Not Enough for the IRS

 That's my reaction to this request from President Biden which was included in his 2022 budget outline:

 Supports a Fair and Equitable Tax System. To ensure that all Americans are treated fairly by the Nation’s tax system, including that the wealthy and corporations comply with existing laws, the discretionary request provides $13.2 billion for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), a $1.2 billion or 10.4-percent increase above the 2021 enacted level. With this funding, the IRS would: increase oversight of high-income and corporate tax returns to ensure compliance; provide new and improved online tools for taxpayers to communicate with the IRS easily and quickly; and improve telephone and in-person taxpayer customer service, including outreach and assistance to underserved communities. In addition to increases for base IRS enforcement funding, the 2022 discretionary request provides an additional increase of $417 million in funding for tax enforcement as part of a multiyear tax initiative that would increase tax compliance and increase revenues. Altogether, the 2022 discretionary request would increase resources for tax enforcement by $0.9 billion

I'd prefer a multi-year plan for 50 percent for more. 

Inflation Ahead?

 I'm seeing media reports of a looming labor shortage--restaurants are reopening but can't find help.

My local supermarket seems to be having staffing problems as well. 

This raises the possibility of inflation coming.  If the labor supply at the low end has been disrupted by the pandemic and possibly the Trump crackdown on immigration, wages will have to rise at the lower end.  Perhaps that will diminish our inequality, or perhaps the better paid among us will try to maintain the wage gap and push for more pay themselves.

We'll see. 

Blasts from the Past

Two things, unconnected except they both recalled my past:

The Post is running "Classic Doonesbury". In a recent one Alex, the daughter, is giving her father her Christmas list.  She wants a Pentium PC so she can keep up with her classmates, and a 288 modem.   I want to say I remember my first modem, but I don't.  Could it have been 120/240 baud or 1200/2400 baud?  I definitely remember the big advance up the ladder to a 28.8K baud modem.  I suspect these days few people remember a "baud" (1 bit per second, where 8 bits equal one byte, which was one character).   Back then I was going on-line through Compuserve.  So much has changed since then.

Going back even further in time, at some point in the 1940's-50's our poultry flock was hit with Newcastle disease. We had a run of diseases at that time, leading us to change the hatchery supplying our chicks, so I don't remember how bad it was, how many hens it killed, how many eggs weren't laid.  I do remember the death toll one of the diseases took, taking the dead hens out and tossing them off a hill into a swamp (I know, not good, but that was another time).  

The NYTimes had a Science article on virologists being able to use the  Newcastle virus as a means of inserting a vaccine into humans.  (Newcastle doesn't do much to people.)

Am I Destroying Capitalism?

 I was a relatively early investor in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) which Annie Lowery in the Atlantic thinks may be dangerous to capitalism (along with index based mutual funds).

If I understand the concerns: in the good old days of individual stock ownership and actively managed mutual funds people, fund managers and investors, were actively concerned about the performance of companies. They bought and sold stock based on that information, resulting in a an efficient sharing of information related to performance  via financial markets.  But with ETFs and index funds dominating the scene these days, many fewer people are tracking performance and incentives for managers to perform are less.

It sounds okay to me.  Although I would point to Billy Hwang's financial distress to observe that financiers can be pretty stupid; they seem to be chasing returns through ingenuity rather than hard work.

Another aspect is the rise of global financial markets.  Back in the days of actively managed funds we had much less  in the way of global financial flows.  Over time I've diversified our investments away from Spdrs and QQQ (the early ETFs tracking the S&P 500 and the Russell index) to include several with foreign investments. While fewer people may be tracking GM  and Ford against each other, the competition between US car manufacturers and foreign manufacturers is being  tracked.

At any rate, I expect the current setup will outlast me; at least I hope so.

Side Effects of the Filibuster Rule

 One phenomena of recent times is the giant legislative bill.  That's true of the reconciliation bill passed annually, but also of others.  

I think what's going on is the filibuster.  It raises the difficulty of passing laws, so the laws which can and must pass get stuffed with measures. As long as someone, Congressional or lobbyist, has the ear of a person who's involved in the writing of the bill, there's a good chance to get your issue addressed.  That cuts out the back and forth we might expect from committee hearings, which can expose difficulties and at least gives the agency which has to administer the bill some additional background and understanding of what's going on.

Here's a related tweet.

Ezra Klein's Misinformation

 Ezra Klein was interviewed on WETA, the Amanpour program.  Briefly he was discussing California and asserted the state had the worst record in vaccinations.  According to the Bloomberg tracker, it's actually slightly above average. 

Update on Congressional Review Act

 I've posted before on the use of the Congressional Review Act to kill regulations. The last time I posted it seemed as if the administration was hesitant to use it, partly because of uncertainty over its effects down the road. CRA has a provision if Congress votes to kill a reg, the agency cannot do new regulations substantially the same without new legislation.

It now appears that maybe Democrats will try to apply it to six regulations. Because the Trump administration used their control of Congress to kill several regulations from the Obama administration, I also looking to see if any agencies try to revive them and test how much flexibility SCOTUS will allow in interpreting the act.

Herd Immunity and Peak Infections

 This was an interesting twitter thread--the gist is that herd immunity does not mean the apex of the curve of covid infections.  

This is an image from one of the tweets:

Why We're Prejudiced--We Love Our Kids

 That's my take-away from this research at the Post's Monkey Cage.

Parents seem to regard decisions that affect their children as the most important they make and to use "common sense" to decide, rather than rational values.   This, together with the existence of vicious cycles of feedback results in what looks like racism.

Worst April Fools Nightmare

 Saw a tweet about Joe Manchin switching parties--an April Fool joke.  That would be liberals' worst nightmare.