Threat Calculus

The Fed has had almost no success gently bring down inflation once an economy has started to overheat.
…
The long-run threat (facing the economy) is that we will cease to be one effective country.  Whether that’s a failure of public investment in everything ranging from collecting the taxes that are owed – where there will be $7 trillion in taxes that are owed but not paid over the next decade;  that is a huge loss to the government  …  [and] a huge source of injustice because most of the nonpayment comes among the highest-income Americans.  Whether it is the fact that at the early stage, we were dependent on other countries for masks, and we were not well prepared for a pandemic, despite the fact that there had been repeated warnings that a next pandemic would come.  Whether it is the fact that it takes half an hour longer on the schedule to fly from Boston to Washington that it did when I first started taking the trip regularly 40 years ago.  This falling-apart of society is our greatest long-term threat.
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I think another important part of the calculus is that when governments lose control over money, people tend to lose confidence in them.  Progressives need to ponder the fact that when they’re not able to keep inflation under control, they can pay a very large political price.
—     Larry Summers
Former Secretary of the Treasury
In an interview with / by:  Eben Shapiro
The interview was titled:  “The Leadership Brief: Inflation worries are keeping Larry Summers up at night“
Appearing in:  Time Magazine;  dtd:  21/28 June 2021
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When I Grow Up I Want To…

Cleaning Windows
The “original” LP version…
And a “live” version…
Comment(s):
When my son was young (pre-teen) and we were living in Liverpool, his mum and I used to ask him what he wanted to grow up to be.  He always replied:  “I want to clean windows.”  We always assumed he’d grow out of this “job” answer, but he kept saying it for several years.
One day I asked him why he wanted to clean windows.  He replied:  “Because when you’re up on the ladder, you don’t have a boss constantly looking over your shoulder and watching you work and you get your money in hand after each house.”  I asked him why that was important.  He replied:  “Because the tax man will never know how much you earned, so you can diddle him dead easy.“
I used to chuckle about that conversation every time I heard this song.  Nowadays, I think:  “Someday my son could turn out to be a Republican candidate for the Presidency.“
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Working On My 2019 Tax Returns

Why, look at me.  I’ve worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.
―    Groucho Marx
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I’d Bet On Taxes

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
―    J.K. Rowling
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Wars Without Taxes

We often give our enemies the means for our own destruction.
―    Aesop
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Why I Pay Taxes

Let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools even though I don’t personally have a kid in school:  I don’t like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.
—   John Green
[Actually, I prefer the term “uneducated people”, but I guess being uneducated can lead to unwitting stupidity.   —   KMAB]
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