Fixing the National Debt, Part VI: How about a Wealth Tax?

Based on the experience of OECD countries and the lower estimate given for a U.S. wealth tax by Saez and Zucman., I’m going to assume a wealth tax in the U.S. would bring in around 1.5% of total federal tax revenue on average. Last year the IRS collected close to $5 trillion in tax revenue. $5 trillion x 1.5% = $75 billion.

What Rich Americans Pay in Income Taxes

Note that the entire after-tax income of the top 1% isn’t enough to close the federal deficit gap of $1.55 trillion. Maybe we can squeeze a bit more out of these lemons but it won’t come close to closing the gap.

Fixing the National Debt, Part V: Tax the Rich Even More?

Not bad, but $6.55T is still $1.55T short of the goal of cutting the Federal Deficit by $8.1 trillion. So I thought it might be time to go after the rich, tax-wise - but not so much as to undermine the country’s economic growth and vitality (ie, the source of future tax revenue). After all, the rich are the investor class; hit them too hard and the economy goes down with them.

News Flash: Physicians are Human, Part III

What the American Medical Association says: Nurse Practitioners are essential members of the physician-led care team, but they are plainly not trained to practice independently.”  What researchers have found: “Public safety is often used as an argument against expanding scope of practice (SOP) for nurse practitioners, despite the benefit of filling unmet health care demand…[We found] absolutely no evidence that states that expanded scope of practice performed worse than states that chose not to in terms of public safety.” Bhai & Mitchell, 2025

News Flash: Physicians are Human, Part II

As documented in the last post, the AMA gives “three big reasons” for opposing independent nurse practitioners (NPs):

  1. It won’t solve the rural access problem.

  2. It will raise health care costs, not cut them.

  3. It threatens patient safety.

I tackled the rural access issue in the last post. This time I will address the second reason the AMA gives for opposing independent NPs.

News Flash: Physicians are Human! Part I

According to its website, the mission of the American Medical Association (AMA) is to “promote the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health.” The AMA is also a lobbying organization that promotes the self-interest of its members: physicians and medical students. But sometimes the greater good does not mesh with the self-interest of physicians. And sometimes the AMA puts self-interest first.

Yes, US Physicians Do Get Paid Too Much

I’m more interested in the salary gap between physicians and the average worker. As it turns out, that gap is also bigger in the US than in Canada, France and Germany. And yet Americans see their doctors less often than the Canadians, French and Germans. In fact, the bigger the salary gap, the fewer doctor visits per capita…

Shallow Runs Deep, Yet Again

There are a few differences though: corporate statements about company culture or core values don’t mention devotion or commitment to the organization itself and they have little to say about individual fulfillment. They’re more about working together on a mission, e.g., customer satisfaction, better products, fixing problems. Patriotism is also about working together towards common goals (e.g., the “American Project”) but love of country (the overarching organization) is central. And in the U.S., love of country is bound up with its gift to the individual: liberty, opportunity, and the pursuit of happiness.

Fixing the National Debt, Part IV: Lower the Cost of Healthcare

One reason the federal government spends so much on Medicare and Medicaid (M&M) is that the entire US healthcare system is expensive, no matter who pays the bills. The providers and suppliers are pretty much the same, whether the payer is private or public. Sure, the feds have some pricing power, but squeeze too hard and healthcare service providers will simply say thanks but no thanks.

Fixing the National Debt, Part II: A First Attempt

10. Raise Payroll Tax Rate by 1%: $1510B in savings. Social Security is mostly financed by a 12.4 percent payroll tax, split equally between employees and employers. This option would increase that rate by one percentage point to 13.4 percent, phased in over ten years. This increase would only apply to income under the current taxable maximum of $176,100. 

Fixing the National Debt, Part I: Intro

The US national debt (which excludes what the government owes itself) is expected to surpass the all-time record of 106% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2029. To put that in perspective, the average over the last 50 years was about 49% of GDP…My goal in this series is to figure out how to reduce the debt to a manageable level. In this quest, I’ll follow the guidance of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), which says that the federal government will need identify around $8.1 trillion in tax increases and budget cuts* to stabilize debt at 100% of the economy by 2035. So that’s what I’m going for.

What is the Current Consensus on Climate Change?

More to the point of this post, what is the current scientific consensus on climate change? I’m not going to depend on the version provided by Elbeyi, Jensen et al, as they seem rather biased. However, NASA has compiled over a dozen consensus statements, which are remarkably similar to each other. Here are a few of them…

Democracy and the Scientific Mind

“It’s when uncertainty collides with urgency that the authorities enter the fray, convene commissions, and issue findings. Those who accept the sanctioned conclusions gain official backing. Those who don’t are ruled out of bounds. No longer recognized as colleagues with legitimate hypotheses, they risk being treated as crackpots, deniers, and conspiracy theorists.” - Doctor’s Orders: It used to be progressives who distrusted the experts. What happened? By Daniel Immerwahr/The New Yorker. May 26, 2025 

A Theory of Behavior: Why We Do What We Do

Human behavior is the outcome of multicausal pathways. For example, in the theory of planned behavior, beliefs, intentions and perceived behavioral control are all parts of a causal chain that lead to a behavior, whether it’s cramming for an exam or stealing a car. The outcomes of behavior provide information relevant to beliefs, intentions and perceived behavioral control and so are part of the causal chain. Intervening at any point in the chain may change the behavior.

Exploring Causality, One Baby Step at a Time

A root cause is not fixed: its effects are not fixed. What gets the ball rolling may not keep it going. What keeps it going may change. What keeps the ball rolling may lose potency with repetition, or be worn down by contrary forces. In other words, causal pathways are subject to decay.

Trust in Science? (From the Archives)

An open science collaboration of researchers conducted replications of 100 studies published in three top psychology journals. Of the original studies, 97% had significant results. Of the replications, just 36% had significant results. Per the study authors, “collectively these results offer a clear conclusion: A large portion of replications produced weaker evidence for the original findings” (Collaboration, O.S., 2015). Replication studies have also been done in economics, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, ecology, and organic chemistry. All arrived at the same clear conclusion.

Are Republican Mayors More Effective in Managing City Budgets?

In their recent article, Best- and Worst-Run Cities in America, WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 148 of the largest U.S. cities to determine “how well city officials manage and spend public funds by comparing the quality of the services residents receive against the city’s total budget”. Among WalletHub’s 36 metrics of comparison were per Capita Budget and Financial Stability.  I had a hunch that, on average, cities with Republican mayors would have smaller per capita budgets and greater financial stability than cities run by non-Republicans (mainly Democrats).  So I checked out if my hunch had any merit.