Facebook and Google vs the Free Press
The effort to contain Google and Facebook were only in the skirmish stage until Australia and Maryland upped the ante with their tax powers.
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Bob Lord (Institute for Policy Studies), America’s Future: Trillionaire Trust Babies?:
Back in 1982, with Reaganomics in its infancy, the first Forbes list of America’s ultra-wealthy had just 13 billionaires on top. The two richest of these billionaires, Daniel Ludwig and Gordon Getty, held personal fortunes estimated in the $2 billion range. The other 11 billionaires on that first annual Forbes list clustered together at the $1 billion level.
Multiply that 1982 billionaire breakdown by 100 and you’d have something awfully close to the present list.
The nine current wealthiest Americans today — all white men — each hold a net worth above or rapidly approaching the $100 billion mark. Two of these “hectobillionaires,” Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, hold around $200 billion.
To what do we owe this awesome increase in billionaire fortune? ...
Over recent decades, Republicans have hollowed out our estate and gift tax laws. Their legislating has allowed tax avoidance planners to effortlessly pass billions from one generation to the next — and often to the next generation after that — without incurring tax liabilities.
One former Donald Trump economic adviser, Gary Cohn, infamously noted that “only morons pay estate tax.” We can condemn Cohn’s disparagement of wealthy Americans who choose not to engage in tax avoidance, but we can’t challenge his basic point: In the United States today, the estate tax has become essentially a voluntary levy. ...
A Victorian chef who stole more than $85,000 from Centrelink to feed his gambling addiction has been jailed.
Michael Blackborrow, 40, on Thursday faced Judge Anne Hassan at the Victorian County Court, where he was sentenced to two years in prison.
He must serve eight months before being eligible for a recognisance release.
ReFED: “In 2019, an enormous 35% of all food in the United States went unsold or uneaten. That’s $408 billion worth of food – roughly 2% of U.S. GDP – with a greenhouse gas footprint equivalent to 4% of total U.S. GHG emissions. Most of this became food waste, which went straight to landfill, incineration, or down the drain, or was simply left in the fields to rot. Businesses, government agencies, funders, and others are already making efforts to address this challenge – but a massive acceleration is needed to achieve national and international goals to reduce food waste by 50% by the year 2030.
See also Project Drawdown – “Roughly a third of the world’s food is never eaten, which means land and resources used and greenhouse gases emitted in producing it were unnecessary. Interventions can reduce loss and waste, as food moves from farm to fork, thereby reducing overall demand.
McKinsey partners sacrifice leader in ‘ritual cleansing’ FT. That’s a damn shame
Sven Smit and Bob Sternfels compete to run the consultancy but the question of reform looms large
The news this week that Kevin Sneaderwould be McKinsey’s first global managing partner since 1976 not to win a second three-year term stunned many of the consultancy’s partners and influential alumni.
Few could point to any one mis-step that had felled the 54-year-old Scot. “It added up,” one veteran said simply of the litany of reputational crises he had tried to resolve.
But nor did many think that Sven Smit or Bob Sternfels, who beat Sneader to the last round of voting, would represent a cleaner break with the past — or that whoever won the final vote in the next few weeks would face an easier task than he had.
Turtles Caught in Disastrous Oil Spill Treated With Mayonnaise Smithsonian
Bond Tantrum Is a Big Test of Central Banks’ MettleBloomberg
Information on factory farms is spotty at best. The government has been hogtied from doing more.Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
