All about risk
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Thirteen states tax Social Security benefits, a matter of significant interest to retirees. Each of these states has its own approach to determining what share of benefits is subject to tax, though these provisions can be grouped together into a few broad categories. Today’s map illustrates these approaches.
Author(s): Janelle Cammenga
Publication Date: 26 May 2021
Publication Site: Tax Foundation
Link: https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/1127/z1love3.html
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In the ’70s, these overpopulation alarms had widespread impact. A 1970 survey found that 69 percent of married women in America agreed that US overpopulation was a “serious problem” — and that many of them were lowering the number of children they intended to have.
Now, however, the birthrate in the industrial world is below the “replacement rate” of 2.1 children per woman. That rate is set at the number of children needed to replace every parent, with more added to account for mortality.
In 1855, white American women averaged 5.31 births — well above the then-current replacement rate of 3.32 (higher then because of higher infant mortality). By 1980, the figure had dropped to 1.75 children each — well below the 2.1 replacement rate. Even the high birthrate of US Hispanics — 56 percent more than non-Hispanics in 1982 — doesn’t raise the total US rate above replacement levels.
Author(s): Rushworth M. Kidder
Publication Date: 27 November 1985
Publication Site: Christian Science Monitor
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Gun-related deaths from preventable, intentional, and undetermined causes totaled 39,707 in 2019, nearly flat from 39,740 deaths in 2018. Suicides account for 60% of deaths related to firearms, while 36% were homicides, and about 1% were preventable/accidental. Please note that the term gun is used on this page to refer to firearms that can be carried by a person, not to the larger class of weapon.
Since 2014, gun-related assault deaths have increased 31%, but the most recent data show that the upward trend may be over, with less than a 1% increase in 2017, a 4% decrease in 2018, and a partial rebound with a 3% increase in 2019. Suicide deaths involving guns decreased 2.0%, marking the first decrease after 12 consecutive yearly increases.
Date Accessed: 26 May 2021
Publication Site: Injury Facts
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Though they tend to get less attention than gun-related murders, suicides have long accounted for the majority of U.S. gun deaths. In 2017, six-in-ten gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides (23,854), while 37% were murders (14,542), according to the CDC. The remainder were unintentional (486), involved law enforcement (553) or had undetermined circumstances (338).
Author(s): JOHN GRAMLICH
Publication Date: 16 August 2019
Publication Site: Pew
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This week’s (May 10 to May 17, 2021) pace of vaccination remained similar to last week across racial/ethnic groups. Across reporting states, vaccination rates increased by 1.3 percentage points for White people, from 40.3% to 41.6%, and by 1.2 percentage points for Black people, from 26.6% to 27.8%, maintaining the gap in rates between these groups (Figure 4). The rate for Hispanic people increased by 1.6 percentage points from 28.8% to 30.4%, while the rate for Asian people increased by 1.9 percentage points, from 50.2% to 52.1%.
Author(s): Nambi Ndugga, Olivia Pham , Latoya Hill, Samantha Artiga, Raisa Alam , Noah Parker
Publication Date: 19 May 2021
Publication Site: Kaiser Family Foundation
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Unlike FASB, the SEC has no control over GASB. But the Commission is obligated “to protect investors in the municipal markets from fraud, including misleading disclosures [emphasis added].” Taken together, the SEC’s own statements make a strong case that it is obligated to prevent fraud in state and local governments’ financial reports, which are confusing and obfuscate the truth.
The state and local governments’ annual financial reports are based on shoddy accounting practices. If confusing and misleading disclosures are considered fraud, then annual reports produce fraudulent disclosures.
It is confusing and misleading that the GASB requires state and local governments to keep two sets of books. Annual financial reports include governmental fund statements that are prepared using an accounting basis called the “modified accrual basis,” which in essence uses short-sighted cash accounting, while the consolidated financial statements are prepared using accrual accounting standards similar to those used by corporations.
Author(s): Sheila Weinberg
Publication Date: 20 May 2021
Publication Site: Truth in Accounting
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Which is why every politician and every voter in Illinois ought to know how Arizona managed its 2016 reform of the 48% funded Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, which had a cost-of-living adjustment calculation that everyone agreed was broken, including the unions themselves. But Arizona shares with Illinois a constitutional protection against pension changes, specifically stating that “public retirement systems shall not be diminished or impaired.”
So how did they implement this change? In a two-step process, the legislature passed reform legislation and then placed on the ballot a constitutional amendment which inserted a new clause into the state constitution: “Public retirement systems shall not be diminished or impaired, except that certain adjustments to the public safety personnel retirement system may be made as provided in Senate Bill 1428, as enacted by the fifty-second legislature, second regular session.”
This meant that the citizens of Arizona could vote on this pension change without having to worry about whether they were authorizing any unknown future changes to pensions that they might not have wanted.
Author(s): Elizabeth Bauer
Publication Date: 25 May 2021
Publication Site: Chicago Tribune
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The Chicago Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund (PABF) —commonly referred to as the Chicago Police Pension Fund—is one of the worst funded public pension plans in the United States today, with a funding ratio of only 23 percent.
A group of retired and disabled officers, along with widows, has long questioned the trustees and management of the struggling pension. Dissatisfied with the responses they received, the group formed the CPD Pension Board Accountability Group.
Funds were raised to commission an independent forensic audit of the pension and an expert in pensions was retained recently to conduct the review. As Forbes readers will recall, in my recent book, Who Stole My Pension?, I encourage pension stakeholders to band together to fund independent forensic investigations by pension experts of their own choosing—to get a second opinion as to whether the pension fiduciaries and Wall Street “helpers” they have hired to manage investments are doing a good job.
