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GROSS: So you report that some of the tax cut provisions in the new stimulus bill - and the stimulus bill is designed to help companies and individuals suffering as a result of the pandemic. But you report that some of the cuts in here for wealthy individuals and rich corporations, these were cuts that were being lobbied for for a couple of years - ever since the 2017 tax cut package that was passed.

And some corporations, lobbyists didn't want those restrictions. They've been working against those restrictions ever since. So do you see this current stimulus package as a kind of opportunity just to give lobbyists and corporations what they've been asking for for a couple of years under the cover of the pandemic?

"The FSP defines OTT impairments as any decrease in expected cash flows that results in the holder not expecting to recover the entire amortized cost basis of the securities, whether or not that decrease is probable. This definition should increase the frequency of OTT impairments."

At the same time,

(2) Organic sales growth / (decrease) is defined as net sales growth / (decrease) excluding the effect of any acquisitions and divestitures and foreign exchange rate changes. See “Non-GAAP Financial Information” below for reconciliation of organic sales growth / (decrease) to net sales growth / (decrease), the most directly comparable GAAP financial information.

The comment addressed two different issues, the first being the definition of “decrease in tax” provided in § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i) of the proposed regulations. Section 6707A(b)(1) provides that, subject to certain minimum and maximum amounts, the amount of the penalty under subsection (a) of section 6707A with respect to any reportable transaction shall be 75 percent of the decrease in tax shown on the return as a result of such transaction (or which would have resulted from such transaction if such transaction were respected for federal tax purposes). Section 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i) of the proposed regulations defines a “decrease in tax” generally as the difference between the amount of tax reported on the return as filed and the amount of tax that would be reported on a hypothetical return where the taxpayer did not participate in the reportable transaction. The definition in § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i) also encompasses situations where a taxpayer's participation in a reportable transaction creates a liability for a tax that would not exist absent participation in the transaction. For example, a taxpayer engaging in a listed transaction involving a Roth IRA may be subject to an excise tax on excess IRA contributions. If the taxpayer fails to report the excise tax on the taxpayer's excess IRA contributions, this amount of tax would not appear on the return filed by the taxpayer that reflected the taxpayer's participation in the reportable transaction. The excise tax would also not appear on a return filed by the taxpayer if the taxpayer had not engaged in the transaction, because there would be no excess contribution on which the excise tax would be imposed. Therefore, the difference between these two returns would result in no decrease in tax attributable to the abusive Roth IRA transaction. To account for this type of situation, § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i)(B) of the proposed regulations includes in the definition of decrease in tax “any other tax that results from participation in the reportable transaction but was not reported on the taxpayer's return.” Example 1 in § 301.6707A-1(d)(3)(i) illustrates this rule.

The commenter noted that the proposed regulation includes tax that should have been shown on the return, but was not, in the definition of “decrease in tax” described in § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i)(B) of the proposed regulations. The decrease in tax described in § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i)(B) of the proposed regulations will only exist if the taxpayer's reporting position is invalid. If the taxpayer's reporting position were determined to be correct, there would be no additional tax resulting from the participation in the reportable transaction that the taxpayer was required to, but did not, report on the taxpayer's return. The commenter contended that including this unreported tax as part of the decrease in tax used to calculate the penalty conflicts with the common understanding that the section 6707A penalty is intended to apply even if the taxpayer's reporting position is determined to be correct. In this situation, the Service will not be able to impose the penalty without first determining the merits of the reporting position. The commenter expressed concerns about whether Congress intended for the penalty to apply in such circumstances, absent adjudication on the merits of the underlying reporting position. The commenter noted that, in contrast, § 301.6707A-1(d)(1)(i)(A) of the proposed regulations defines “decrease in tax” by comparing the amount reported on the taxpayer's return (reflecting participation in the reportable transaction) with the tax liability that would be reported on a hypothetical return that did not reflect participation in the reportable transaction. This portion of the definition is not affected by the assumption that the taxpayer's reporting position is invalid.

The proof is given in Section A4 in the Appendix. Intuitively, the legal quality estimator uses the first postshock cohort to measure the immediate change in Delaware's share of new firms. However, that cohort responds not only to the increase in Delaware's legal quality but also to the (expected) increase in its future network size. Delaware's share of the first postshock cohort is therefore greater than what the quality effect alone would have induced. Similarly, the network effect estimator uses firms from the second postshock cohort and onward to measure subsequent changes in Delaware's share of new firms. This estimator is a lower bound because it excludes the part of the increase in Delaware's share of the first postshock cohort that was due to the expected increase in network size. Note that this logic does not depend on the accuracy of firms' predictions, the ability of firms to reincorporate, or the total number of firms; the validity of the bounds depends only on firms' beliefs that a positive quality shock will (weakly) increase Delaware's network size. The bounds are thus valid even if firms systematically underestimate Delaware's future network size.

