Workers Defy the Billionaire Takeover on May Day

 

Staying with an angry person is like a bleeding person trying to comfort a hungry lion.

~ Paul Bamikole

Judge Rejects Efforts to Free F.B.I. Informant Who Lied About Hunter Biden

The Trump administration had signaled it might try to undo the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Alexander Smirnov.

19 Billion Compromised Passwords Found Online

How the UK tax code got in such a mess

Near-constant political tinkering means we have by far the most complex tax legislation in the world

It’s not just that our tax system is too complicated — creating all sorts of unanticipated opportunities for wealthy individuals and companies to engage in creative compliance — it’s also increasingly incoherent. This is perhaps most obvious in the mad cliff edges created by successive governments, particularly the withdrawal of the income tax personal allowance and tax-free childcare at £100,000 of earnings. This leads to the ridiculous situation where a London family with two children in full-time childcare would need to earn £150,000 before being marginally better off than they were below £100,000.

Ultimately, improving things comes down to politics. To her credit, Reeves has, at least, said there will only be one “fiscal event” a year with tax changes, though while we still have two OBR forecasts a year this seems unlikely to hold. But why do we need these “events” at all? Budgets could be set in a multi-stage and consultative process, as happens in plenty of other countries. That alone would reduce the pressure on politicians for endless gimmicks and tweaks.

Workers Defy the Billionaire Takeover on May DayIn These Times

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Blank (UC-Irvine; Google Scholar) & Osofsky (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Introduction to Automated Agencies: The Transformation of Government Guidance (Cambridge University Press, 2025)

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