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Two dumb tax policies give Aussie millionaire a bite of your lunch
Image Credit: Marshall Astor (cc) via flickr From Crains we have a report that McPier — the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority which controls McCormick Place and Navy Pier — has paid $5.5...
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America’s Biggest Bank and America’s Biggest Crook and Cook County’s Treasurer
No, they aren’t all one and the same. I personally haven’t had any problem with JP Morgan Chase. I had a CD with a predecessor bank and, when it matured, I retrieved it without difficulty. My real...
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Book Extract: The Pale King
Pale King (credit: Martin Heigan (cc) via flickr) I am in no way qualified to review works of acknowledged fiction, as I read very few. But I have been intrigued by David Foster Wallace since a Radio...
View ArticleBillionaires controlling land and other natural resources
The Resnicks who, according to Forbes, own 70,000 acres of pistachio and almond trees in California’s central valley, and entitlements to “at least 120 billion gallons of water per year” (enough to...
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Politician talking sense…
image credit: njcull (cc) via flickr …or at least so it appears from this interview. (No transcript is posted so you’ll have to listen to the audio.) Andrew Barr is described as Chief Minister of the...
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Hey Bruce! Mike! Here’s a few bucks for the deficit… or something.
For a full-sized (23.4mb!) copy of this cool Illinois Coal Industry Map produced by Illinois State Geological Survey, click the image En route to writing something else, I discovered that the Center...
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India does something a bit like what Scott Adams suggested
image credit: Andrew Sorensen (cc) via Flickr It was over four years ago that I blogged about Scott Adams’ suggestion that the government could improve tax compliance by publicly honoring those who pay...
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Is Trump not entirely bad?
Photo of Jan 21 2017 women’s march by Bob Matter. Political commentator Bob Matter took this photo, and sent it with the comment “You know you picked the right guy when the tax lawyers are against...
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An improved real estate tax can help revitalize the south suburbs
photo of a south suburban rainbow by Tom Gill (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Thanks to Crains for an article discussing the multiple difficulties of maintaining the south side of Chicago, and the south Cook County...
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More jobs –> less recidivism
Click this image of Abashiri Station, Hokkaido to learn how it relates to recidivism. Image credit: David McKelvey .license: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Many of us have long assumed...
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Tribune exposes one scandal and misses a bigger one
Property tax needs attention credit: From Sovereign to Serf (CC BY-ND 2.0) The Chicago Tribune, or what’s left of it, has issued a pretty good report on inequities and corruption at the Cook County...
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The only honest way to do income tax
photo credit: Randi Hausken CC BY-SA 2.0 In Norway, it turns out, income tax returns are public, sort of. Apparently you need to be Norwegian, or know somebody who’ll let you use their government...
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Won’t be finishing this book
Laurel & Hardy silhouettes. Image credit: Stephen McCulloch CC BY-SA 2.0 A Fine Mess by T R Reid. The subtitle is: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System. A great...
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Another outrage that a land value tax would eliminate
One of many sophisticated dogs named “Wrigley” Image credit: Liz CC BY-NC 2.0 Expanding on a subject covered here nearly six years ago, Tim Novak of the Sun Times writes about assessment deals in...
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About those corporate tax rates…
credit: Mike Licht (CC BY 2.0) We hear that corporate tax rates, at 35% (federal), are too high and need to be reduced so U S companies can be competitive. I remain confident that the best way to fund...
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Some Cook County assessments are maybe about as bad as we thought
We have a new report(pdf) today from the Civic Consulting Alliance, pointing out that residential assessments (excluding condominiums and large apartment buildings) done by Joe Berrios and his crew...
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Wealth tax would require even more government monitoring
Not the paper, but the book cited below Here’s a brief paper (pdf) by two Berkeley economists suggesting how a “progressive wealth tax” could work. They assume a 2% rate would be applied to wealth in...
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Notes on farmland from the 2017 Census of Agriculture for Illinois
1009 Illinois farms have leased wind rights to others. (“Farms” by jopaha is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0 ) The 2017 Census of Agriculture Illinois report was issued earlier this month, and here are a...
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Notes on Cook County Assessments
Selection from Olcott’s Land Values Blue Book, 1936 edition, Numbers represent values per front foot, to be adjusted as described in the book. Assessor Fritz Kaegi appears to seek assessments that are...
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Why does public policy favor homeowners over renters?
image credit: Stephen Dann CC BY-SA 2.0 It’s certainly true here, where owner-occupants (of houses or condos) pay less tax than renters occupying units of the same value, with additional discounts for...
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