MOVING THE BIG ROCKS’: ANALYZING AND COMMUNICATING BIG POLICY PROBLEMS
Improving tax compliance is a common goal of governments worldwide. Australia is no exception. The size of the nation’s “tax gap” — or the difference between what taxpayers pay in taxes in a timely manner and what they should pay if they fully complied with the tax laws — is hundreds of billions of dollars annually, significantly depriving the nation of much needed revenue.
Trust in government in Australia is at an all-time low. According to survey data, fewer than 41 per cent ofAustralian citizens are satisfied with the way democracy works, a precipitous decline from 86 per cent in 2007
This distrust stems from more than perception. Government is indeed failing to deliver solutions that improve people’s lives in measurable ways.
What some ego driven approaches fail to make clear is that public problem solving is not a solitary process to be undertaken by the clever problem solver behind closed doors.
In order to succeed, no amount of erudition or leadership skill will substitute for the collaboration that is needed at every step. In fact, public problem-solving skills are directed not at convincing others that one is right, but at harnessing the collective intelligence of others to develop a deeper and more realistic understanding of both problem and solution, and to evolve along with them. We can not be as smart alone as we are together, taking advantage of our diverse intelligence. And solutions will be more legitimate if they are developed with the benefit of participation.
How do you built tax system for good when talent does not rise to executive levels?
Interagency collaboration to reduce crime in New Zealand 2018-198.1
AI Teaches Itself Diplomacy IEEE
Falling sperm counts ‘threaten human survival’, expert warns Guardian
CASS SUNSTEIN, ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: The Cognitive Bias That Makes Us Panic About Coronavirus. Feeling anxious? Blame “probability neglect.”
Gruesome find made at same spot as Caddick’s school excursions Sydney Morning Herald A likely final chapter in a major fraud
Following up on my previous post, NY Times: College Dropout Jeffrey Epstein Earned Hundreds Of Millions As His Cut Of Billions Of Taxes Saved By Clients Using His Strategies — Typically GRATs: Daniel Hemel (Chicago; Google Scholar) & Bob Lord (Institute for Policy Studies), Beyond Lucrative: Jeffrey Epstein’s Billionaire Tax Avoidance Assistance Business:
The sex-trafficking scandal surrounding the late Jeffrey Epstein already has tarnished the reputations of prominent politicians, businessmen, and the British royal family. Now it’s casting a dark shadow on an estate tax-avoidance strategy popular among Wall Street CEOs and tech entrepreneurs.
The strategy exploits a loophole that Congress unintentionally left open when it passed provisions related to grantor retained annuity trusts, or GRATs, in 1990. Use of these trusts already has cost the IRS—by one estimate—well over $100 billion in just the last two decades. A recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission by the private equity firm Apollo Global Management reveals that the firm’s longtime CEO, Leon Black, relied on Epstein’s assistance to extract more than $500 million of tax savings from GRATs.
Your Micro credentials not the education revolution they were first touted to be
A guide to the identities and language of the far right
Poynter, James Stout: “Journalists have had to cover the difference between white nationalism and western chauvinism in the last few months, with some confusion…Many of my colleagues more used to dissecting the differences between two parties that share a narrow neoliberal consensus have been, through no choice of their own, forced to cover the difference between white nationalism and western chauvinism in the last few months. Understandably, there’s some confusion about where the dividing lines lie. This article tries to offer come conceptual clarity. There’s nowhere near enough space here to condense whole libraries of books, but I have included links and references to further reading…”
46,218 news transcripts show ideologically extreme politicians get more airtime – Professors Joshua Darr, Jeremey Padgett and Johanna Dunaway research how changes in the media have shifted the incentives of elected officials and the considerations of voters, and what that means for American democracy. In recent work, they showed that extremely conservative and extremely liberal legislators receive far more airtime on cable and broadcast news than their moderate counterparts.
Public servants free to harass, smear children; code of conduct goes missing in action
The day it was publicly revealed that Department of Parliamentary Services employee Geoff Wade was behind six years of online harassment, under the very nose of his employer, he targeted a group of primary school children. Continue reading
