Today, “zero waste” may be a movement, but in the past, it was a necessity. Scraps were repurposed not out of environmentalism, but because they were too valuable to throw away. Folk art and crafts turned discarded material into useful and beautiful items. For example, a colorful ...
Every April, Americans spend more than 7 billion hours filing taxes and roughly the same amount of time arguing over them, almost entirely on the basis of several common myths. Here are the five most consequential. —Myth No. 1: The Rich Don’t Pay Their Fair Share This is the most repeated claim in American tax politics and one of the least supported by actual data. The top 1% of earners take in 22% of total income and pay 40% of all federal income taxes. The top 10% earn about half the nation’s income and pay 72% of its taxes. The bottom half of earners, collectively, pay ...
Call him the “antisocial” media president. When a president attacks the Pope, he telegraphs: “There’s nothing I won’t do or say.” That is a profoundly troubling message. There are no lines I won’t cross, no rules I won’t break, President Donald Trump is telling the whole wide world. Nobody is safe nor sacred in my book. Got it? And the White House press corps meekly accepts that. The worse Trump gets, the worse Trump gets, in a vortex of flexing power and expressing anger. This week he insulted the Roman Catholic Church and its 1.4 billion members. Last week, he ...
Dear Annie: My friend insists on splitting every restaurant bill “evenly,” no matter what. The problem is, she always orders cocktails and appetizers, while I usually stick to one entree. Last week, my $22 dinner somehow became $48 after the “split.” When I suggested we each pay for what we ordered, she laughed and said, “That’s so much more complicated.” I like spending time with her, but I’m starting to dread going out to eat. How do I bring this up without sounding cheap? — Tired of Picking Up the Tab Dear Tired: There are plenty of ways to split a bill that ...
DEAR DR. ROACH: No parent should ever outlive their children. A couple of years ago, my son, who is now approaching 54 years young, was diagnosed with what I am told is an extremely rare illness called primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC). Since he required special bile duct tubes to be installed and repeatedly changed out, he had been waiting for a proper liver transplant. When this was finally about to happen, the disease apparently morphed into abdominal cancer, thus rendering the (long-awaited) liver transplant no longer viable. I had never heard of this illness before, but ...
Child care got expensive — more than $13,000 per child, per year. So many people want government to pay for it. My state just agreed. New York will fund free child care. Yay! But wait ... what government does isn’t free. Taxpayers pay. And taxpayers pay more because “government rules have unintended consequences,” says Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women’s Forum. Washington, D.C. day care teachers must have a degree in Early Childhood Education. That can take two years and cost $22,000. “Of course you’re going to have to pay a lot more,” says Lukas in my ...
