In biggest shake-up of the standardised driving exam since the introduction of the theory test, UK drivers will be required to demonstrate that they can navigate using a sat nav. The Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency has confirmed that from Decem…
Have you seen this adorable photo of a baby giraffe getting a kiss from its mother? The picture has gone viral in the past few days. Steve Van Zandt, the famous Sopranos actor and musician, tweeted it yesterday with the caption, “And just when you’re ready to give up hope…”
The director of the HBO series “The Leftovers” said the election of President Donald Trump may be humanity’s last lurch toward an exterminating angel that presages the end of it all.
Damon Lindelof’s series launched its third and final season on HBO Sunday. Starring Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon, the show is a kind of end-of-days saga about what happens after the mysterious disappearance of 2 percent of the world’s population. The vanishings, called the “Sudden Departure,” appear to be similar to the rapture predicted in the Bible when good people, living and dead, rise to heaven just before the world is destroyed.
Religious zealots tend to embrace the idea of the rapture because they believe it means the destruction of sin and sinners while they take their place with the Lord.
“With all apocalyptic thinking, if it’s not happening fast enough we are going to bring it about, which I think explains the election in America,” Lindelof said during a masterclass that was part of the Series Mania TV festival in Paris, Variety reported.
“If you are unhappy with the way things are going, you may want to elect an agent of destruction. I think it’s very interesting that Trump doesn’t identify as particularly religious, [but] so many evangelicals got behind him.”
Lindelof said he doesn’t believe we’re actually heading for the end of days — yet. But he does think every generation fears the world will end when they are living.
“Are we closer to the apocalypse now than we were a year ago? I don’t think so,” he told Inverse. “One of the things we tried to say in the third season of the show is that every generation of humans thought the world might end while they were alive. That’s kind of narcissistic and interesting.”
Lindelof said the final season of the series was written against the backdrop of the presidential campaign.
“We were all feeling cocky and confident that Hillary Clinton was going to become the president of the United States, and that would be a step away from the apocalypse,” he said. “But that idea in ‘The Leftovers’ is that the ‘Sudden Departure’ forced everyone to reevaluate the world they lived in and suddenly understand that things were not as stable as they seemed. They were surprised, and unpleasantly so. I think all of us experienced that sensation on the evening of November 8.”
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Toddlers really need their sleep. It’s crucial when our brains our first developing, so early problems can ripple across your lifetime. That makes a report by Birbeck University of London researchers somewhat disturbing — they found that toddlers be…
WASHINGTON ― If taxpayers are looking for someone to blame for federal deficits and the state of the U.S. tax code as the filing deadline approaches, a good place to start might be the mirror.
For decades, politicians from both parties have told Americans their federal taxes are too high, or even that they’ve been increasing. For their part, voters have been eager to believe them, making the promise of a “middle-class tax cut” a perennial campaign favorite.
President Donald Trump talked about it on the trail, and again last week: “The middle class has just been taken advantage of in this country for so many years,” he told Fox Business.
Yet for decades, that underlying premise has been wrong: Americans at almost every income level are paying a smaller percentage of their salaries in federal taxes than they were 10, 20 even 30 years ago.
Only the richest one-fifth of households are paying a higher percentage in federal taxes than they were a decade or two ago, and that’s only because of increases passed under former President Barack Obama to pay for his signature health care law.
Meaning that for liberals who support the idea of a progressive income tax ― one that imposes higher rates on the wealthy ― the promise of a middle-class tax reduction as part of a coming “tax reform” package could actually be a Trojan horse. Given House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) longtime desire to lower the top rates, any reduction for middle and lower-income taxpayers would almost certainly be dwarfed by savings for the wealthiest.
“They keep saying: There are not going to be any tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, right,” said Roberton Williamson, with the liberal-leaning Tax Policy Center.
“It’s almost became a religious belief, a religious cult. Tax cuts are an elixir for everything. They are always good,” said Norman Ornstein, of the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, who in recent years has grown critical of congressional Republicans. “And the lowest rates are best for the richest, since they drive the economy. Evidence is not a part of this.”
While supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) may disagree, the tax code today already leans heavily on the country’s wealthy. The richest 1 percent of households in the nation pays 25 percent of all federal taxes. That includes personal income tax, payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and excise taxes – according to a 2016 analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.
The richest one-fifth ― whose average income in 2013, the latest year available in the CBO report, was $265,000 ― paid 69 percent of all federal taxes collected by the U.S. Treasury that year.
The middle 20 percent ― whose average household income was $69,700 ― paid 9 percent of all federal taxes.
