, Google Home assistants, and all sorts of other things the public (and Google’s competitors) haven’t seen yet. As you can read in our exclusive first visit here, the Design Lab has areas devoted to every aspect of the design process, from precise color evaluation to a materials library that allows team members to handle over 1,000 material swatches. As this dedicated design lab was being developed, Google vice president and head of hardware design Ivy Ross also had another request for the design team: a library, with actual paper books that her designers could grab and read. Each designer was asked to bring in six of the most influential books in their lives, and write a line inside the cover about it


Australian Liberal MP Gladys Liu's links to secretive United Front Chinese influence arm

Alan B. Morrison (George Washington), My Taxes Are None of Your Business:

One of the underlying principles of our income tax laws is that our tax returns are kept secret and only those who have a legitimate need to know can see them. However, some of the efforts to enable Congress, and perhaps everyone else, to see the tax returns of private citizen Donald J. Trump, may threaten that principle, not just for him, but for everyone else.

Andrew Leahey (Tax LL.M. 2019, NYU), Trump Tax Games: Lowered Tax Morale as Trump’s Lasting Tax Policy Legacy:

The Trump administration’s most permanent change to tax policy will not come in the form of executive action or signature legislation, but will stem from the way in which Trump himself has undermined tax compliance and lauded tax evasion — both in words and by example. These effects are not easily mitigated, as unlike tax rates there is no political or legislative mechanism through which social norms can be effectively changed.

Clint Wallace (South Carolina), Tax Policy and Our Democracy, 118 Mich. L. Rev. ___ (2019) (reviewing Camille Walsh (Washington), Racial Taxation: Schools, Segregation, and Taxpayer Citizenship, 1869–1973 (University of North Carolina Press 2018), and Anthony C. Infanti (Pittsburgh), Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves (MIT Press 2018)):

Two new books explore the many ways in which U.S. tax policies and tax systems have promoted social injustices and continue to do so. In Racial Taxation, Camille Walsh provides a vivid depiction of the under-scrutinized fiscal history of elementary through secondary education in the United States, from the post-Reconstruction era until San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez. InOur Selfish Tax Laws, Anthony Infanti details how existing U.S. Federal tax policies manifest problematic power structures that exclude and disadvantage many if not most taxpayers. Together, these books dissect a variety of flawed tax structures and reveal that tax discrimination grounded in race, gender, heteronormativity, differences in physical ability, and, pervasively, power dynamics, are not a malignant tumor on an otherwise healthy body, but rather are a systemic, pathological affliction on the entire U.S. fiscal state. This essay reviews Walsh’s and Infanti’s work, and builds on the authors’ rich historical and analytical contributions to ask: how can tax policy be reformed so that, rather than betraying and undermining the foundations of American democracy, it works to strengthen democratic institutions and their connection with members of a democratic society?