Occupy Wall Street, Distributive Justice, and Tax Scholarship: An Ideology Critique of the Consumption Tax Debate

[Excerpt] “This Article argues that the pro-consumption tax literature is wrong to claim that no legitimate fairness objections to the consumption tax exist. It argues that the persistent and widespread wariness about replacing our current hybrid consumption tax/income tax system with a pure consumption tax is, contrary to what the pro-consumption tax literature asserts, completely justified. In fact, our reservations about the consumption tax’s fairness reflect legitimate concern about the role of capitalist power in America, particularly over the past thirty years. Indeed, the more the nation continues to experience the social welfare effects of increased capitalist power, the more compelling these objections become. History proves these concerns not just legitimate, but paramount. A full account, not a dismissal, of how capitalist power might benefit from a consumption tax is what would be required to meet these fairness objections. Part II of this Article fleshes out the fairness objections more fully and addresses the counter arguments that exist in the literature. In doing so, it seeks to reestablish the legitimacy of fairness objections to a consumption tax and encourage more robust and historically aware considerations of distributive justice in tax policy. Part II goes further and shows that the consumption tax literature gets it wrong in a particularly revealing way. Part II characterizes the pro-consumption tax literature’s dismissal of serious fairness and distributive justice concerns as, essentially, ideological; the literature’s very framing of the fairness issue precludes any serious consideration of the historical reality of capitalist power. Ideology, not argument, supports the claim that capitalist power is not a concern.

Welfare Reform for Low-wage Worker in New Zealand: Will Working For Families Work?

In May 2004 the New Zealand Government announced a number of welfare reforms (the Working for Families reforms) that will account for an increase in welfare expenditure of approximately $1.1 billion per-annum when fully implemented. Two objectives of these reforms are to reduce child poverty and to improve financial incentives for work at low wages. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of these reforms in achieving these objectives. Research is cited that shows that Working for Families should significantly reduce child poverty. This research, however, contains no estimates of the labour market behavioural effects of the reforms. This paper therefore estimates the likely labour market behavioural effects of the reforms and the impact of these effects on poverty reduction effectiveness and targeting efficiency. The improvement in financial incentives for work facing sole parents will be likely to improve the poverty reduction effectiveness of the reforms. The increase in disincentive facing secondary earners will be likely to encourage partnered families to reduce their hours of work and market incomes. These responses will be likely to improve the targeting efficiency of the reforms but at a cost of increasing the excess burden of the welfare system

An Investigation into the Thermodynamics of Overland Tropical Cyclone Intensity Change in Weakly/Non-Baroclinic Environments

There are two leading theories regarding how tropical cyclones can maintain or increase their intensity over land in weakly to non-baroclinic environments. In the first, tropical cyclones are maintained overland by enhanced upward surface enthalpy fluxes facilitated by the tropical cyclone’s rains, whereas in the second, tropical cyclones are maintained by enhanced enthalpy fluxes under inflowing trajectories at larger radii from the cyclone’s center. These theories have yet to be rigorously tested, however. To rigorously test these hypotheses, this study uses a quasi-idealized version of the Weather Research and Forecasting model lacking parameterized radiation to test the sensitivity of overland tropical cyclone intensity to the underlying land surface’s characteristics. In these simulations, the coldest initial land surfaces result in the strongest simulated tropical cyclones after landfall as they are associated with a negative sensible heat flux that creates a nighttime-like near-surface temperature inversion. This nighttime-like inversion suppresses tropical cyclone rainband activity, preventing lower equivalent potential temperature air from the midtroposphere from being mixed into the inflowing near-surface trajectories by convective downdrafts. The results do not fully support either of the two leading hypotheses and further investigations are needed to address shortcomings in the applicability of this study’s findings to observed events

Gut Microbiota, Inflammation, and Behavioral Expression Following Social Defeat

Social stress exacerbates symptoms of mood and anxiety disorders in humans. Here, we tested the hypothesis that social stress increases anxiety- and depression-like responses via changes in gut microbiota and inflammation. We used a social defeat model in Syrian hamsters to determine whether exposure to social stress alters the gut microbial community. We then tested whether alterations in the gut microbial community impacts susceptibility to social stress, and, if so, whether it might do so via immunological pathways. In Aim 1, the gut microbial community of hamsters was assessed by 16S mRNA Illumina sequencing after one and repeated agonistic encounters. Both dominant and subordinate hamsters exhibited alterations in the gut microbial community and reductions in species richness following social stress. LEfSE analysis revealed that some microbial taxa correlated with achieving dominant or subordinate status in a future agonistic encounter. In Aim 2, hamsters were treated with either a probiotic for 2 weeks or an emulsifier for 12 weeks to test whether manipulating gut microbiota impacts behavioral susceptibility to social defeat. Probiotics are thought to promote a healthy microbial composition and emulsifiers have been shown to disrupt the gut microbial community. Probiotic treatment increased avoidance behavior and decreased social interaction following defeat. Probiotic treatment also altered the gut microbial community and serum cytokines following defeat. Emulsifier treatment had no effect on behavior. In Aim 3, neuroinflammation was assessed following social defeat. There was no increase in microglial activation in brain following defeat suggesting that exposure to mild social stress in hamsters does not induce robust neuroinflammation. As a positive control, we examined microglial activation following administration of lipopolysaccharide, a bacterial endotoxin, and were able to demonstrate a robust inflammatory response in hamster brain. Thus, the experiments in Aim 3 suggest that neuroinflammation is not necessary for behavioral responses to social stress in hamsters. Collectively, these data demonstrate that exposure to social stress can alter gut microbiota and that the microbiota can alter susceptibility to social stress. Future studies will be necessary to determine the mechanisms underlying this two-way relationship