The investment coefficients are related to the coefficients of production in the following way.5 In producing a unit of the jth sector's output (per year) an amount ai; of the ith sector's output is used up in the process (per year). An additional amount of asj must be used up next year if next year's output is to increase by one unit. The stock of the means of production must increase accordingly. The needed increase in stock, i.e., investment, depends on the rate of use-up of the means of production. Let, for instance, the means of production (e.g., machines, buildings, or other equipment), in which the output of the ith sector is embodied in the jth sector, last for 10 years and their rate of use-up be uniformly 1/10 per year. Then in order to increase the use-up of each year by aij, a stock of additional means of production equal to 1 0ai must be provided. Thus, bi1 lOaij. In view of the durable character of the means of production, it is not possible to provide less, for then the use-up could not be kept up at as; per year.

These questions coalesced into a powerful campaign against the CANS law. Led by fearless community members and groups, the campaign mobilized advocacy, lobbying, litigation, public education, and a press strategy to challenge the discrimination faced by those convicted of CANS. And in two short years, despite the state's strenuous effort to defend this law, a coalition of community advocates, lawyers and activists systematically and comprehensively dismantled its most pernicious effects, rendering the law truly redundant and functionally void.

We investigate the effect of applying nonlinear redistributive taxes to the yard-sale dynamics of assets. An amount of money is collected from each individual (tax) and distributed back equally. We consider (i) a piecewise linear tax, exempting those with wealth below a threshold W0, and taxing the excess wealth otherwise, and (ii) a power-law tax with exponent a>0, which allows embracing regressive, proportional and progressive rules. The distribution of wealth obtained from numerical simulations of the agent-based dynamics is compared with the solution of its associated Fokker–Planck equation for the probability density function P (w, t) of wealth w at time t, in good agreement. Based on these solutions, we analyze how the different rules modify the distribution of wealth across the population, quantifying the level of inequality through the Gini coefficient. We note that the introduction of an exemption threshold does not always diminish inequality, depending on the implementation details. Moreover, nonlinearity brings new stylized facts in the distribution of wealth compared to the linear case, e.g., negative skewness, bimodality, indicating stratification, or a flat shape meaning equality populated wealth layers.

The scope of income redistribution in America is truly immense. In 2007, the last year not significantly affected by the Great Recession, the federal government spent about $1.45 trillion (roughly half of its total spending) on programs aimed at redistributing income from more wealthy Americans to the less wealthy. These ranged from means-tested entitlement programs like Medicaid, housing assistance, unemployment compensation, and food stamps to broader entitlements like Medicare and Social Security (which are not means-tested, but nonetheless transfer income on a mass scale and are generally justified on the grounds that they reduce poverty among the elderly).

Beyond these direct anti-poverty initiatives, the progressive federal income tax redistributes income even further. Progressive taxation means that the tax rate increases along with a taxpayer's income; a person earning $50,000 per year, for example, might pay $10,000 in taxes while a person earning $100,000 per year might pay $30,000. The higher-income person not only pays more taxes in total: He also pays a larger portion of his income (30% versus 20% in the preceding example). The wealthier give up a greater share of their earnings so that the less wealthy can forfeit a smaller portion of theirs; in this way, our progressive tax code is redistributive. The table below displays the effective tax rate (defined as total federal taxes paid — including payroll taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare — divided by total income earned) for different segments of the income distribution. It also shows the share of the nation's total federal tax burden shouldered by each income group.

