Entries Tagged 'Economics and Investing' ↓
July 6th, 2018 — Economics and Investing, Government
Yesterday there were screams of delight that Scott Pruitt took the advice of Kristen Mink and resigned soon after she confronted him in a restaurant. Will that really make much of a change to the EPA?
Well, taxpayers will not be losing millions of dollars spent by Mr. Pruitt on extravagances. More importantly to me, a number of staff will not have to put up with the arbitrary whims and petty meannesses their boss forced them to endure.
But Mr. Pruitt is not one of a kind. He is a type of manager I’ve witnessed a various times during my working career. I saw and heard many stories of his likenesses in government agencies, non-profits, and corporate settings.
In fact almost everyone President Trump has appointed to office has done similar things to what Mr. Pruitt did, only on a lesser scale…
There’s a bigger picture here that points both to corruption in government and to implementation of policies many American people dislike intensely. It will take more than one or two resignations of government heads of agencies to ever stop this juggernaut!
But for the EPA there is also another factor—that is its history. EPA leadership has been suppressed for decades now. Continue reading →
March 12th, 2018 — Economics and Investing, Government, Jobs
Nearly everyone and his or her brother and sister have come out against Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum this week! 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum.
I have read some things I didn’t know about tariffs on steel and aluminum. Most of these things came from an article in The Conversation titled “George W. Bush tried steel tariffs. It didn’t work” by William Hauk, Associate Professor of Economics at one of my alma maters, the University of South Carolina in Columbia.
Here are some facts I didn’t know
Continue reading →
February 5th, 2018 — Economics and Investing, Government, Jobs, Taxes
Today the Financial Times reports that American expatriats living abroad will have to pay higher taxes on any holdings in foreign businesses.
This is due to the hasty provisions Republicans put into their tax law to get mega-corportions like Apple and Google to bring back profits earned abroad to the United States.
But will those repatriation provisions to get US corporations to bring home more foreign earnings even work to create more jobs for Americans?”
The answer is “No!”
Why? Continue reading →