Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act: Provisions Expiring in 2004

CRS_2004_Jobs_and_Growth_Tax_Relief_Reconciliation_Act.pdf: 676 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

West Michigan Stock Returns

West Michigan stocks have outperformed the national market indexes in 9 of the past 11 years, often by a considerable margin. That wasn’t the case, however, in 2004. Although West Michigan stock returns outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average, they trailed the two other major national market indexes

Uncertainty relations and possible experience

The uncertainty principle can be understood as a condition of joint indeterminacy of classes of properties in quantum theory. The mathematical expressions most closely associated with this principle have been the uncertainty relations, various inequalities exemplified by the well known expression regarding position and momentum introduced by Heisenberg. Here, recent work involving a new sort of “logical” indeterminacy principle and associated relations introduced by Pitowsky, expressable directly in terms of probabilities of outcomes of measurements of sharp quantum observables, is reviewed and its quantum nature is discussed. These novel relations are derivable from Boolean “conditions of possible experience” of the quantum realm and have been considered both as fundamentally logical and as fundamentally geometrical. This work focuses on the relationship of indeterminacy to the propositions regarding the values of discrete, sharp observables of quantum systems. Here, reasons for favoring each of these two positions are considered. Finally, with an eye toward future research related to indeterminacy relations, further novel approaches grounded in category theory and intended to capture and reconceptualize the complementarity characteristics of quantum propositions are discussed in relation to the former

Is identity per se irrelevant? A contrarian view of self-verification effects

Self-verification theory (SVT) posits that people who hold negative self-views, such as depressive patients, ironically strive to verify that these self-views are correct, by actively seeking out critical feedback or interaction partners who evaluate them unfavorably. Such verification strivings are allegedly directed towards maximizing subjective perceptions of prediction and control. Nonetheless, verification strivings are also alleged to stabilize maladaptive self-perceptions, and thereby hindering therapeutic recovery. Despite the widespread acceptance of SVT, I contend that the evidence for it is weak and circumstantial. In particular, I contend that that most or all major findings cited in support of SVT can be more economically explained in terms of raison oblige theory (ROT). ROT posits that people with negative self-views solicit critical feedback, not because they want it, but because they their self-view inclines them regard it as probative, a necessary condition for considering it worth obtaining. Relevant findings are reviewed and reinterpreted with an emphasis on depression, and some new empirical data reported

The Market for Medical Ethics

At the core of Kenneth Arrow’s classic 1963 essay on medical uncertainty is a claim that has failed to carry the day among economists. This claim—that physician adherence to an anti-competitive ethic of fidelity to patients and suppression of pecuniary influences on clinical judgment pushes medical markets toward social optimality—has won Arrow near-iconic status among medical ethicists (and many physicians). Yet conventional wisdom among health economists, including several participants in this symposium, holds that this claim is either naïve or outdated. Health economists admire Arrow’s article for its path-breaking analysis of market failures resulting from information asymmetry, uncertainty, and moral hazard. But his suggestion that anticompetitive professional norms can compensate for these market failures is at odds with economists’ more typical treatment of professional norms as monopolistic constraints on contractual possibility. If the goal of health care policy and law is to maximize the social welfare yield from medical spending, consideration of the place of professional ethics norms in health policy requires that we pose three questions. First, how can we distinguish between professional norms that enhance social welfare (even if “anticompetitive” in some sense) and therefore merit our deference (and perhaps even some legal protection) and norms that reduce welfare? Second, when we conclude that a professional norm is socially undesirable, how should we go about choosing among regulatory and legal strategies and deference to markets as means for dissolving the norm? Third, when we conclude that a professional norm is socially desirable, how should we go about preserving it? Should we defer to market outcomes—and perhaps shield select forms of professional collusion from antitrust intervention? Or should we defend this norm actively, through legal and regulatory intervention? This essay focuses on the first of these three questions, since it is the subject of Arrow’s article. From a public policy perspective, however, the second and third are just as important. It is hardly obvious that a socially undesirable norm should be targeted by judges or regulators rather than left to wither in the marketplace; nor is it clear that a socially desirable norm needs legal or regulatory support to survive

UK Welfare Reform 1996 to 2008 and beyond: A personalised and responsive welfare system?

The UK welfare system has undergone three very profound periods of reform of the post-war model laid down by Beveridge. The first was a move in the direction of (but never fully converged with) the Bismarkian model of a contributory social insurance model with time limited earnings related benefits with a low value means tested social assistance safety net. This occurred slowly through the 1960s and up to the mid-1970s. The second phase started in 1979 and involved a dramatic move to curtail the social insurance entitlements and end all earnings related benefits. The result was a residualist low value means tested social assistance model, which ended both the Beveridge model and completely reversed the drift toward a European Bismarkian approach. Finally from 1996 a new model has emerged based on an activational welfare model with greater emphasis on incentives, support services and conditionality. As a direction of travel from the previous regime(s) this represents an increase in the engagement and support functions, increases in the (disciplinary) required activity functions combined with increased financial support for children and pensioners and personalised support services. The emerging model is far from completion and the final make up of the system remains uncertain. However, it bears strong similarities with developments in New Zealand and to a degree Australia and Canada. Within Europe the model most closely resembles a less generous version of the welfare systems in Denmark or Holland, which are sometimes referred to as embodying Flex-security. This evolutionary process of reform had some antecedents prior to 1996 but has really come to the fore since that date. This paper discusses reform in depth from 1996 and looks at its current direction of evolutionary change.welfare reform, tax credits, lone parents, disabled adults

Race, Money and Medicines

Taking notice of race is both risky and inevitable, in medicine no less than in other endeavors. The literature on race as a classifying tool in clinical research poses this core dilemma: On the one hand, race can be a useful stand-in for unstudied genetic and environmental factors that yield differences in disease expression and therapeutic response. On the other hand, racial distinctions have social mean­ ings that are often pejorative or worse, especially when these distinctions are cast as culturally or biologically fixed. Our country\u27s troubled past in this regard and the persistence of race-related disadvantage should keep us on notice about this hazard. Yet paying attention to race in order to ameliorate past wrongs sometimes supports the quest for social justice, as Dorothy Roberts points out in this issue. And at times, as Jay Cohn and Raj Bhopal note, attention to race can make a therapeutic difference, to the point of saving lives