As Democrats and Republicans across the country fought over control of Congress in this past midterm election, progressives in Massachusetts and California continued with one of their favorite pastimes: trying to raise taxes on the rich. In Massachusetts, voters were presented with a proposal to add a 4.00 percent tax on annual incomes above $1 million in addition to the state’s current flat tax of 5.00 percent.
The collapse of the crypto exchange FTX may prove to be a canary in the coal mine of the easy-money-fueled crypto bubbles. FTX’s collapse has exposed just how little due diligence is actually taking place among investors, who are apparently willing to put large amounts of cash in whatever looks like the hottest new thing and promises—without convincing evidence—big-time returns.
Prominent Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have repeatedly expressed interest in reinstating a federal assault weapons ban. Biden himself included an assault weapon ban in his 1994 crime bill, which lasted ten years until its expiration in 2004. Biden has claimed that the ban did its job and reduced mass shootings: “When we passed the assault weapons ban, mass shootings went down. When the law expired, mass shootings tripled.”
Raising interest rates is a necessary but insufficient measure to combat inflation. To reduce inflation to 2 percent, central banks must significantly reduce their balance sheets, which has not yet occurred in local currency, and governments must reduce spending, which is highly unlikely.
The most challenging obstacle is also the accumulation of debt.
The US trade and tech wars against China continued under President Joe Biden, who escalated export controls related to technology. The US wants to cut China’s access to advanced semiconductors and the equipment used to manufacture them in order to prevent their use for military purposes.
In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.
—George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language,” 1946
