760 research outputs found
The Price We Pay: Economic Costs of Barriers to Employment for Former Prisoners and People Convicted of Felonies
Despite modest declines in recent years, the large and decades-long blossoming of the prison population ensure that it will take many years before the United States sees a corresponding decrease in the number of former prisoners. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), this report estimates that there were between 14 and 15.8 million working-age people with felony convictions in 2014, of whom between 6.1 and 6.9 million were former prisoners
The Chained CPI: A Painful Cut in Social Security Benefits and a Stealth Tax Hike
In the debate over federal budget deficits, several politicians have proposed to change the formulas that determine benefit levels for Social Security and other government programs as well as income tax brackets. Switching to a relatively new formula, the Chained CPI, would help the federal government save money by slowing increases in benefits and raising additional tax revenue. Proponents of this proposal argue that the Chained CPI is a more accurate formula and any impact on beneficiaries of the government programs affected would be mitigated by increased tax revenue from the wealthy. However, this issue brief effectively refutes those arguments by showing that switching to the Chained CPI would result in cuts to already modest Social Security benefits, that it is likely that the Chained CPI is not an accurate measure of the inflation rate seen by seniors and that the Chained CPI would lead to income tax increases for working Americans
Who Pays if We Raise the Social Security Payroll Tax Cap?
Most Americans know that their earnings are subject to the Social Security payroll tax. Not as many are aware that the amount of earnings subject to the tax, while subject to change, is capped at the same level for everyone, regardless of total earnings. This year, the maximum wage earnings subject to the payroll tax is $127,200. The cap on the Social Security payroll tax means that those with the highest earnings pay a lower rate.Using Census Bureau data from the latest American Community Survey (ACS), this issue brief updates previous CEPR research to determine how many people would be affected if the payroll tax cap were raised or eliminated
The Social Security Benefits of Sitting Senators in 2015
This issue brief presents the scheduled Social Security benefit for each current member of the Senate. The issue brief is intended to inform Senators -- and the general public -- about Social Security and, assuming no changes to current policy, demonstrate that it will pay full benefits through 2030 and roughly 75 percent of benefits from 2031 on
Schooner Flash, Captain Falwell... The Short Wartime Life of a Texian Sailing Vessel, 1835-1837
The Orbital Ellipticity of Satellite Galaxies and the Mass of the Milky Way
We use simulations of Milky Way-sized dark matter haloes from the Aquarius
Project to investigate the orbits of substructure haloes likely, according to a
semi-analytic galaxy formation model, to host luminous satellites. These tend
to populate the most massive subhaloes and are on more radial orbits than the
majority of subhaloes found within the halo virial radius. One reason for this
(mild) kinematic bias is that many low-mass subhaloes have apocentres that
exceed the virial radius of the main host; they are thus excluded from subhalo
samples identified within the virial boundary, reducing the number of subhalos
on radial orbits. Two other factors contributing to the difference in orbital
shape between dark and luminous subhaloes are their dynamical evolution after
infall, which affects more markedly low-mass (dark) subhaloes, and a weak
dependence of ellipticity on the redshift of first infall. The ellipticity
distribution of luminous satellites exhibits little halo-to-halo scatter and it
may therefore be compared fruitfully with that of Milky Way satellites. Since
the latter depends sensitively on the total mass of the Milky Way we can use
the predicted distribution of satellite ellipticities to place constraints on
this important parameter. Using the latest estimates of position and velocity
of dwarfs compiled from the literature, we find that the most likely Milky Way
mass lies in the range , with a best fit value of . This value is consistent with Milky Way mass estimates based on
dynamical tracers or the timing argument.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figures, Accepted by MNRA
A Preliminary Investigation of the Role of Problem Based Learning (PBL)
In recent years (since the mid 1970’s) there has been an increased interest in Problem Based Learning (PBL) as an educational methodology which is not a instructor-centred as traditional educational methodologies. Education professionals are legitimately asking if PBL is applicable generally to most disciplines, and if so, should it be viewed as an alternative or a complementary methodology. Traditional teaching methodologies for technical disciplines place the instructor very much at the centre of learning for the student (with formal lectures, supervised laboratory work and tutorials), particularly in the early years of study at third level. A common view in education is that “assessment drives learning” and that “the curriculum shows you what the teaching staff are doing, assessment tells you what the students are doing”1. Current assessment methodologies at second–level can place more emphasis on knowledge recall rather than actual understanding and this experience can be reinforced at third-level. It may be unrealistic to expect learning not to be primarily driven by assessment, but better assessment methodologies may map the student’s learning more closely to the course objectives. The careful specification of course objectives and the design of curriculum, learning and assessment methodologies to support them is a problem to which PBL offers a solution. It is not the only solution. This article represents a first step in trying to define what is meant by PBL and if it can be applied to the teaching of computing at third level in an Institute of Technology
Who Pays if We Raise the Social Security Payroll Tax Cap? (2019 update)
Most Americans know that their earnings are subject to the Social Security payroll tax. Not as many are aware that the amount of earnings subject to the tax, while liable to change, is capped at the same level for everyone, regardless of total earnings. This year, the maximum wage earnings subject to the payroll tax is 250,000 a year makes another 132,900 cap though, and have significantly less stock or other income, if any. As a result, all or most of their income is subject to the payroll tax
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