Taxing Tuesday! And Some Extra...

Taxes and Donuts and Bears, Oh My!

Okay, no bears.

While I will be announcing new STUMP posts on here, let’s take advantage of the different medium - and do some quick links!

Taxing Tuesday!

Every Tuesday, I do a tax-related roundup on STUMP. For 10 March 2020, I look at some Social Security tax proposals from Biden and Sanders. Also: my usual round-up of news links and tax tweets.

Check it out: Taxing Tuesday: Mmmmmm, Donuts... I Mean, Hmmmm, Biden and Sanders Tax Plans

And here’s an extra: my Social Security earnings history!

Coronavirus

Pandemics are nothing new, and governmental responses (good or bad) and individual responses (same) are interesting similar, even 350 years ago. Daniel Defoe recorded this in A Journal of the Plague Year (available on Project Gutenberg for free)

A Journal of the Plague Year Review by me:

An excerpt:

Defoe is essentially a journalist, taking in other people's stories and telling them really well, while folding in facts such as the mortality counts per week in different districts of London in 1665, the last large plague year in the city (and then the Great Fire was in 1666.... and it does get several mentions in the book.)

….

While our technology and medicine has progressed in 350 years, the kinds of responses to serious epidemics remains the same. Defoe especially points out how people get out of quarantine and how disease is spread well before people know they're infected.

Asymptomatic spreading of disease is one of the problems with containing COVID-19. If you happen to be in an unexpected quarantine situation, maybe you’d prefer to read something else right now, but if you’re not particularly stressed, you may find the book of interest.

MIT Tech Review: The best, and the worst, of the coronavirus dashboards

I have tended to read COVID-19 news from technical sites, as they may have some unconsidered perspectives. And they’re not necessarily driven by trying to gin up panic.

See y’all soon!