Ordered back to the office, top tech talent left instead

REAL ID Act: 20 Years Of Delays – Why 2025 Won’t Be Any Different View from the Wing

ATO now a bigger Big Brother thanks to AI

Billabong founder on the ATO hook for $50 million on EY advice. What’s the scam?

Kemker: Do Black Taxpayers Matter? A Critical Tax Analysis Of IRS Audit Practices

Barbara Pocock fuming over delayed responses

THEY SHOULD KNOW, THEY’LL BE DOING IT:  US intel officials warn Congress that election interference will be ‘more complex than ever.’

Billionaire investor Ray Dalio warns U.S. is ‘on the brink’ and estimates a more than 1 in 3 chance of civil war Fortune

Civil War taught how to influence news media. It nearly cost Lincoln re-election FOX.

Mystery in the Alps: A Chinese Family, a Swiss Inn and the World’s Most Expensive Weapon: Switzerland agreed to buy F-35 jet fighters to park on a remote runway. Then the U.S. zeroed in on the Wangs, who owned the rustic hotel next door. “The truth of whether the Wangs were small-time innkeepers or a secret weapon in Beijing’s decadelong effort to capture one of America’s most closely protected military secrets may never be known. The case boils down to whether the family was interested in the view from the hotel’s front, or its back.” 

KEVIN DOWNEY JR: Want Spies With That? Chinese and Iranian Moles Are Posing As DoorDash Drivers.“Chinese nationals tried to squeeze onto military bases in the U.S. roughly 100 times just in 2023, roughly once every three or four days. They sometimes pose as DoorDash drivers who have ‘wandered off course’ and ‘accidentally’ showed up at a secret nuclear site.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Kurt Schlichter scenario is looking more plausible all the time.

ANOTHER BREWING CRISIS BY DESIGN: More Chinese Nationals Illegally Entered The U.S. In Two Days This Month Than In All Of 2021. “The CCP leadership’s chemical and political warfare against the U.S. coincides with a surge in the number of Chinese illegal aliens crossing the southern border without authorization. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 10,000 Chinese unlawful aliens have been apprehended since October 2022, compared to fewer than 500 in the same period in 2021. This increase may be attributed to various factors, such as the economic and social uncertainties and the limited personal freedoms in China, the demand for cheap labor, and the effectiveness of smugglers already positioned in the U.S.”

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): The Kurt Schlichter scenario is looking more plausible, too.

A mad world: capitalism and the rise of mental illness Red 

THE 21ST CENTURY ISN’T TURNING OUT AS I’D HOPED:  Brixham, England, residents forced to boil water after contamination.

Return to Office and the Tenure Distribution, David Van Dijcke1, Florian Gunsilius, and Austin Wright, Department of Economics, University of Michigan , Risk Analytics Division, Ipsos Public Affairs, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago. May 7, 2024: “With the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic, debates about the return to office have taken center stage among companies and employees. 

Despite their ubiquity, the economic implications of return to office policies are not fully understood. Using 260 million resumes matched to company data, we analyze the causal effects of such policies on employees’ tenure and seniority levels at three of the largest US tech companies: Microsoft, SpaceX, and Apple. Our estimation procedure is nonparametric and captures the full heterogeneity of tenure and seniority of employees in a distributional synthetic controls framework. We estimate a reduction in counterfactual tenure that increases for employees with longer tenure. Similarly, we document a leftward shift in the seniority distribution towards positions below the senior level.

 These shifts appear to be driven by employees leaving to larger firms that are direct competitors. Our results suggest that return to office policies can lead to an outflow of senior employees, posing a potential threat to the productivity, innovation, and competitiveness of the wider firm.”

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When the pursuit of ever greater wealth for the already wealthy is the goal of society something has to break

The Dow Jones Index of traded shares values in the USA hit 40,000 yesterday, for the first time. This is the index over the past
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Tax havens are still a threat to our well-being

I posted this video to YouTube this morning. In it, I argue that Tax havens are still a massive threat to the well-being of the
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Book Review: The Untapped Knowledge of Animals

In “The Internet of Animals,” Martin Wikelski highlights what insights humans can learn from creatures great and small.

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We’re set for the presidential debates. Now what?

The first debate is set for June 27, much earlier than usual. It will appear on CNN. Jake Tapper and Dana Bash will moderate.