Author: Mary Pat Campbell

A Misleading C.D.C. Number

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/briefing/outdoor-covid-transmission-cdc-number.html

Excerpt:

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released new guidelines last month for mask wearing, it announced that “less than 10 percent” of Covid-19 transmission was occurring outdoors. Media organizations repeated the statistic, and it quickly became a standard description of the frequency of outdoor transmission.

….

That benchmark “seems to be a huge exaggeration,” as Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, said. In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me. The rare outdoor transmission that has happened almost all seems to have involved crowded places or close conversation.

Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving.

Author(s): David Leonhardt

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: NY Times

Dems Demanding SALT Tax Cuts Stand to Benefit

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.dailyposter.com/democrats-gunning-to-end-salt-cap-stand-to-benefit/

Graphic:

Excerpt:

The SALT tax deduction allows state and local taxes like property taxes to be deducted from federal taxes. The deduction is particularly beneficial to wealthy property owners in Democratic states, which typically have higher property tax rates. In 2017, the deduction was capped at $10,000 under President Trump’s tax reform bill, in what many saw as a Republican attack on blue states.

Repealing the SALT cap would cost the government $600 billion in revenue over nine years.  That outlay would essentially negate any financial benefits from  the Democrats’ proposal to raise the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent, the party’s preferred alternative to Biden’s proposed 28-percent corporate tax rate. With all of the money from raising the tax rate being funneled back to wealthy homeowners, there would likely be little money left to fund Biden’s infrastructure package.

Author(s): EMMA RINDLISBACHER

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: Daily Poster

Bernie Sanders Is (Mostly) Right About the SALT Deduction

Mary Pat Campbell
Bernie Sanders Is (Mostly) Right About the SALT Deduction

Graphic:

Excerpt:

“I want to tell you this: If I become majority leader, one of the first things I will do is we will eliminate it forever,” Schumer said during a July 14 press conference on Long Island. “It will be dead, gone, and buried.”

“It” in this case was the cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction, which was imposed as part of the 2017 federal tax reform bill passed by Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump. As a result of that law, Americans are allowed to deduct a maximum of $10,000 in state and local tax payments from their federally taxable income; previously the deduction was uncapped, and it overwhelmingly benefitted the richest households while shifting their federal tax burden to everyone else.

…..

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) is correct to point out, as he did in an interview with Axios this week, that the SALT cap creates a serious optics problem for Democrats. Sanders says he will oppose Schumer’s effort to attach the SALT cap repeal to the transportation bill because “it sends a terrible, terrible message when you have Republicans telling us that this is a tax break for the rich.”

Author(s): Eric Boehm

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: Reason

Dem tax rift: Sanders rips Pelosi, Schumer for backing repeal of SALT cap

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/05/10/sanders-rips-pelosi-schumer-for-backing-repeal-of-salt-cap/

Excerpt:

​Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking on the leaders of his own Democratic Party — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — for supporting a repeal of the cap on deductions for state and local tax on federal income taxes.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Schumer (D-NY) — who represent two of the highest tax states — back repealing the $10,000 cap instituted by former President Donald Trump on SALT deductions, which Sanders said “sends a terrible, terrible message” to working-class people.

…..

“We could reverse that for 2018 and 2019 so that people could refile their taxes” and get a refund, Pelosi told The Times in March. “They’d have more disposable income, which is the lifeblood of our economy, a consumer economy that we are.”

Author(s): Mark Moore

Publication Date: 10 May 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

The Cost of Insuring Colleges Continues to Rise. And Covid’s Not the Reason.

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-cost-of-insuring-colleges-continues-to-rise-and-covids-not-the-reason?cid2=gen_login_refresh&cid=gen_sign_in

Excerpt:

Colleges face an increasingly complex and unpredictable array of challenges — abuse, harassment, assault, police misconduct, accidents, health and environmental hazards, fiduciary wrongdoing, the pandemic — that are making it more difficult to calculate risk and insure against it.

That’s a big part of why annual insurance premiums have gone up by double digits in recent years. John McLaughlin, senior managing director of the higher-education practice at Gallagher, an insurance brokerage and risk-management and consulting firm, says those increases range between an average of 10 and 35 percent across an institution’s insurance portfolio.

….

But what’s striking is that just behind enrollment on colleges’ list of worries are two areas that are not directly related to Covid: data security and Title IX. That’s according to an annual survey by United Educators, which provides liability insurance and risk-management services for its member colleges and schools. The survey was conducted from May 2019 through September 2020, as the coronavirus crisis unfolded, and 480 United Educators member institutions responded.

Author(s): Alexander C. Kafka

Publication Date: 3 March 2021

Publication Site: Chronicle of Higher Education

Data proves it: Pandemic is no excuse for NYC’s rising tide of violent crime

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://nypost.com/2021/05/09/pandemic-is-no-excuse-for-nycs-rising-tide-of-violent-crime/

Excerpt:

So he [NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio] hasn’t acted with much urgency as the murder rate rose 47 percent last year, to a total of 468 people killed, and has risen this year, so far, by 17 percent. 

…..

In London, the global city that most closely resembles Gotham, the murder rate plummeted last year. It fell to 126 from 150, down 16 percent. 

Why? Well, that’s obvious: It was the global pandemic. “Many, many crime types have reduced as you would expect,” said Met Police chief Cressida Dick, noting that fewer people were outside to fight with each other. 

How about Italy, hit hard and early by the pandemic? There, murders fell by 14 percent, to 271 from 315. 

France with its troubled banlieues? The country’s murders were down 2 percent in 2020, to 863. 

….

But these are all safe countries anyway. So what about cartel-ridden Mexico? There, murders fell by slightly less than half a percent last year, to 34,523 — the first decline in six years. 