That share of the total burden worked out to an average federal tax rate of 12.8 percent in 2013, compared with 13.6 percent in 2003, 17.2 percent in 1993, and 17.5 percent in 1983 ― immediately after President Ronald Reagan’s big first-term tax cuts.
That overall tax reduction is similar to other income groups: The poorest 20 percent saw their average federal tax rate drop from 8.7 percent in 1983 to 3.3 percent in 2013. The next one-fifth of households saw their federal tax rate drop from 12.8 percent to 8.4 percent.
Only the wealthiest one-fifth saw their average federal rate go up, from 23.8 percent in 1983 to 26.3 percent in 2013 ― but that was only because of tax increases under Obama following his re-election. That group’s tax rate had been 23.9 percent in 2012.
“We basically have had a downward ratchet, and haven’t raised taxes on the vast majority of people since the 1980s,” said Jason Furman, chairman of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers during his second term.
It’s almost became a religious belief, a religious cult. Tax cuts are an elixir for everything. They are always good.
Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute
Unlike Republicans’ push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which Democrats uniformly oppose, the idea of tax “reform” is one that could gain some Democratic support.
After all, the tax code and the Internal Revenue Service that administers it are almost uniformly disliked. Arguments to make tax law simpler and fairer sound attractive on their face ― a fact the Trump White House and its allies are counting on.
“Many Democrats have reached out to say that they want to help on this process too. They recognize it’s been 30 years since significant tax reform was done,” White House legislative affairs director Marc Short said recently. “I think there will be bipartisan interest to work on tax reform.”
Yet if Democrats do wind up agreeing to work for a tax package with the shared goal of “closing loopholes” and simplifying the code, they could inadvertently wind up with a system far less progressive in its structure than the existing one,
“Trump is very good at shiny, symbolic gestures,” said Harry Stein, director of fiscal policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. “And this is something progressives are going to have to watch for in tax reform.”
Even the idea of eliminating the many dozens of deductions and credits with the promise of ending giveaways to the well-connected ignores that most of the biggest deductions and credits are those that benefit the average taxpayer, not a particular special interest.
The biggest of the “tax expenditures,” as Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation calls them, lets employers deduct health insurance premiums for their workers as a business expense. That alone costs the U.S. Treasury $220 billion a year. Eliminating it would make health insurance more expensive for every single American who gets it as an employee benefit.
The second-biggest tax break comes from something most homeowners don’t even realize they’re getting. The ability to live in one’s home rent-free may not seem like a tax break ― but it offers homeowners a substantial tax advantage over renters. Monthly rent payments are treated as taxable income by landlords, and that extra cost is built into the rent. Meanwhile, the so-called “imputed income” of not having to pay yourself rent to live in your home goes untaxed by the IRS. The price tag in uncollected revenue: $105 billion a year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
That total does not include the deduction for mortgage interest on those homes ― worth $68 billion ― and local property taxes on those homes ― an additional $36 billion.
Letting taxpayers deduct their state and local income taxes from their federal taxes costs the treasury $55 billion. Charitable deductions cost $59 billion.
In contrast, the tax breaks politicians typically point to as abuses are significantly smaller. The “carried interest” loophole that lets some investment managers pay a reduced rate on their income costs the treasury about $2 billion a year. The “corporate jet” loophole costs the treasury $300 million a year.
“That is where good analysis is so important,” Stein said, adding that Democrats should not get snookered into agreeing to a deal that closes a few loopholes, but winds up giving the wealthy much more valuable rate reductions in exchange. “There are provisions that are important, but do not have as much value.”
Americans at almost every income level are paying a smaller percentage of their salaries in federal taxes than they were 10, 20 even 30 years ago.
The current tax code, of course, did not become complicated one day by itself. Each deduction, each credit, was passed either on its own, or as part of a package by Congress and then approved by the president at the time.
Chris Edwards, with the libertarian Cato Institute, said a fair number of those benefit specific, small constituencies, and only passed because lawmakers traded votes with each other. “It’s mostly the result of log-rolling,” he said. “Congress often passes laws that do not reflect the interests of the American public.”
But while some of the breaks are industry-specific with dubious public policy benefit, many were passed to encourage what was considered a desirable social objective.
Parents, for example, benefit from $24 billion in credits for having minor children, and $5 billion in credits for day care expenses. Owners of clean-fuel cars get credits totaling $670 million. Investors in “clean coal” plants benefit from $400 million a year. Employers and employees putting money into retirement plans get a number of big-dollar breaks: $65 billion for employer-sponsored plans, $31 billion for self-employed plans, and $17 billion for those putting money into IRAs.
