The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform, Why We Need It and What it Will Take

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In this week’s column, Fred Siegmund reviews “The Benefit and The Burden: Tax Reform, Why We Need It and What it Will Take” by Bruce Bartlett. In the opening sentences of the Introduction, author Bruce Bartlett tells readers the Federal tax code needs regular attention like a garden needs weeding. Even though the present weedy tangle [...]

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The Fiscal Cliff and Social Security

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Post-election analysis has started to turn to discussion of economic issues put off before the election. Health care expansion will go forward and tax and budget disputes will be settled by default with the fiscal cliff or by compromise in the Congress. A recent article by Robert J. Samuelson [“It’s the Welfare State, Stupid,” Washington [...]

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When’s the Right Time to Get a Master’s Degree?

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There were 693,025 MA degree graduates for the year ending June 2010, the last year of complete data.  The MA is still relatively small compared to 1.6 million BA degree candidates, but the MA degree has the highest growth rate of degrees including the AA, BA and Ph.D. From 1990 to 2010, that growth was [...]

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Performance, Job Pay and Teachers

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Growing opinion from outside of teaching expects teachers to produce a quality product measured by student test scores. The use of test scores in teacher evaluation and the use of test scores was the primary contention for teachers in the Chicago teacher strike. Manufactured products fail as a result of defective materials and workmanship, and [...]

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The Follies of Gold

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Many years ago, before banks, gold circulated as a medium of exchange, but it was heavy and inconvenient from the beginning. Enterprising entrepreneurs opened gold depositories where people could store their gold safely. Depositors received a paper certificate as proof of their deposit. If a depositor decided to buy a horse and wagon, he would [...]

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Like Automatic Finances on Facebook to Get the Ebook Free!

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See this image above? That’s the Automatic Finances page on Facebook. See how many likes it currently has? 41. 41!! Totally lame. It’s time to finally do something about that. Here’s the incredibly simple jist. If you are one of the first 125 people to Like the Automatic Finances page on Facebook, you’ll get a free copy [...]

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The Economics of a City: Detroit

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Detroit is a city of misery and hope. The mayor, former basketball star Dave Bing, wants to turn liabilities into assets with a plan known as the Detroit works project. His city is broke with the loss of the automobile industry and over half its population, but it apparently has nearly 40 square miles of [...]

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