#Daniel Markovits, "We need to tax wealth," TIME, May 10/May 17, 2021. - "The rich have too much money. We simply can't spend our way back to equality. Curing economic inequality requires redistribution and redistribution means taxes."
"In one study, the least economically privileged fifth of contries experienced COVID-19 death rates of 67% higher than the most privileged fifth." "Meanwhile, yearlong bull market -- triggered by the series of government rescues -- has added roughly $4.8 trillion of wealth to the richest 1% of American households."
"A onetime tax starting at 50% on the richest 5% of households, that is, on wealth in excess of $2.5 million." "The richest 5 % of American households own two-thirds of the country's total wealth, much of it in forms (publicly traded securities, real estate property) for which data on valuations already exists." "Extreme wealth inequality confronts the U.S. with a [severe] threat. Wealth taxes answer the threat."
#Rovse Bruner, "A wave of new bills threatens trans youth," TIME, April 26/May 3, 2021. - "HB 1570,which passed in Arkansas on April 6 after the lawmakers overrode a gubernatorial veto, is the first bill in the U.S. that effectively bars trans youth from transitioning." "Over 100 anti-trans bills in 33 states are bring considered in legislative sessions, according to the Human Rights Campaign, the highest number in any year on record."
"The CDC's latest Youth Risk Behavior Survey, released in 2019, estimated that about 20% of U.S. high schoolers identify as trans -- or roughly 300,000 trans across the country." "But at the national level, the Equality Act, which would amend the 1964's Civil Rights Act to include federal protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, still faces stiff opposition from Republicans in the U.S. Senate."
#Amy Davidson Sorkin, "Childish Things," The New Yorker, May 10, 2021. - "Biden's proposals include one that would make pre-kindergarten programs for three- and four-year olds universally available." "One in every six children lives below the federal poverty level, which is an income of $27,501 for a family of four. For Black children, the rate is thirty per cent; for Latinx, twenty-four per cent, according to the Children's Defense Fund."
"Last month, the Court made it easier to sentence children to life without parole, meaning that they could die in prison." "That it is hard for Republicans to protest that, while they would like to do something for children, that something isn't in their plan. So they are left with indigenous attacks and warnings about socialism."
"The challenge for the Biden Administration will be keeping the true reality of children's lives at the center of the fight. Superheroes aren't everywhere in Washington."
#Christine Kenneally, "Mind Machines," The New Yorker, April 26 & May 3, 2021. - "Today, at least two hundred thousand people worldwide, suffering from a wide range of conditions, live with a neural implant of some kind." "Although epilepsy affects more than fifty million of whom do not respond to medication, epilepsy research struggles to obtain funding. In the United States, multiple sclerosis, which affects an eighth of the number of people that epilepsy does, nonetheless attracts roughly five times more research money patient from the N.I.H."
"The suicide rate for people with epilepsy is between two and three times higher than it is in the rest of the population." "For the great majority of patients, deep brain stimulation is life-changing, but there were occasional reports of strange behavioral reactions."
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