Other breaks go to taxpayers facing particular challenges. Benefits flowing to disabled coal miners are not taxed, costing the treasury $20 million a year. Blind taxpayers get a break that costs the government $40 million.
Those keen on cleaning up the tax code will be faced with justifying the elimination of tax breaks for the blind, or the disabled. Or explaining why ending incentives to save for retirement makes sense in the long run.
In other words: Tax reformers will face the exact issues that led to the passage of those tax breaks and credits in the first place.
And while some tax economists argue that the code should not be the place to effect government policy, doing so offers some advantages. Creating a government program to help parents with child care, for instance, would mean administering it, adding to the bureaucracy. Offering tax credits brings the same result, but much less intrusively, said the American Enterprise Institute’s Ornstein.
“If you don’t like government bureaucracies, or if you believe the better, less obtrusive way to do so is through the tax code, then you should do more of it,” he said.
Tax cuts and tax reform has been the singular glue holding the Republican Party since Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House. They have to deliver.
Chris Edwards, Cato Institue
But for advocates of simplifying the tax code and lowering rates, the current environment, with Republicans running both chambers of Congress and Trump in the White House, offers the best opportunity in decades for getting anything done.
“Tax cuts and tax reform has been the singular glue holding the Republican Party since Newt Gingrich became speaker of the House,” said the Cato Institute’s Edwards. “Whatever they pass, he’ll sign.”
That knowledge, proponents of a progressive tax structure warn, should keep lawmakers who don’t want to see a plan skewed in favor of the wealthy on their guard.
Furman said that Democrats who want to close loopholes that would truly make the code fairer could push to end preferential treatment for capital gains and dividends, which combined currently cost the Treasury $122 billion a year. That would revert the code to how it was following the 1986 tax reform under Reagan, when “unearned” income was taxed identically to wage income.
That differential tax treatment disproportionately benefits the wealthiest, who own the most assets that generate that kind of income. Eliminating that break could also start making up for the dramatic increase in income and wealth the richest one-fifth have enjoyed ― and only the richest one-fifth ― since Reagan’s tax cuts.
“Whatever you thought progressivity should have been 30 years ago, you should think it should be more so now,” Furman said.
But with Republicans ― and some Democrats ― not at all likely to go along with that, Furman said a small step that would actually encourage more efficient investments in the economy would be to tax capital gains every year, rather than only when the asset is sold. That would end the incentive to hold onto underperforming stocks merely to avoid taxes in any given year, Furman said.
In any event, said Stein from the Center for American Progress, Democrats need to pay attention and sweat the details of anything Trump and congressional Republicans offer as they unroll their tax-reform plans in the coming weeks.
“If you like the tax system being progressive, we need to make sure that we’re not doing anything to give rich people and corporations more ways of not paying taxes,” Stein said.
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
In a surprisingly candid interview, Britain’s Prince Harry has revealed his struggles in the wake of Princess Diana’s death in 1997.
The 32-year-old prince told The Telegraph that his way of dealing with his mother’s sudden death in a car accident in Paris was to simply shut down his emotions.
“I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12, and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years, has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but my work as well,” said Harry.
He added: “My way of dealing with it was sticking my head in the sand, refusing to ever think about my mum because why would that help? It’s only going to make you sad. It’s not going to bring her back.”
By the time he was in his 20s, Harry said he felt like he was going to explode.
“I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and sort of lies and misconceptions and everything are coming to you from every angle,” he said.
Harry spoke about his experiences as part of The Telegraph’s series of “Mad World” podcasts about how people grapple with mental health issues. The prince participated in order to battle the stigma surrounding opening up about personal problems and to encourage people to get help.
Harry and his brother and sister-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, have also set up the charity Heads Together to promote mental health.
Harry gained a reputation known as the wild brother, particularly after photos of his nude hijinks in a Las Vegas hotel room came to light in 2012. But now he’s involved in numerous charitable projects such as supporting the Invictus Games for wounded warriors, working to eliminate hidden land mines, encouraging HIV testing and helping to save elephants in Africa.
As for his emotional struggles, including two years of “total chaos,” Harry said he finally sought counseling at the age of 28 and started opening up about his feelings. He also said boxing lessons helped after he came very close to “punching someone.” Now, he’s in a “good place.”
Harry encouraged others to learn from his struggles.
“The experience I have had is that once you start talking about it, you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club,” he said.
