Moral Reflections on Twenty-First Century Tax Policy Trends

Focusing on individual taxpayers, this article offers moral reflections on state and local, and federal tax policy trends during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. Although tax policy decisions are made by politicians (who often rely on economists), determining the best tax policy is ultimately an ethical issue and serves as a barometer revealing the true moral compass of any community. I started thinking about ethical tax policy while studying theology at the Beeson Divinity School, a conservative evangelical seminary that is part of Samford University. At Beeson, I noticed for the first time the gap between walk and talk in my home state. Of Alabama-although more than 90% of Alabamians claimed to be Christians, its regressive state and local taxes and paltry K-12 funding harshly impacted the most vulnerable and powerless Alabamians. In 2002, I published my thesis that condemned this as biblically immoral and urged all Christians in Alabama, especially political and religious leaders, to support reforms. My article condemning Alabama\u27s tax policy under the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics generated nationwide press coverage. Internationally, the London Times also weighed in. This press coverage and numerous questions posed at hundreds of speaking engagements all over Alabama and in twenty-eight states inspired me to embark on a body of scholarship spanning a decade that morally evaluated federal tax policy and the state and local tax policy of all fifty states. All tax policy issues ultimately boil down to answering two questions. The first defines the amount of revenues to be raised and for what purpose such revenues are to be spent. The second determines how the burden of paying the taxes needed to raise these revenues will be allocated among taxpayers enjoying different levels of income and wealth. Part I of this article briefly identifies fundamental concepts surrounding the discussion of these two questions and explains why economic theories cannot provide definitive answers. Part II illustrates that the moral principles of Judeo-Christian ethics require tax policy that raises an adequate level of revenues so that all persons have a reasonable opportunity to reach their potential with the tax burden allocated under a moderately progressive model. Part II then explains why several community-oriented secular theories come to similar tax policy conclusions as the Judeo-Christian approach, albeit for different reasons.8 Finally, this part contrasts these moral frameworks to objectivist ethics, a form of atheism that values individual self-interest over all else, which only condones tax policy that raises as little revenue as possible under a burden allocation model void of any progressive elements. After summarizing my 2002 article condemning Alabama\u27s state and local tax policy as biblically immoral, Part III overviews empirical research conducted a few years later that provided a helicopter view of the state and local tax policy in all fifty states. This part then illustrates that most of the states had tax policies that were just as immoral, only slightly better, or even more immoral than Alabama\u27s tax policy, while the others still failed to raise adequate revenues supporting reasonable opportunity under a moderately progressive model.\u27 Finally, Part III explores the most recent evidence that indicates some states have slightly improved their tax policies while others are even more unfair. Because our nation\u27s state and local policy essentially has not changed, it is still as immoral as it was earlier in the twenty-first century. Part IV overviews and morally evaluates federal tax policy trends during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. President George W. Bush\u27s first term tax cuts eroded progressivity while benefiting the wealthiest Americans, created substantial federal deficits jeopardizing programs uplifting the most vulnerable Americans, and moved towards eliminating the estate tax. The justifications behind the Bush tax cuts were not only void of Judeo-Christian or community-oriented secular principles but also reflected objectivist ethics values. Despite severe economic challenges and partisan gridlock, President Barack Obama reversed some of these income tax trends, and although his moral conversation more closely reflected Judeo-Christian and community-oriented secular values, his compromises further eroded the estate tax. This part then illustrates that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which in addition to favoring the wealthiest Americans while threatening the nation\u27s fiscal stability, is also driven by objec- tivist ethics. This article concludes that, overall, twenty-first century tax policy trends are headed in the wrong direction that are contrary to the values most Americans claim to adhere to. Although President Joseph R. Biden\u27s ideas could start steering federal tax policy in the right direction, objectivist ethics influence poisoning tax policy, which remains a powerful force that, if allowed to continue, will eventually ruin the nation

What Happened, and Why: Toward an Understanding of Human Error Based on Automated Analyses of Incident Reports

The objective of the Aviation System Monitoring and Modeling (ASMM) project of NASA s Aviation Safety and Security Program was to develop technologies that will enable proactive management of safety risk, which entails identifying the precursor events and conditions that foreshadow most accidents. This presents a particular challenge in the aviation system where people are key components and human error is frequently cited as a major contributing factor or cause of incidents and accidents. In the aviation "world", information about what happened can be extracted from quantitative data sources, but the experiential account of the incident reporter is the best available source of information about why an incident happened. This report describes a conceptual model and an approach to automated analyses of textual data sources for the subjective perspective of the reporter of the incident to aid in understanding why an incident occurred. It explores a first-generation process for routinely searching large databases of textual reports of aviation incident or accidents, and reliably analyzing them for causal factors of human behavior (the why of an incident). We have defined a generic structure of information that is postulated to be a sound basis for defining similarities between aviation incidents. Based on this structure, we have introduced the simplifying structure, which we call the Scenario as a pragmatic guide for identifying similarities of what happened based on the objective parameters that define the Context and the Outcome of a Scenario. We believe that it will be possible to design an automated analysis process guided by the structure of the Scenario that will aid aviation-safety experts to understand the systemic issues that are conducive to human error

A translation from the French of André Gedalge's Traité de la Fugue.

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Programming a paintable computer

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2002.Includes bibliographical references (p. 163-169).A paintable computer is defined as an agglomerate of numerous, finely dispersed, ultra-miniaturized computing particles; each positioned randomly, running asynchronously and communicating locally. Individual particles are tightly resource bound, and processing is necessarily distributed. Yet computing elements are vanishingly cheap and are regarded as freely expendable. In this regime, a limiting problem is the distribution of processing over a particle ensemble whose topology can vary unexpectedly. The principles of material self-assembly are employed to guide the positioning of "process fragments" - autonomous, mobile pieces of a larger process. These fragments spatially position themselves and reaggregate into a running process. We present the results of simulations to show that "process self-assembly" is viable, robust and supports a variety of useful applications on a paintable computer. We describe a hardware reference platform as an initial guide to the application domain. We describe a programming model which normatively defines the term process fragment and which provides environmental support for the fragment's mobility, scheduling and data exchange. The programming model is embodied in a simulator that supports development, test and visualization on a 2D particle ensemble. Experiments on simple combinations of fragments demonstrate robustness and explore the limits of scale invariance. Process fragments are shown interacting to approximate conservative fields, and using these fields to implement scaffolded and thermodynamic self-assembly.(cont.) Four applications demonstrate practical relevance, delineate the application domain and collectively illustrate the paintable's capacity for storage, communication and signal processing. These four applications are Audio Streaming, Holistic Data Storage, Surface Bus and Image Segmentation.by William Joseph Butera.Ph.D

Beyond the atmosphere: Early years of space science

From the rocket measurements of the upper atmosphere and Sun that began in 1946, space science gradually emerged as a new field of scientific activity. The course of the United State space program is viewed in an historical context. Major emphasis is on NASA and its programs. The funding, staffing, organization, and priorities of the space program were reviewed