As an initial step, we need to establish a baseline of support. Let us suppose that our unit of redistribution is the amount of money it takes annually to support the subsistence needs of one person in a household living at the level of the national median. We can calculate the necessary amount in the roughest sense for illustrative purposes if we take US $43,000, the 2003 median income of a U.S. family,27 and, assuming the household is composed of four persons, divide that amount by four, yielding US $10,750. This sum becomes what can be called a redistribution unit—the basic annual income guaranteed to every person living in the United States. Though this figure can be adjusted or calculated anew when a proposal of this nature begins its trek toward becoming a law, the principle of providing an adequate income guarantee must be retained if we are to meet the general imperative of providing economic equality. Since every person will now have an income, and thus either filing an income tax form or being part of a household filing, we can assure that each person receives the total amount of the minimum guaranteed by raising the standard deduction to US$10,750, thus rendering the income tax-free. Tax refunds can serve as the device for delivering the guaranteed income. So that we do not re-create inequality by giving every person the same amount, and thereby providing well-off persons with an additional income subsidy, we need to assume that income above the minimum level is taxed progressively. This means that the federal government will tax higher incomes at higher rates, not simply as a means of financing government expenditures, but as a social policy designed to redistribute the national income more equally.

Yamiche Alcindor: And, Brian, in the last administration that you worked for — that would be former President Obama — you were also a key expert on climate change. I want to ask you about climate change in this bill. Are you worried that there are critics who think that you gave up too much on climate and that this bill is too watered down as it relates to those issues? Brian Deese: This bill, as it's structured, would be the largest and most significant investment in climate change in our nation's history by a significant factor. It would, if enacted, reduce one gigaton of emissions from our economy. And, most importantly, it would spark new economic engines in our economy, from the electric vehicle industry, to the clean power industry, not only putting people to work in good-paying jobs around the country, but creating new export opportunities, so that the United States is actually exporting the next generation of, for example, American-made vehicles, electric clean vehicles all around the world.

The infrastructure drama enveloping Capitol Hill could spill onto the global climate stage. Why it matters: Major new U.S. investments and policies could help spur other nations to take more aggressive and tangible steps to cut emissions. But failure to steer major new initiatives through Congress could hinder the White House diplomatic posture as the U.N. conference looms. State of play: The White House is negotiating with Republicans amid all kinds of uncertainty over whether Democrats can pass legislation without GOP backing. President Biden has proposed major investments in electric vehicles, grid tech, mass transit, clean energy tax incentives and many other initiatives. The negotiations with Republicans — who object to the plan's steep price tag and expansive definition of infrastructure — come ahead of November's critical United Nations climate summit. What they're saying: "Because of the importance of American leadership on climate, the rest of the world is definitely watching what happens on Capitol Hill," said the Environmental Defense Fund's Nathaniel Keohane. Keohane, who leads EDF's climate program, said major U.S. investments will bolster the country's economy and competitiveness. But they're also consequential internationally, he said. "The more the U.S. can demonstrate leadership — not only in the ambition of its targets but in the ambition of its implementation and the seriousness of its implementation — the more likely we are to see the rest of the world stepping into its ambition and accelerating its own climate action," he said. Catch up fast: In April the White House set a voluntary target under the Paris Agreement of cutting U.S. emissions by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.But that's much harder to achieve absent Capitol Hill approval of new investments and incentives. The Atlantic Council's Margaret Jackson said Biden's climate initiatives thus far have borne some fruit, pointing to several nations strengthening their Paris targets. But Jackson, who has written about the importance of congressional action, also tells Axios: "U.S. allies and partners are still somewhat skeptical in terms of how much this administration can really accomplish, and will it be lasting."

Happily, a 2016  in the journal Earth System Dynamics tackles this directly. Over at CarbonBrief, Roz Pidcock has a  on the study that gets into the background and some of the implications.

Best of all, the team at  (which you should really bookmark) has compiled the relevant comparisons in the study into a single clear, aesthetically pleasing graphic:

A central problem with geoengineering is that the cure may be worse than the disease. For the very scale of what it is attempting to achieve could create a risk of massive unintended consequences over the entire Earth's surface, possibly posing a greater existential risk than climate change itself. Geoengineering thus needs to be very carefully governed—especially when it comes to radical techniques that are cheap enough for a country or research group to implement unilaterally—and we shouldn't rely on it as an alternative to emissions reductions. But it may well have a useful role to play as a last resort, or as a means for the eventual 92 restoration of our planet's climate.

The most likely levels of global warming are very unlikely to cause human extinction.15 The existential risks of climate change instead stem from tail risk climate change – the low probability of extreme levels of warming – and interaction with other sources of risk. It is impossible to say with confidence at what point global warming would become severe enough to pose an existential threat. Research has suggested that warming of 11-12°C would render most of the planet uninhabitable,16 and would completely devastate agriculture.17 This would pose an extreme threat to human civilisation as we know it.18 Warming of around 7°C or more could potentially produce conflict and instability on such a scale that the indirect effects could be an existential risk, although it is extremely uncertain how likely such scenarios are.19 Moreover, the timescales over which such changes might happen could mean that humanity is able to adapt enough to avoid extinction in even very extreme scenarios.

