Assessment of research needs for sustainability of unconventional machining processes

AbstractThe use of unconventional machining (UCM) practices is increasing for product manufacture particularly when machining difficult to cut materials and when high precision is required. There is plenty of research conducted on improving sustainability of traditional machining. However, sustainability studies on unconventional/non-traditional machining practices are few. This review aims to determine the current state of the art in sustainability assessment of unconventional machining practices and identify gaps in research. An extensive review was carried out and analysed using a qualitative data analysing software. The analysis shows that only 25 publications directly and indirectly discuss the matter of sustainability of UCM. Out of this almost 70% of publications were recorded after year 2006 showing a clear evidence of uncovered research gap in the field with a growing interest. Despite this trend, evidence on studies which are explicitly dedicated to analyse the sustainability of UCM are rare

Why a Wealth Tax is Definitely Constitutional

Wealth tax reform proposals are playing a major role in the 2020 presidential campaign. However, some opponents of these wealth tax reform proposals have claimed that a wealth tax would be unconstitutional. Other prominent critics have argued that wealth tax reforms are probably unconstitutional, so that, after review by the courts, the “likeliest outcome is that a wealth tax will raise exactly zero dollars.” These claims are wrong. More precisely, these claims are wrong conditioned on wealth tax legislation being carefully drafted so as to ensure its constitutionality. As we will explain in this essay, properly drafted, wealth tax reform legislation is definitely constitutional and thus capable of raising substantial revenues to fund new spending programs. Constitutional scholars disagree about whether a new federal wealth tax would need to be uniform or apportioned in order to be constitutional. We explain how wealth tax legislation could be drafted to ensure its constitutionality regardless of how the Supreme Court ultimately decides on this question. In particular, we explain how Congress could design an apportioned federal wealth tax made equitable through the use of a fiscal equalization program, and could legislate this as a fallback option in case the Supreme Court were to rule against an unapportioned federal wealth tax

Bunch Splitting Simulations for the JLEIC Ion Collider Ring

We describe the bunch splitting strategies for the proposed JLEIC ion collider ring at Jefferson Lab. This complex requires an unprecedented 9:6832 bunch splitting, performed in several stages. We outline the problem and current results, optimized with ESME including general parameterization of 1:2 bunch splitting for JLEIC parameters

Taxation and the Constitution, Reconsidered

Our current income tax is unable to address growing concentrations of financial wealth and resulting economic inequality. But reforms to address these problems—such as a wealth tax or an income tax on unrealized capital gains—are stymied by fears of unconstitutionality. The basic claim is that wealth taxes and similar reforms are “direct taxes” under the Apportionment Clauses of the Constitution, and since apportionment is not feasible, these taxes are impossible. But this claim is wrong.This Article shows that there is in fact a long history of federal taxes similar to wealth taxes—both apportioned and uniform—and a well-developed constitutional tax jurisprudence to go along with that history. This jurisprudence has laid mostly dormant during the past century-plus of the income tax era, but a reconsideration of taxation and the Constitution shows that we should now have multiple viable paths for taxing extreme concentrations of wealth.In particular, we call for reviving a two paths approach to constitutional tax questions, which was dominant for most of the first century of United States history. Under this view, apportionment, like uniformity, is merely a method of taxation, not a barrier. We show for the first time in the literature how this method is practically viable today using modern fiscal instruments.We also show for the first time in the literature that there is coherent and mostly consistent Supreme Court jurisprudence to guide the two paths approach, even including the much-reviled case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. Central to this jurisprudence is what we call the Excise Tax Canon, a quasi-canon of constitutional interpretation under which prominent wealth tax and similar reforms should be upheld as excises that can follow the uniformity path.Finally, because there is uncertainty about which path—apportionment or uniformity—the Supreme Court might require, we propose strategies for drafting a tax reform to navigate those uncertainties

Tax Now or Tax Never: Political Optionality and the Case for Current-Assessment Tax Reform

The U.S. income tax system is broken. Due to the realization doctrine and taxpayers’ consequent ability to defer taxation of gains, taxpayers can easily minimize or avoid the taxation of investment income, a failure that is magnified many times over when considering the ultra-wealthy. As a result, this small group of taxpayers commands an enormous share of national wealth yet pays paltry taxes relative to the economic income their wealth produces—a predicament that this Article condemns as being economically, politically, and socially harmful. The conventional view among tax law experts has assumed that the problems created by the realization doctrine can be fixed on the back end by adjusting the rules that govern taxation at the time of realization. Specifically, most tax scholars have favored reform proposals that would retain the realization doctrine while aiming to impose taxes in a way that would erase or reduce the financial benefits of deferral. Examples include retrospective capital gains tax reforms, progressive consumption tax reforms, and more incremental reforms such as ending stepped-up basis. However, this Article argues that these future-assessment reform proposals ignore a crucial additional problem of deferral—political optionality. If there is a many-year or longer gap between when either income is earned or wealth is accrued and when tax is assessed, then any number of things can happen in the interim to undermine the eventual assessment and collection of tax. This Article explains three sets of pressures that tend to erode future-assessment reforms over time: (1) policy drift and the need for incremental bolstering of tax reforms, (2) the time value of options, and (3) federal budget rules and related political incentives. By contrast to future-assessment reforms, this Article explains how current assessment reforms—like wealth tax or accrual-income tax reform proposals— are relatively resistant to these pressures. As this Article demonstrates, both theory and historical experience reveal that future-assessment reforms are fragile and often fail—and that ultra-wealthy taxpayers are well aware of this. Therefore, accounting for the implications of political optionality, only current assessment reforms are likely to succeed at meaningfully taxing the ultra-wealthy and fixing the personal tax system

Taxation and the Constitution, Reconsidered

Our current income tax is unable to address growing concentrations of financial wealth and resulting economic inequality. But reforms to address these problems—such as a wealth tax or an income tax on unrealized capital gains—are stymied by fears of unconstitutionality. The basic claim is that wealth taxes and similar reforms are “direct taxes” under the Apportionment Clauses of the Constitution, and since apportionment is not feasible, these taxes are impossible. But this claim is wrong.This Article shows that there is in fact a long history of federal taxes similar to wealth taxes—both apportioned and uniform—and a well-developed constitutional tax jurisprudence to go along with that history. This jurisprudence has laid mostly dormant during the past century-plus of the income tax era, but a reconsideration of taxation and the Constitution shows that we should now have multiple viable paths for taxing extreme concentrations of wealth.In particular, we call for reviving a two paths approach to constitutional tax questions, which was dominant for most of the first century of United States history. Under this view, apportionment, like uniformity, is merely a method of taxation, not a barrier. We show for the first time in the literature how this method is practically viable today using modern fiscal instruments.We also show for the first time in the literature that there is coherent and mostly consistent Supreme Court jurisprudence to guide the two paths approach, even including the much-reviled case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan & Trust Co. Central to this jurisprudence is what we call the Excise Tax Canon, a quasi-canon of constitutional interpretation under which prominent wealth tax and similar reforms should be upheld as excises that can follow the uniformity path.Finally, because there is uncertainty about which path—apportionment or uniformity—the Supreme Court might require, we propose strategies for drafting a tax reform to navigate those uncertainties

Community Wellbeing Survey - Lane Cove

Lane Cove Council contracted UTS:CLG in 2014 to develop a community indicator framework to establish a set of indicators and measures of community wellbeing informed predominantly by the social issues aligned to Council’s Community Strategic Plan (CSP). The framework was built upon the objectives of the CSP and encompasses indicators and data sources that will increase Council’s awareness, knowledge and monitoring of current social issues and trends in Lane Cove