Fair Warning: Doing a Reverse Robin Hood
Morning!
So, my sister has a really cute dog called Henry and to say she spoils him is an understatement. This week she sent me this video saying she was thinking of getting it for him. I laughed so hard at it that I had to make it into a gif and share it with you, because…. Just look at it. Seriously.
ANYWAY, moving on…
On the home front
London had the smallest gender pay gap 20 years ago, and now has the largest. Also, the divide in the public sector has widened massively for part-time workers. (Full disclosure: I wrote this)
Experimental Home Office figures show that the government have refused nearly three-quarters of the claims for asylum from gay asylum seekers, according to Pink News:
London Mayor Sadiq Khan has suggested banning new fast food places being built within 400 metres of schools, apparently. Dan Cookson mapped schools, their 400m ‘limit’, and fast food outlets. It doesn’t make much sense until you zoom in really, so try your local area or somewhere in London.
This made me giggle: How many Boris buses does a Brexit divorce bill buy you?
And talking of Brexit buses, there’s this amazing/ridiculous game where you drive the bus over the value of the pound. This makes me miss Ampp3d and UsVsTh3m, really.
Over the pond
GOP senators passed their version of the long-awaited tax bill. It rather helpfully literally takes money from poorer people to pay for tax cuts to the richer. By 2027 around 13 million US taxpayers on $10,000 to $40,000 (~£7,500 — £30,000) will face tax increases. It’s a reverse Robin Hood, if you will:
That gif is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and I found their analysis really useful and interesting. Other key points from this piece are:
- The revenue boost from the tax bill won’t offset the cost of it
- 13 million more people will be without health insurance
- SALT (state and local tax) deductions will be repealed, squeezing state budgets
I’m not going to pretend I fully understand how legislation works in the US, but apparently the bill still isn’t fully passed yet, but it’s a hell of a lot closer…
On this, the NYT modelled 25,000 families across the spectrum and looked at how the tax changes would affect them.
The NYT also looked at Generation Grumpy, people who are around 50 and hate life. “The Grumpy Middle got to college around the time the drinking age was raised to 21 and were too young to enjoy all of the benefits of the booming 1980s economy… now they’ve reached their peak earning years, only to find they are no longer peak earning years.”
Elsewhere
For those of you who are sports-minded, you may be interested that Russia is in “the easiest modern World Cup in history” according to FiveThirtyEight. “Based on Elo ratings, Russia’s group with Uruguay, Egypt and Saudi Arabia has an average rating of 1720, which is 98 points worse than the average of all World Cup teams.” *Laughs forever*
It takes 88 weeks for Americans/English-speakers to learn languages like Arabic and Japanese, and 24–30 weeks to learn Spanish and Italian, according to the Foreign Service Institute. Interesting!
The Economist has started its Christmas Countdown, where you can find the most popular posts over the last year. I love it! (The first is “The world is more stable than the news suggests” which is a relief.)
Lastly… It’s a weird, likely unachievable ambition of mine to travel along the Silk Road at some point, so imagine my joy when I came across this lovely photo essay documenting just that.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! If you like this newsletter, please forward it to people, encourage friends to subscribe to it, or buy me a coffee to show your appreciation. I’m on Twitter @SophieWarnes.
