Fair Warning - Healthcare, billionnaire tax cuts, and the Laffer curve
Hello! It has been A Week.
A few random things to start:
BABY SNOW LEOPARDS (sound ON)
Elephants communicate to each other where humans will help them (old, but new to me!)
While extremely sleep-deprived on Friday, I saw this tweet with a badly-phrased headline and laughed deliriously at it (and the replies) for about five minutes. My American friend didn’t understand it, but I’m hoping it’s not lost on you…
On the home front
Northern Powerhouse 'undermined' by austerity, five years on - BBC News — www.bbc.co.uk
It’s been five years, so what has happened to the dream of the Northern Powerhouse? Well, the North West is second only to London in jobs growth, and the north has experienced “marginally higher” economic growth. However, more children are living in “poor” households, weekly pay growth is far behind the national average, and public transport is still abysmal.
The Brexit rift splitting the Conservative Party
This is interesting, on the “Brexit faultline” in the Conservative Party. I quite like the use of the triangular visualisation to illustrate how people have voted, and to show different factions that have formed across the House.
Brexit Anniversary: Is the U.K. Economy Worse Off?
“Forecasts of a major disaster had largely been proven wrong. Until now.” So says Bloomberg, based on its “Brexit Barometer”. I can’t help but feel like this is a bit of a strange perspective on it, since the forecasts were about the UK *not being inside the EU anymore*, and that is STILL yet to happen.
Matt Whittaker from the Resolution Foundation (a good Twitter follow, btw) wrote a thread about how the mortgage market in the UK has changed since the recession. To me, it mostly reads like positive change - it’s ridiculous that 20% of new mortgage advances were “non-evidenced” in 2007 (no proof of income). Bonkers.
There’s a seven percentage-point rise in the number of people in Wales who want Welsh independence. (Source)
Over the pond
One Trump Tax Cut Was Meant to Help the Poor. A Billionaire Ended Up Winning Big — www.propublica.org
I couldn’t believe when I read this. “Opportunity zones” are poorer tracts of land in need of investment, and you get a tax cut by developing there. Essentially, due to a tiny error in a shapefile, an area which is not poor was designated an opportunity zone, and now a billionaire is developing on the land while also getting a massive tax cut.
This is why accuracy in mapping matters!
Colorado’s Ski Towns Could Fix the High Cost of American Health Care
This is very interesting case study. Kind of like a union but for healthcare. In Colorado, there’s a group of employers who have banded together to negotiate prices directly with local hospitals. Yikes to this: “Employers often don’t have a good sense of what their health plans pay for services and how that compares with the market.”
Democratic Presidential candidates quiz: how well do you know them? - Washington Post
This is hilarious. There are 23 candidates, who on earth are they? Test your knowledge with this weird little quiz. Ummm, I’ve never heard of most of these people
Cities Start to Question an American Ideal: A House With a Yard on Every Lot - The New York Times
Some US cities are starting to look at changing single-family zoning rules (ie, each lot can only have one house for one family, not apartments etc) because of concerns over housing affordability. Lovely building-level maps in this.
Astonishing stat: “It is illegal on 75 percent of the residential land in many American cities to build anything other than a detached single-family home.”
Odds and ends
Hong Kong protests: Measuring the masses — graphics.reuters.com
How do you measure the size of a crowd? This is quite interesting on the discrepancy between estimates of crowd sizes from the police and from march organisers.
A chronicle of the anti-vaccination movement
This is an interesting walk-through of significant events in the anti-vax movement, from the publication (and repudiation, just one year later) of the study which suggested a link between MMR and autism. Told through scientific publications and mentions in the New York Times.
Can countries lower taxes and raise revenues?
While the Laffer curve exists in principle, the sweet spot is hard to find. I quite like this explanation of the Laffer curve and application of it to countries and their current tax rates. The US could stand to hike income tax rates, and Sweden might benefit from lowering income tax rates.
Town Twinning: Where our friends live
Nice look at which towns in Germany are twinned with other places, and where those places are. The furthest away is Wagga Wagga in Australia, and the ‘closest friend’ is France, where there are 2100 towns twinned with German towns.
Bad chart of the week
Thanks to Paul Bradshaw for pointing this out to me. Another dreadful chart from BBC Sport. I happen to think that this is a combination of a really bad/basic internal chart builder, and a lack of knowledge or even just thought as to why you might choose a donut chart over any other type of chart. (The answer is, of course, the percentages are not proportions so they don’t add up to 100%)
Well, that’s me done for another Sunday. Please share, forward, and tell friends about Fair Warning if you enjoyed this issue. Also, you can support Fair Warning on Patreon, or you can simply buy me a coffee to say thank you. See you next week!