Whether or not Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is ultimately an effective congressperson remains to be seen, writes New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, but she’s already doing a great job of advancing tax policy.
Ocasio-Cortez has advocated a tax rate of 70 to80 percent on very high incomes, which Krugman says seems “crazy”—except to the world’s leading expert on public finance.
“It’s a policy nobody has ever implemented, aside from … the United States, for 35 years after World War II — including the most successful period of economic growth in our history,” he writes.The government should look at taxation as a way to raise revenue for the government.“When taxing the rich, all we should care about is how much revenue we raise,” he explains. “The optimal tax rate on people with very high incomes is the rate that raises the maximum possible revenue.”According to a fellow Nobel laureate in economics, “the optimal rate” for taxing the rich is 73 percent.“So AOC, far from showing her craziness, is fully in line with serious economic research,” he writes. “She definitely knows more economics than almost everyone in the G.O.P. caucus.”
The tensions unfolding over a natural gas pipeline project in northern B.C. have raised questions about who a resource company should consult among Indigenous leaders when pursuing a major project: hereditary chiefs or elected band councils?
Hereditary chiefs are standing in opposition to the project, despite a court injunction. But several Wet'suwet'en elected band councils have signed agreements with Coastal GasLink, a subsidiary of TransCanada Corp., for a pipeline to carry natural gas from northern B.C. to the coast, where a liquefied natural gas project is scheduled.
Here’s a look at what we know about the situation:
Who is trying to stop the pipeline in Wet'suwet'en territory?
All the First Nations bands, except the Hagwilget Nation Village Council, signed agreements with Coastal Gaslink. This includes the Skin Tyee First Nation, Wet'suwet'en First Nation, Witset First Nation, and Nee Tahi Buhn Band.
However, hereditary leaders say those agreements don’t apply to the traditional territories.
“All of the 13 house chiefs of the five Wet'suwet'en clans have said ‘no’ to all oil and gas pipelines in our territories,” says Carla Lewis, a spokesperson with the Gitdimt'en clan, who has a master’s degree in Indigenous governance.
Lewis says those clans ratified their opposition to all oil and gas expansion within their territory through a potlatch three years ago after weighing the cultural, environmental, and economic impacts.
“When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lamppost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: “it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks.” And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of Van Gogh’s it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *academical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on. But the moment I read Van Gogh’s letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh’s little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care.”
— Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit (via raggedybearcat)
The other day I went to McDonald’s with my family and the guy who took my order was really loud and was basically like “HAPPY HOLIDAYS WHAT CAN I GET YOU” and I was like wow I can’t let this guy outmatch me so I yelled “I’LL TAKE A HAPPY MEAL WITH THE NUG NUGS IF I MAY” you know, like a natural well-adjusted epitome of adulthood 19 year old and he was like “CERTAINLY WOULD YOU LIKE THE MIGHTY KIDS MEAL INSTEAD WITH EXTRA FRIES” and I was so sleep deprived I essentially blacked out and apparently leaned over the counter like I was robbing the place, raised my eyebrow like a suave robin hood and said “HECK YES I WOULD GOOD SIR” and then I sat down and he yelled from across the store “WOULD YOU LIKE THE PURPLE OR BLUE SPIDER-MAN” and since purple is the more superior color that’s how I answered and long story short my parents think college changed me and that I’m now the poster child for being social and I’ve only been asked once why I’m not in a relationship yet but I know it’s gonna be brought up again and how do i tell my parents it’s because whenever I eat in the dining hall I spend the entire time playing bumper cars with the wheeley chairs and all I eat is pixie sticks and the last time I was in the library (where I’m supposed to work next semester, deAr GoD) I ripped my leggings in the bathroom pulling up my pants and I walked the entire 20 mins back to my dorm with my neon underwear peeking out from the holes like a 17th century harlot with a cocaine addiction and I’ve essentially been living off jars of peanut butter and the soundtrack to the bee movie for the past year
there’s more information in this post than there was in the library of alexandria
