|
Tax-rebate checks are expected to arrive in the second quarter for consumers, but the bulk of relief from Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act is geared toward businesses
|
|
Topic: Going GreenGovernancePoliticsBill Gates recently posted his new thinking on Climate Change declaring we've been thinking about it the wrong way. His article is sending shockwaves, some agreeing, some feeling he has betrayed the cause, and some like Trump declaring this is proof that climate change was a hoax. I definitely agree with Gates here (and not Trump, obviously) but his revelation speaks to something even bigger than climate change, and hints at what may be the greatest mistake in global political discussion about a wide range of topics, not just climate. We've been doing it wrong, and are paying a terrible price.
Gates' thesis is that the general climate community has been overstating the case for climate change. It's a major, serious problem, which he has personally done far more to address than almost anybody, but it's not the civilization-ending emergency crisis it is often painted as. This has stopped us from allocating our resources wisely to fight the true big problems like poverty and disease, which will do far more harm to people than even the worst that global warming threatens. The way to combat climate change not simply to stop emissions (which is good) but to give people the economic prosperity and tools to contend with the hardships to come, and many others.
Read Gates' own essay to get the full scop
|
|
Main image:
WHAT are Republican lawmakers in politics to achieve? Not many years ago, at the peak of their outrage over Barack Obama''s economic stimulus package, 'balanced budgets' might have featured in the answer. But the frenzied passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act through Congress has revealed the insincerity of the party''s fiscal moralising. Republicans in Congress do not oppose government borrowing when it suits them. Rather, the overarching policy objective that unifies them is cutting taxes—and damn the fiscal consequences. Following the passage of the tax bill through the Senate in the early hours of December 2nd, Republicans are on the brink of achieving their goal.On November 30th budget scorekeepers unveiled a forecast for how much extra economic growth the tax bill might spark: enough to pay for about one third of its $1.5trn cost. Previously, Republicans might have viewed this projection as a triumph. They have long pressed for budget forecasts to include such 'dynamic' effects (see blog). But the score briefly seemed to imperil the bill. It undermined the absurd claim, made by the Republican leadership and the Trump administration, that tax cuts would pay for themselves in full. No serious economist ever thought this credible. Yet the official score seemed to blow Republicans'' ...
|
|
