The rich demystified: A reply to Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008)

The contribution Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) has argued that "the rich" do not pay taxes adequately in relation to their income, finding, for instance, an effective tax rate of only 38.1% for the 0.001% fractile of German income taxpayers in 2001. This result contrasts sharply with the legislated top marginal income tax rate of 48.5%. We subject the results contained in Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) to a rigorous analysis: We find major flaws and inconsistencies with regard to methodology, i.e. the omission of corporate taxes and inter-temporal aspects of taxation. Restating basic rules for the measurement of effective tax rates, we provide values for what we term the "comprehensive nominal tax rate" (CNTR) and show that the headline result in Bach, Corneo and Steiner (2008) of 38.1% is underestimated by over 12 percentage points. As an important distributional result, the CNTR increases with increasing taxable income. --Top Incomes,Income Taxation,Taxing the Rich,Comprehensive Tax Burden

The Rich Demystified - A Reply to Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008)

The contribution Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) has argued that “the rich” do not pay taxes adequately in relation to their income, finding, for instance, an effective tax rate of only 38.1% for the 0.001% fractile of German income taxpayers in 2001. This result contrasts sharply with the legislated top marginal income tax rate of 48.5%. We subject the results contained in Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) to a rigorous analysis: We find major flaws and inconsistencies with regard to methodology, i.e. the omission of corporate taxes and inter-temporal aspects of taxation. Restating basic rules for the measurement of effective tax rates, we provide values for what we term the “comprehensive nominal tax rate” (CNTR) and show that the headline result in Bach, Corneo, and Steiner (2008) of 38.1% is underestimated by over 12 percentage points. As an important distributional result, the CNTR increases with increasing taxable income.top incomes, income taxation, taxing the rich, comprehensive nominal tax rate

CRYSTAL PLASTICITY FINITE ELEMENT MODELING OF MAGNESIUM ALLOYS AND EXPERIMENTAL CHARACTERIZATION OF A TRIP HIGH ENTROPY ALLOY

This work presents two crystal plasticity finite element studies on magnesium alloys and an experimental characterization of a high entropy alloy. The first of two crystal plasticity studies presents a high strain rate deformation characterization via a split Hopkinson bar Taylor impact of a WE43 magnesium alloy. This study showed that crystal plasticity finite element modeling (CPFE) was able to model WE43 texture evolution, twin volume fraction along the length of the cylinder, and anisotropy with four different material orientations at high strain rates when compared to experimental data. The second study investigated the Taylor-type model homogenization response of the virtual polycrystal and how to best spread the crystal orientations over the finite element (FE) mesh for accurate modeling of Mg alloys specifically AZ31. It was found that 6 embedded crystals per integration point proved most optimal when compared to a full-field explicit grain mesh model. The third study investigated phase transformation hardness values and strain hardening characteristics for a four-phase high entropy alloy by nanoindentation. The material exhibited great strength based on phase transformation during plastic deformation upon compression

Bloon: Software and Hardware for Data Collection and Real-Time Analysis

Bloon is a powerful, user-friendly parsing and plotting utility optimized for use in real-time applications that I wrote for the Mac. Its generalized parser is capable of handling a wide variety of data formats. If you can define it in Bloon’s parsing language, then Bloon can parse and plot it. Bloon’s grapher is also extremely powerful, allowing users to zoom and scroll about millions of data points smoothly in real time. Bloon makes the difficult task of real-time data collection and visualization a breeze

The Impact of General Strike on Government Healthcare Delivery in Kerala State in India

General strike (also known as hartal) is used as a mode of protest by organizations and political parties in India. It is generally thought that hartals negatively impact the healthcare delivery in a society. We used the Right to Information Act to obtain data from government health centers in Kerala state in India for four hartal days (H-day) and two control days (A-day and B-day) for each H-day, from sixteen health centers including 6 Community Health Center (CHC), 6 Secondary Health Center (SHC), and 4 Tertiary Health Center (THC). Data on emergency room visits was available for six HCs. 15 HCs had a statistically significant decrease in the number of outpatient visits on H-day. There was no difference in the number of outpatient visits between the two control days (A and B) in 15 HCs, suggesting the lack of a posthartal surge in visits. Median decrease in outpatient visits in CHCs, SHCs, and THCs was 50.4%, 59.5%, and 47.4%, respectively. Hartal did not impact the number of emergency room visits in 6 out of 7 health centers assessed. Our study identified a significant harmful impact on government healthcare delivery due to hartals in Kerala. These findings have major public health implications

Medication-Assisted Withdrawal and Alcohol Use Disorder Treatment in the Ambulatory Setting

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) represents a significant burden of disease in central Vermont, but receives little attention and resources compared to other drivers of morbidity and mortality. As part of a community health improvement project, primary care providers in central Vermont were surveyed regarding current practices and perceived barriers related to the effective treatment of AUD. 69% of respondents reported treating alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS) and 83% reported treating AUD. Respondents indicated concern about the safety and efficacy of the medications they currently prescribe and expressed interest in learning about other evidence-based treatments for AWS and AUD. The most frequently cited barriers to the treatment of AUD were lack of time and resources for adequate follow-up; patient’s unwillingness to decrease use; and provider lack of knowledge and comfort in treating AWS and AUD. The authors make several recommendations to improve care for patients struggling with AUD, including incorporating peer recovery coaches into primary care settings; providing CME opportunities for clinician training in evidence-based treatments for AWS and AUD; and implementing a decision-making protocol to determine the appropriate setting for patients experiencing AWS.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1805/thumbnail.jp

Sources and budgets for CO and O-3 in the northeastern Pacific during the spring of 2001: Results from the PHOBEA-II Experiment

Abstract. Ground and airborne measurements of CO, ozone, and aerosols were obtained in th

A Method for Fast, High-Precision Characterization of Synthetic Biology Devices

Engineering biological systems with predictable behavior is a foundational goal of synthetic biology. To accomplish this, it is important to accurately characterize the behavior of biological devices. Prior characterization efforts, however, have generally not yielded enough high-quality information to enable compositional design. In the TASBE (A Tool-Chain to Accelerate Synthetic Biological Engineering) project we have developed a new characterization technique capable of producing such data. This document describes the techniques we have developed, along with examples of their application, so that the techniques can be accurately used by others