The progressivity of the U.S. tax system has dramatically declined over the past seven decades. The upshot is that for most income levels, the U.S. tax system now resembles a flat tax that becomes regressive at the very top end, meaning the super-rich pay proportionately less. Today, virtually all income groups pay roughly 28 percent of their income in taxes--– except for the 400 richest Americans.
When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to Facebook in Palo Alto and hugged Mark Zuckerberg at a townhall, he went up several notches in cool. The image of the two men hugging was splashed all over Indian media. But there’s no such thing as a Free Hug. Instead there’s Free Basics. Facebook has blanketed newspapers and billboards in India drumming up support for Free Basics. The ad budget, says one news report, is about one third of all its India revenue.
On February 4th Silicon Valley popped corks to celebrate Facebook’s 10th birthday. What began as a relatively exclusive event for the East Coast elite, very soon hit a central nerve and changed the way 1.23 billion people worldwide communicate, interact, engage, catch up, and bristle. Let’s think about those two numbers for a moment: A company that didn’t even exist 10 years ago, has as many users as India has denizens.
As a company, Burning Man LLC, has created various organizations to help promote its values. There’s The Black Rock Arts Foundation, which supports public art; the year round newsletter, Jack Rabbit Speaks, that keeps the Burners in the know of what is going on in the Burning community; and the Burning Man Project, a nonprofit organization that develops program initiatives in the areas of civic involvement, social enterprise, and education. Perhaps, the most telling signs of Burning Man’s evolution are the executives and companies that it attracts.
TheNew Republic was on the verge of collapse just shy of its 100th birthday. But in March of 2012, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes swooped down to its rescue, saving the iconic magazine from ruin, nursing it back to health, though not necessary profitability. This was not the first time the influential magazine has stood on shaky ground, nor is it the first time that it has operated at a financial loss. And judging from its recovery in recent months, it seems fair to say now that it will likely not be the last.
Charlie Day plays a man recently released from a mental institution who has no ability to communicate with people and is largely unaware of the things going on around him. Making the character mute could have been done well, but when that character is also incapable of communicating, it makes it difficult to find him compelling. Even though his body language can be funny, it’s mostly up to the rest of the cast to deliver jokes -- which has mixed results.
Countless videogames, films, and television series utilize this shorthand. Think of almost any piece of media set in World War II; the countless zombie films, games and TV shows. Demons are admittedly less utilized outside of games; however, trade them in for generic “aliens” in Hollywood and you have a pretty close match. We are then allowed to be happy to kill these “enemies,” and see them die in horrific ways because they are morally bankrupt.
