Here is how it works: If you live and work exclusively outside of the United States, you must file a U.S. tax return reporting your income, foreign bank accounts containing over $10,000, retirement accounts, investments, and other financial details. You’re responsible for paying U.S. taxes on income above certain thresholds and navigating complex forms and rules to avoid or minimize double taxation.
This is not only unfair but uniquely so. The United States is the only developed nation that taxes based on citizenship rather than residency. We are in terrible company. As the Cato Institute’s Adam Michel writes, “Eritrea’s brutal dictatorship is the only other country to come close, imposing a 2 percent levy on all expatriates.”
David Henderson makes the case against cancelling student debt.
Daniel Cameron applauds Walmart for bidding adieu to DEI. A slice:
American corporations don’t have to yield their corporate governance to any activist group. The era of virtue signaling is over. We are entering a new age of good, sound business decisions. Walmart, Tractor Supply and John Deere are leading the way. Others should join.
Noah Rothman criticizes RFK Jr.’s officiousness. A slice:
RFK Jr. has previously expressed his desire to see the U.S. impose legal restrictions on the ability of pharmaceutical manufacturers to air direct-to-consumer advertisements. He even seems to believe that the laws protecting the right of private firms to retail (provably true) claims to the public can be accomplished via presidential pen-stroke. On “my first day in office, I will issue an executive order banning pharmaceutical advertising on television,” Kennedy wrote when he was still running for the presidency. “We are one of only two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical companies to advertise directly to consumers on television,” he added. “Not surprisingly, Americans consume more pharmaceutical products than anyone else on the planet.”
As far as I can tell, the fact that the United States extends (relatively) unique liberties to the pharmaceutical sector is the closest thing to a rationale for such a ban: America should be more like Europe. If America continues to behave like America, however, the idiots who populate this country (not you and I, of course, but them) will languidly persist in their addiction to self-harm. In the absence of a benevolent government sherpa to hold Americans’ hands and tell them not to swallow fistfuls of anti-depressants and avoid consuming Cap’n Crunch and Cheez-Its exclusively, the country cannot survive. The GOP owes Michelle Obama an apology.
This is the sort of patronizing narcissism we should expect from a lifelong progressive Democrat. But sentiments like these should have no place within the party of individual liberty and personal responsibility.
The pharmaceutical industry — indeed, medical innovation generally — is one of this country’s most profitable enterprises for a reason. Unlike much of the rest of the world, the U.S. does not regulate pharmaceutical prices, making drug development a worthwhile endeavor. Its legal structure is designed to encourage public-private pharma research and development projects — a condition anathema in countries where access to pharmaceuticals is treated as a right and, thus, where innovation is all but entirely stagnant. Those countries rely on U.S. medical exports as well as the clinical trials it conducts overseas. If America were to make itself more like Europe, it would produce fewer medical miracles, develop and export fewer life-saving innovations, and make less money.
“The PPP was a COVID-Era disaster. Trump wants to promote the guy who ran it.”
Craig Eyermann reports that the U.S. government’s debt “passes new grim milestone.”
John Sailer decries the lunacy of DEI on campus. A slice:
At the University of Michigan (UM), professor Jessica Kenyatta Walker specializes in “critical food studies” and helped develop “in-class activities” on the “racialization of food in the United States.” Professor Adi Saleem’s recent book, Queer Jews, Queer Muslims: Race, Religion, and Representation, focuses on “triangulating the Jewish-Muslim dyad with a third variable: queerness.” Jennifer Dominique Jones, meantime, teaches courses in “Black Queer Histories” and “Black Intimacies.”
These scholars share more than an affinity for critical theory: each was hired through the university’s Collegiate Fellows Program. Established in 2016, the CFP hires postdoctoral fellows who show a “commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.” The fellows are guaranteed a tenure-track position after two years, bypassing the rigors of a normal competitive job search.