Author(s): Nicole Gelinas

Publication Date: 9 May 2021

Publication Site: NY Post

Which Public Pension Funds Have the Highest Holdings of Alternative Assets? 2021 Edition

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/which-public-pension-funds-have-the

Graphic:

All the data for alternative allocation 2001-2020, with key percentiles plotted as lines

Excerpt:

What you see in that graph is a data point for each of the plans I know their asset allocation for, with the median, 25th percentile, and 75th percentiles marked out so you can see the allocations increasing.

That pattern does not make me feel good.

Allocating more to alternatives doesn’t seem to get asset managers higher returns. But the group is generally sliding upwards in their allocations, and I’m very unhappy about this.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

F.B.I. Asking Questions After a Pension Fund Aimed High and Fell Short

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/business/dealbook/psers-pennsylvania-fund-fbi.html

Excerpt:

The search for high returns takes many pension funds far and wide, but the Pennsylvania teachers’ fund went farther than most. It invested in trailer park chains, pistachio farms, pay phone systems for prison inmates — and, in a particularly bizarre twist, loans to Kurds trying to carve out their own homeland in northern Iraq.

Now the F.B.I. is on the case, investigating investment practices at the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System, and new questions are emerging about how the fund’s staff and consultants calculated returns.

…..

The error in calculating returns was a tiny one, just four one-hundredths of a percentage point. But it was enough — just barely — to push the fund’s performance over a critical threshold of 6.36 percent that, by law, determines whether certain teachers have to pay more into the fund. The close call raised questions about whether someone had manipulated the numbers and the error wasn’t really an error at all.

…..

“If you can’t change the benefits, and you can’t change the contributions, the only lever left for these people to pull is investment policy — that’s it,” said Kurt Winkelmann, a senior fellow for pension policy design at the University of Minnesota’s Heller-Hurwicz Economics Institute. “And that exposes younger beneficiaries and taxpayers to a lot of risk.”

Author(s): Mary Williams Walsh

Publication Date: 11 May 2021

Publication Site: New York Times

To Protect Australian Workers’ Retirement Savings, We Must Democratize Pensions

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://jacobinmag.com/2021/05/australia-pensions-superannuation-super-industry-funds-democratic-control-investment-vanguard-equity-stock-market

Excerpt:

By design, Australia’s existing superannuation system reproduces inequalities built into the labor market. This is because employers must pay super as a proportion of wages into individual accounts that then earn compounding returns. Upon retirement, high-income workers may find they own a significant pool of capital.

Meanwhile, lower-income workers — disproportionately women — retire with the lowest super balances. The same will be true of younger or marginalized workers who are trapped in precarious or informal employment. As wages continue to decline and precarious work becomes more prevalent, the number of people with a stake in defending superannuation is shrinking year by year.

To make matters worse, in its present form, superannuation undermines genuinely redistributive institutions like the age pension. This is because conservative political forces are able to present them as a last-resort safety net rather than a guarantee of the right to a decent retirement.

Author(s): Robert Lechte

Publication Date: 9 May 2021

Publication Site: Jacobin Magazine

Third withdrawal of 10: How will the mechanism for pensioners for annuities work?

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.t13.cl/noticia/negocios/rentas-vitalicias-como-funcionara-retiro-dineros-como-solicitar-afp-tercer-retir-10-28-04-21

[auto-translated by Google]

[this relates to people in Chile being allowed to taking fairly large withdrawals from their official retirement savings]

Excerpt:

This Monday, the application process will begin through digital platforms within the framework of the new 10% third withdrawal law.

As detailed by the Undersecretary of Social Welfare, Pedro Pizarro, the process will begin 100% online during the first two weeks of May, both for AFP users and for the nearly 700 thousand pensioners through the life annuity modality , who for the first time may request a cash advance.

In view of this process, the Financial Market Commission is preparing an instruction manual to regulate the unprecedented withdrawal of savings in the form of life annuities, which – they assure – will be published shortly (In this same note we will update the news of said instruction )

Publication Date: 2 May 2021

Publication Site: T13 in Chile

Pension plan conversion a hot topic at the end of the ND Legislative session

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://news.prairiepublic.org/post/pension-plan-conversion-hot-topic-end-nd-legislative-session

Excerpt:

A bill to change the pension plan for public employees will be one of the last measures the Legislature will consider.

It would affect people hired after January first, 2023.

Right now it’s a “defined benefit” plan. The bill would make it a “defined contribution” plan.

The current system has an unfunded liability of $1.4 billion. And the proposal would put money toward the current plan over several years to pay that down. Supporters say people who are on the defined benefit plan would have an option to convert to a defined contribution plan, but that would not be mandated.

Author(s): Dave Thompson

Publication Date: 25 April 2021

Publication Site: Prairie Public News

Editorial: Don’t further punish Florida state, local government retirees

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/opinion/editorials/2021/04/25/editorial-dont-further-punish-florida-state-local-government-retirees/7331804002/

Excerpt:

A closer look at the FRS shows that there is no problem to be fixed, leaving SB 84 little more than a vehicle to divert millions that would appreciate over time into alternative — and riskier — investment funds managed by Wall Street firms friendly to Republican politicians.

The Senate’s consternation over Florida’s retirement program might surprise people who actually know something about it. The state’s pension program still has a AAA credit rating and a very manageable liability relative to the size of Florida’s economy. Its funded ratio sits among the nation’s best. Its sizeable returns on investment pay the bulk of retirement benefits.

“I would say overall that we’re in a reasonably good place, and we’re heading in the right direction,” said Ash Williams, executive director and chief investment officer for the State Board of Administration, the body responsible for managing the state’s defined contribution program.

Author(s): Editorial board

Publication Date: 25 April 2021

Publication Site: Palm Beach Post