The probability of these levels of warming depends on eventual greenhouse gas concentrations. According to some experts, unless strong action is taken soon by major emitters, it is likely that we will pursue a medium-high emissions pathway.20 If we do, the chance of extreme warming is highly uncertain but appears non-negligible. Current concentrations of greenhouse gases are higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years,21 which means that there are significant unknown unknowns about how the climate system will respond. Particularly concerning is the risk of positive feedback loops, such as the release of vast amounts of methane from melting of the arctic permafrost, which would cause rapid and disastrous warming.22 The economists Gernot Wagner and Martin Weitzman have used IPCC figures (which do not include modelling of feedback loops such as those from melting permafrost) to estimate that if we continue to pursue a medium-high emissions pathway, the probability of eventual warming of 6°C is around 10%,23 and of 10°C is around 3%.24 These estimates are of course highly uncertain. It is likely that the world will take action against climate change once it begins to impose large costs on human society, long before there is warming of 10°C. Unfortunately, there is significant inertia in the climate system: there is a 25 to 50 year lag between CO2 emissions and eventual warming,25 and it is expected that 40% of the peak concentration of CO2 will remain in the atmosphere 1,000 years after the peak is reached.26 Consequently, it is impossible to reduce temperatures quickly by reducing CO2 emissions. If the world does start to face costly warming, the international community will therefore face strong incentives to find other ways to reduce global temperatures. The only known way to reduce global temperatures quickly and cheaply is a form of climate engineering called Solar Radiation Management (SRM), which involves cooling the Earth by reflecting sunlight back into space.27 The most researched form of SRM involves injecting aerosols into the stratosphere.28 Most of the evidence so far suggests that ideal SRM deployment programmes would reduce overall damages relative to an un-engineered greenhouse world.29 However, SRM brings its own risks. Of the currently known potential negative direct effects of SRM, only abrupt termination could plausibly bring about an existential catastrophe.30 If a very thick stratospheric veil were deployed and SRM was suddenly terminated and not resumed within a buffer period of a few months, then there would be very rapid and damaging warming. There is some reason to think that an SRM system could be made very resilient to this termination shock risk, especially if the knowledge and capability for SRM deployment was widely shared, but termination shock could occur as a result of another global catastrophe, such as a global war or devastating pandemic.31 Aside from the known risks of SRM, current climate models are imperfect, and SRM could have currently unforeseen catastrophic effects. SRM also creates some indirect risks. Firstly, SRM could be unilaterally deployed32 and it will be difficult to agree on a level of SRM acceptable to all regions.33 Some nations could counter-geoengineer to reverse the effects of SRM, creating tensions and accident risk. Natural regional weather events could be incorrectly attributed to SRM, potentially leading to opposition from some parts of the world. SRM therefore poses serious international governance problems and, if mishandled, could increase the risk of political conflict.34

For all that, nuclear winter appears unlikely to lead to our extinction. No current researchers on nuclear winter are on record saying that it would and many have explicitly said that it is unlikely.38 Existential catastrophe via a global unrecoverable collapse of civilization also seems unlikely, especially if we consider somewhere like New Zealand (or the southeast of Australia) which is unlikely to be directly targeted and will avoid the worst effects of nuclear winter by being coastal. It is hard to see why they wouldn't make it through with most of their 39 technology (and institutions) intact.

However, substantial regions would also remain below this threshold. Even with an extreme 20°C of warming there would be many coastal areas (and some elevated regions) that would have no days above the temperature/humidity threshold.89 So there would remain large areas in which humanity and civilization could continue. A world with 20°C of warming would be an unparalleled human and environmental tragedy, forcing mass migration and perhaps starvation too. This is reason enough to do our utmost to prevent anything like that from ever happening. However, our present task is identifying existential risks to humanity and it is hard to see how any realistic level of heat stress could pose such a risk. So the runaway and moist greenhouse effects remain the only known mechanisms through which climate change could directly cause our extinction or irrevocable collapse.

