Most of This Post Is Invisible December 4, 2012 ESTATE TAX Irwin Gerstein: “The right wingers are always talking about how getting money you haven’t earned is a disincentive to work and personal development. I wonder why they want to deny Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian the same character-building opportunities that the daughter of a Walmart cashier gets.” PUTTING THE “TEMPORARY” BACK IN (SOME) TAX CUTS Vince DeHart: “As the President stumps for his budget proposals, I’d like to see him remind everyone that the current tax rates were enacted under his predecessor as temporary. Avoiding discussion of the rich paying their fair share and the counter-arguments about redistributing wealth and penalizing success, he could present it something like this: Extending the middle-class tax rates is essential to continuing our economic recovery. Allowing the lower rates to expire for high incomes is essential to reducing the deficit — we can’t afford to extend those temporary cuts while we’re faced with the deficits they helped to create. So it’s not about class envy or partisan politics, it’s about the most effective way of simultaneously addressing both of our major economic challenges.” ☞ Exactly. And please note that, as currently envisioned, 100% of us — not 98% — will get a break on our first $250,000 ($200,000 if filing singly). All of us! It’s only on income above that amount that some of us will pay more. Just as we did back in the half century before George W. Bush when, for the most part, the economy boomed. WHAT’S INVISIBLE This charming TED talk mentions the four fundamental forces of nature (which I thought were Charisma, Compound Interest, Robin Williams, and Ketchup but are, in fact, Gravity, Electromagnetism, the Strong Force and the Weak Force), notes that there are twice as many genes in rice as in humans (and two more chromosomes in a potato than in yourself), and concludes with a quote from W.H. Auden: “We are here on Earth to help others. What the others are here for, I’ve NO idea.”