World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

The US tax system is impossible to understand.  The tax code takes about 2000 pages to articulate and many of those pages are incomprehensible.  There is probably no good public policy interest to justify such complexity, but the code reflects a systematic effort to create opportunities for individuals and corporations to reduce their tax obligations.  The New York Times has an article in today’s paper that every American should be required to read.  The essential argument of the essay?  The US has the most biased tax code that money can buy:  owners of capital pay a much lower percentage in taxes than do owners of labor.

Do lower taxes lead to higher rates of economic growth?

The evidence doesn’t support that proposition.

After retaking the city of Ramadi, Iraqi forces will turn their attention to the much larger and much more important city of Mosul.  That city, however, is contested by both Iraqi Arabs and Iraqi Kurds.  The Iraqi army will have to cooperate with Kurdish forces to retake the city, but the Kurds will likely expect greater autonomy in the city and in their parts of Iraq as the price for their support.  The Kurds are emerging as the pivotal element in the fight against Daesh (the Islamic State), but they hold weaker cards in the longer game for their own aspirations.

Some are predicting that the North Pole will have temperatures above freezing tomorrow.  If that does happen, it will only be the second time in recorded history that above freezing temperatures have occurred in the winter.  There is little question that the weather in South Hadley has been very strange this winter.  Something weird is definitely going on.