Author(s): Edward Siedle
Publication Date: 25 May 2021
Publication Site: Forbes
Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0091743520304345
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Suicide is an increasingly common cause of death in the United States and recent increases in suicide rates disproportionately impact low income individuals. We sought to assess the impact of income support in the form of state earned income tax credit policies on suicide-related behaviors. This state-level study used repeated cross-sectional data from vital records and the National Survey of Drug Use and Health data representative at the state-level. The population included adults who either died by suicide or were selected for in-person NSDUH interviews between 2008 and 2018. Exposure was measured as the generosity of a refundable state earned income tax credit policy measured as a percentage of the federal policy. Outcomes assessed were suicidal ideation, suicidal planning, non-fatal suicide attempt, suicide deaths, and combined fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts. Analyses were performed between April and June 2020. A 10 percentage-point increase in the generosity of state earned income tax credit was associated with lower frequency of non-fatal suicide attempts (prevalence ratio [PR] = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93–0.99), combined fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts (PR = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93–0.99), and suicide deaths (PR = 0.99; 95% CI: 0.99–1.00). This translates to 4 fewer suicide attempts per 10,000 population each year. Generous state earned income tax credit policies are associated with reductions in the frequency of most severe suicidal behavior. Income support policies may be one way to reduce suicide attempts and death, especially among low-income adults.
Author(s): Erin R.Morgan, Christopher R. DeCou, Heather D. Hill, Stephen J.Mooney, Frederick P.Rivara, AliRowhani-Rahbar
Publication Date: April 2021
Publication Site: Preventive Medicine
Link: http://www.17centurymaths.com/contents/napiercontents.html
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A modern translation with some notes of Napier’s Descriptio, with the Latin version presented last, is presented here. Book I is an introduction to the new science of logarithms; while Book II is devoted to a thorough explanation of the solution of plane and spherical triangles. The original work was translated by Edward Wright in 1616 and both the original and the translation were used by Briggs at Gresham College as part of the education of navigators, for whom the work was intended; astronomers also benefited. This work and its sequel the Constructioshould be read before Briggs’s Arithmetica is approached. I present here a spreadsheet derivation of Napier’s Log Tables : there was a ‘slippery mistake’ in one of the tables of the Constructio, which together with the rounding that took place, limited the original tables accuracy to only perhaps 5 places ; thus, there cannot be complete agreement with the original tables.. The Constructio in which Napier promised to elaborate on his method then follows; though Napier did not live long enough to see this work in print. This work is the first time the exponential function appears in mathematics, under the guise of a geometric number line. This is a brilliant exercise in lateral thinking to solve an apparently unsolvable problem : the time and labour spent in long calculations. I am much indebted to the translation of this work by William Macdonald (1888) , that has helped me to unravel some of the knots in Napier’s Latin and saved much time. An appendix is also given; and one should also mention the existence of another book that was printed before the death of the philosopher, his Rabdologea, in which Napier’s other calculating devices that include his bones and promptuary are set out. As an excellent translation by William Frank Richardson has been published in the history of computing series, there is no need to expound on this here. Perhaps I should say that an internet friend of mine, Jim Hanson, has resurrected the Promptuary, and you should visit his website if you want to know how to make one :
Translated text: http://www.17centurymaths.com/contents/napier/ademonstratiobookone.pdf
Author(s): John Napier (original in Latin), translated by Ian Bruce
Publication Date: 30 April 2012
Publication Site: 17th century maths
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AT THE turn of the twentieth century, a newborn white American could expect to live for around 48 years. That was 15 years longer than a newborn African-American could expect. Improvements in hygiene, medicine and other public-health measures led those numbers to rise dramatically. By mid-century, life expectancy for African-Americans had nearly doubled, to 61 years, while for white Americans it rose to 69. By 2017 the gap had narrowed further, to three and a half years: 75.3 for African-Americans, 78.8 for whites. But Hispanic Americans outlive them both, to an average of 81.8 years. In other words, both races have progressed significantly, but gaps remain. This same pattern exists across a number of metrics.
The most disturbing aspect of this pattern is not just the enduring gap in outcomes between black and white Americans, though it has narrowed markedly. It is that, as the work of Anne Case and Angus Deaton, both economists at Princeton, has shown, life expectancy fell for all demographic groups of Americans between 2014 and 2017 for the first time since 1993. The rise in mortality rates has been especially stark for whites without college degrees, owing to what they call “deaths of despair”: drug overdoses, suicide and diseases caused by heavy drinking.
Publication Date: 20 May 2021
Publication Site: The Economist
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Three researchers from China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed U.S. intelligence report that could add weight to growing calls for a fuller probe of whether the Covid-19 virus may have escaped from the laboratory.
The details of the reporting go beyond a State Department fact sheet, issued during the final days of the Trump administration, which said that several researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 “with symptoms consistent with both Covid-19 and common seasonal illness.”
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China’s National Health Commission and the WIV didn’t respond to requests for comment. Shi Zhengli, the top bat coronavirus expert at WIV, has said the virus didn’t leak from her laboratories. She told the WHO-led team that traveled to Wuhan earlier this year to investigate the origins of the virus that all staff had tested negative for Covid-19 antibodies and there had been no turnover of staff on the coronavirus team.
Marion Koopmans, a Dutch virologist on that team told NBC News in March that some WIV staff did fall sick in the autumn of 2019, but she attributed that to regular, seasonal sickness.
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It isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner. Covid-19 and the flu, while very different illnesses, share some of the same symptoms, such as fever, aches and a cough. Still, it could be significant if members of the same team working with coronaviruses went to hospital with similar symptoms shortly before the pandemic was first identified.
Author(s): Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel, Drew Hinshaw
Publication Date: 23 May 2021
Publication Site: WSJ