Rent Control: A Practical Guide for Tenant Organizations

This comment explores the issue of rent control. After a brief history of rent control laws, the author examines the arguments for and against rent control. Next the author discusses the general constitutional restrictions on rent control legislation. The author then addresses specific contents and problems involved in drafting rent control legislation. Finally the author provides sample rent control legislation and encourages tenant organization to follow the guidelines of the comment in order to withstand constitutional challenges and landlords\u27 retaliatory reactions to rent control legislation

Kuwait's foreign policy (1961-1977): Non-alignment, ideology and the pursuit of security

Kuwait's leaders from 1961-77 maintained a foreign policy that reflected the country's territorial vulnerabilities. They sought to discretely cultivate an Anglo-American defence relationship without fatally compromising an ideological fealty to at least the slogans of Arabism. The thesis emphasises Kuwait's essential need to offset its international "hard" security component with, as far as practicable, a regional non-alignment posture and adherence to Arab policy norrns. In the process neo-realist and constructivist theory are used to bring out the duality at the heart of the amirate's foreign policy. Differences between key Al-Sabah over foreign policy were differences of emphasis, while domestic security concerns did not so much determine policy as emphasise Kuwait's regional challenges, against which the amirate chose to deploy ideology. Arabism inevitably had contradictions as a tool of Kuwait foreign policy, and was often more about the cash subventions that accompanied policy stances, than the value of the stances themselves. However deploying ideology was indicative of the ruling Al-Sabah's desire to strike the right tone for external and domestic consumption; a desire to accommodate or befriend key regional players without, it hoped, alienating others. The inherent contradictions of Kuwait's foreign policy were born of the country's relative weakness, save its one precious asset, oil. In the 1980s Kuwait's strategically vital location and key resource would see the amirate forced to abandon its sometimes illusory regional nonalignment; after 1990 it maintained an overt US alliance. Events post- 1977 therefore emphasised what had been the fragility of Kuwait's foreign policy since independence. The country's limited ability to act to prevent these crises only underscored what had been the limits of the amirate's policy options

The GCC: Gulf state integration or leadership cooperation?

The GCC was forged as an alliance of politically like-minded states which sought to cooperate in the face of perceptibly increasing security threats. The conflict between Iraq and Iran presented security threats to the different Gulf Arab regimes. Saudi Arabia was concerned that the war could encourage some of the smaller states to bandwagon with one of the two adversaries. The smaller Gulf states were prepared to work with Saudi Arabia in preference to the greater threat of Iraq and Iran. The Gulf Arab hereditary regimes formed an association whose launch reflected Arab and national norms by not defining itself in opposition to others and by emphasizing economic operation, not common security interests. The ideational construct of Gulf cooperation proved insufficient to overcome the statecentric rationale of maximizing national sovereignty through loose regional political cooperation and bilateral defence pacts with Washington. The increased economic weight of some of the GCC states has seen a competitive search for international prestige that has sometimes been expressed through the construct of ‘regional’ interests but is fundamentally state-leadership focused. These leaderships remain pivotal in polities largely defined by a ruling family where there is little tradition or practical capacity for devolving authority. As such a major transfer of political authority to supra-state GCC institutions also remains a far-off prospect

Welfare Reform for Low-wage Worker in New Zealand: Will Working For Families Work?

In May 2004 the New Zealand Government announced a number of welfare reforms (the Working for Families reforms) that will account for an increase in welfare expenditure of approximately $1.1 billion per-annum when fully implemented. Two objectives of these reforms are to reduce child poverty and to improve financial incentives for work at low wages. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of these reforms in achieving these objectives. Research is cited that shows that Working for Families should significantly reduce child poverty. This research, however, contains no estimates of the labour market behavioural effects of the reforms. This paper therefore estimates the likely labour market behavioural effects of the reforms and the impact of these effects on poverty reduction effectiveness and targeting efficiency. The improvement in financial incentives for work facing sole parents will be likely to improve the poverty reduction effectiveness of the reforms. The increase in disincentive facing secondary earners will be likely to encourage partnered families to reduce their hours of work and market incomes. These responses will be likely to improve the targeting efficiency of the reforms but at a cost of increasing the excess burden of the welfare system

When counting sheep becomes counting worries: insomnia, rumination, and depression

Previous studies have examined how both external and internal factors are related to sleep disorders. Internal factors such as depression have been linked to insomnia and other sleep disorders. The current study examines the relationship between rumination, insomnia, and depression. The study also examines how sleep rumination, the act of persistently worrying about how much sleep one is getting, might affect the relationship between insomnia and depression. In the results, depression was strongly correlated with rumination (r = .635, p \u3c .001). Though there was no correlation between sleep rumination and depression, there was a significant correlation between depression and sleep discrepancy, the difference between the amount of sleep and the amount of sleep desired (r = .51, p \u3c .001). This finding suggests that more research should be conducted on sleep discrepancy to see how it may relate to other disorders and psychological concepts