This doesn't rule out unknown mechanisms. We are considering large changes to the Earth that may even be unprecedented in size or speed. It wouldn't be astonishing if that directly led to our permanent ruin. The best argument against such unknown mechanisms is probably that the PETM did not lead to a mass extinction, despite temperatures rapidly rising about 50C, to reach a level 140C above pre-industrial temperatures. But this is tempered by the imprecision of paleoclimate data, the sparsity of the fossil record, the smaller size of mammals at the time (making them more heat-tolerant), and a reluctance to rely on a single example. Most importantly, anthropogenic warming could be over a hundred times faster than warming during the PETM, and rapid warming has been suggested as a contributing factor in the end- Permian mass extinction, in which 96 percent of species went 91 In the end, we can say little more than that direct extinct. existential risk from climate change appears very small, but cannot yet be ruled out.

Climate change and nuclear weapons represent two key threats of our time. Climate change endangers ecosystems and social systems all over the world. The degradation of natural resources, the decline of water and food supplies, forced migration, and more frequent and intense disasters will greatly affect population clusters, big and small. Climate-related shocks will add stress to the world’s existing conflicts and act as a “threat multiplier” in already fragile regions. This could contribute to a decline of international stability and trigger hostility between people and nations. Meanwhile, the 15,500 nuclear weapons that remain in the arsenals of only a few states possess the destructive force to destroy life on Earth as we know multiple times over. With nuclear deterrence strategies still in place, and hundreds of weapons on ‘hair trigger alert’, the risks of nuclear war caused by accident, miscalculation or intent remain plentiful and imminent. Despite growing recognition that climate change and nuclear weapons pose critical security risks, the linkages between both threats are largely ignored. However, nuclear and climate risks interfere with each other in a mutually enforcing way. Conflicts induced by climate change could contribute to global insecurity, which, in turn, could enhance the chance of a nuclear weapon being used, could create more fertile breeding grounds for terrorism, including nuclear terrorism, and could feed the ambitions among some states to acquire nuclear arms. Furthermore, as evidenced by a series of incidents in recent years, extreme weather events, environmental degradation and major seismic events can directly impact the safety and security of nuclear installations. Moreover, a nuclear war could lead to a rapid and prolonged drop in average global temperatures and significantly disrupt the global climate for years to come, which would have disastrous implications for agriculture, threatening the food supply for most of the world. Finally, climate change, nuclear weapons and nuclear energy pose threats of intergenerational harm, as evidenced by the transgenerational effects of nuclear testing and nuclear power accidents and the lasting impacts on the climate, environment and public health by carbon emissions.

Failing to act on climate change will have serious consequences in multiple ways. We will lose large numbers of animal species because they will be unable to adapt to the new environment they face, and ecosystems will collapse. Rising temperatures and humidity will also pose threats to human health and well-being, and risk making some areas unliveable. And food yields and supplies will all be hit, with crops and animals killed by temperature extremes, droughts and floods. Climate-related risks dominate the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2023, with failure to mitigate climate change perceived as the biggest number risk facing the world over the next 10 years. Natural disasters, extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are also top concerns.

A devastating fact of climate collapse is that there may be a silver lining to the mushroom cloud. First, it should be noted that a nuclear exchange does not inevitably result in apocalyptic loss of life. Nuclear winter—the idea that firestorms would make the earth uninhabitable—is based on shaky science. There’s no reliable model that can determine how many megatons would decimate agriculture or make humans extinct. Nations have already detonated 2,476 nuclear devices. An exchange that shuts down the global economy but stops short of human extinction may be the only blade realistically likely to cut the carbon knot we’re trapped within. It would decimate existing infrastructures, providing an opportunity to build new energy infrastructure and intervene in the current investments and subsidies keeping fossil fuels alive. In the near term, emissions would almost certainly rise as militaries are some of the world’s largest emitters. Given what we know of human history, though, conflict may be the only way to build the mass social cohesion necessary for undertaking the kind of huge, collective action needed for global sequestration and energy transition. Like the 20th century’s world wars, a nuclear exchange could serve as an economic leveler. It could provide justification for nationalizing energy industries with the interest of shuttering fossil fuel plants and transitioning to renewables and, uh, nuclear energy. It could shock us into reimagining a less suicidal civilization, one that dethrones the death-cult zealots who are currently in power. And it may toss particulates into the atmosphere sufficient to block out some of the solar heat helping to drive global warming. Or it may have the opposite effects. Who knows? What we do know is that humans can survive and recover from war, probably even a nuclear one. Humans cannot recover from runaway climate change. Nuclear war is not an inevitable extinction event; six degrees of warming is.