Click here to listen to the podcast.
type=type=RelatedArticlesblockTitle=Related Coverage + articlesList=58ca8154e4b0be71dcf1c23e,585369e2e4b08debb78860c4,5798ed31e4b02d5d5ed3d7b6,570d1557e4b0836057a2665e
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
Operating an Airbnb means that you have to be OK with the idea of strangers living in your home, which also means that there is also a chance that they could leave your home damaged or maybe even steal stuff. We suppose that’s just the risk one has to take, although a recent report from BuzzFeed News revealed that hackers have been using Airbnb to rob homes.
Basically what happens is that hackers will hack accounts of guests who have good ratings and reviews, and then book the homes of their victims and then rob them when they are there. It also works in reverse where hackers can hack host profiles and get guests to send them money without actually confirming the booking, but this is something Airbnb is fighting against with newly introduced security tools.
This comes in the form of multi-factor authentication where Airbnb will prompt users to enter a one-time confirmation code whenever they log into their account from a new device that is unrecognized by the platform. They are also introducing improved account alerts where Airbnb can now notify users via SMS in addition to email, so that users can take action more quickly.
That being said, Airbnb already offers hosts $1 million in insurance policy in the event of such incidents, but monetary loss isn’t so much the issue for some hosts as sometimes certain items can’t be replaced, there is the breach of trust, and the overall hassle, but hopefully these new security tools will help prevent such incidents from happening in the future.
Airbnb’s New Security Tools Will Help Prevent Account Takeovers , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Last year when Motorola launched the Moto Z Force, it was exclusive to Verizon which meant that non-Verizon customers couldn’t get their hands on it. If you’re hoping that this will change in 2017, you might be right because a recent tweet from Evan Blass has “confirmed” that the Moto Z2 Force won’t be exclusive to Verizon anymore.
Instead it has been suggested that it could find its way to other carriers such as T-Mobile. Blass specifically mentions T-Mobile but phrases it in a way that sounds like it could be merely an example, so we’re not 100% sure if T-Mobile will be another carrier besides Verizon that will offer the phone, or if all the other major carriers will offer up the handset as well.
The Moto Z2 Force won’t be a Verizon exclusive this time around; T-Mobile will carry it, for instance. pic.twitter.com/alTiGTer1Z
— Evan Blass (@evleaks) April 16, 2017
So far it is unclear as to what kind of specs we might be looking at, but a recent alleged photo of the Moto Z2 made its way online. Assuming that the Moto Z2 Force looks similar, then we might already know what we can expect in terms of design. As for its hardware, presumably there will be support for Moto Mods, and we can also expect some high-end specs such as the use of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835, but that’s just speculation on our part for now, so do take it with a grain of salt.
Moto Z2 Force Might Not Be Exclusive To Verizon , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
Last year Google announced Google WiFi, a hockey puck shaped router that allowed users to create a mesh network in their home, thus ensuring that WiFi is evenly distributed and potentially killing off any dead spots. It works as intended and so far feedback seems to be mostly positive.
That being said if you’re hoping for a newer version of Google WiFi, you’ll be pleased to learn that Google could be working on a second-generation Google WiFi thanks to a recent sighting at the FCC. The specs of the newer version appear to be similar to last year’s model with dual-band support, and if anything it sounds like it could be a more pared down version.
Android Police has noted that the version spotted at the FCC does not have support for ZigBee protocol which is usually associated with IoT and home automation, which means that maybe this could be a cheaper and simpler version for users who just want WiFi and don’t really want all the other features.
It will however retain the same ports, such as dual ethernet ports and a power connection. No word on when this particular model will be revealed, but it is possible with Google I/O 2017 coming up that we could learn more about it then.
New Version Of Google WiFi Spotted At The FCC , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.
The host of a Fox News show on Sunday told the “Muslim community” not to “burn people alive and set off bombs” if they want a better portrayal in the media.
“Fox & Friends Weekend” was discussing comments made by actor Mandy Patinkin, who said his show “Homeland” would try to be “part of the cure” by offering a more positive portrayal of Muslims. In an MSNBC interview, Patinkin noted that this season’s storyline would show “that maybe it’s the… white men in the government and the military establishment that are the bad guys, not the Muslim community.”
In a clip posted online by Media Matters, Fox News host Pete Hegseth complained that “Homeland” was trying to “ram political agendas down our throat.”
“Do we remember who the bombers of the Boston Marathon were?” cohost Jon Scott asked. “I mean, just an aside to the Muslim community, if you don’t want to be portrayed in a negative light, maybe don’t burn people alive and set off bombs and things like that.”
Hesgeth added: “Yeah, and point out the radicalism, and say that’s not me.”
The comments didn’t sit well with many on Twitter:
— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
