Miscellaneous from NPR

Buchanan identified studies that most taxpayers don't know how much tax they truly are paying. Here is an estimate. Payroll taxes are 18.7% of income and other taxes such as the add-on to one's telephone bill work out to be 5.4% income. Thus, taxes are about a quarter of one's bill.

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I have long believed that college student loans should be replaced by a share of the income after college. A group is doing just that. Although I don't understand why they end after ten years, an arbitary period. If the graduate goes into teaching for the first ten years and then becomes an investment banker versus the reverse. I more see a middle-aged person paying for, or contributing to, a young person's college education. They would pay ten percent of their income for as long as that person lived, funding their retirement. The Tell Me More scenario was someone who started teaching in Mississippi at $31,000.00, who would then pay ten percent of their income for ten years.

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Sadly, although Egyptians are often blogging and tweeting about the problems in the country and fifteen million out of seventy-eight million have access to the web, the government remains autocratic. Some cases, they have helped and gotten international attention, in many cases other wise.

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I blogged about the role of share holders in a modern corporation, sadly often none. Companies would send out a proxy ballot with just one candidate for each position. Now, big share holders who have held three percent of the company for three years will have access. Of course, that is far short of what I advocated.