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Bansi Sharma
@bansisharma
, 4 tweets, 1 min read Read on Twitter
The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions -- Philadelphia Edition! (Part II)
It's amazing how many people are trying to solve the problem by restructuring the tax regimen, through geographic expansion or taxing at source (i.e. manufacturers), etc. ...
... As if the problem is how to increase tax revenue while solving for a health issue, or as if it is a given that all health problems must be addressed through taxation, or at the very least, as if taxing should be the weapon of choice for behavior modification.
I think our legislators need little help in figuring out new taxation schemes. What would be more productive, and intellectually more challenging, is to stretch our thinking on how to solve for this class of problems effectively without bringing taxation into the mix.
A follow-on thread (food for thought) regarding my views on "sin taxes":
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Bansi Sharma
@bansisharma
Senator, can you explain to the nation why your favorite Sweden doesn't have minimum wage laws? If you can't, I will, See the following tweet.
Did you know the coffee shop where @Ocasio2018 “got her start” had to close down because minimum wage hikes have put them out of business?
1. Increasing minimum wage results in low-skilled young workers either being laid off or never getting a first job to build their skills for a better paying job later. Democrats always find ways to exacerbate problems while pretending to solve them.
Read 7 tweets
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Bansi Sharma
@bansisharma
We get idealistic socialist blather from limousine liberals who have never ever met anyone who has actually lived under socialism, just because somebody told them about Sweden. In reality, they don't know much about Sweden either. 1/
And when confronted with actual Swedish policies (like no minimum wage laws, flat tax on all incomes above ~$45K, light regulation, etc.), they wouldn't support Swedish system either. They just want to use Sweden as some sort of a muse to avert their gaze from Venezuela. 2/x
And hear this. 100% of the children throughout Sweden get education vouchers. Children with special needs, such as learning disabilities, get a larger voucher to cover the additional costs of accommodating them. 1/
Read 4 tweets
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Bansi Sharma
@bansisharma
1. The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions -- Philadelphia Edition!

Nearly two years ago, Philadelphia passed a "soda tax" -- a hefty 1.5 cents per ounce or $1 tax on a typical two-liter bottle -- as a "sin tax" in the national war on obesity. Now the verdict is in.
2. Philadelphians didn’t cut calories as a result of the tax on sweetened drinks, nor did they shift towards drinking anything healthier. Instead, most of them just drove outside the city to buy the same old sodas from stores where they didn’t have to pay the tax.
3. Meanwhile the poorest in the city — those who would find it hardest to drive for many miles to buy soda — just ended up paying more in taxes.
Read 22 tweets

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Dr EM supports Meghan Murphy
@PankhurstEM
Transgender activist who sits on the board for Stonewall and thus may be partly responsible for safeguarding (i.e. lack of) policies committed serious omissions and had no regard for safeguarding when employing a paedophile as their election agent, twice. thetimes.co.uk/article/green-…
@LeaningLeft46 got in there first and put it better than me: 'Far from being poor at understanding safeguarding the Challenors understood it very well and used very clever and deliberate methods to avoid scrutiny'.
In my opinion this is a blatant case where Aimee used her trans status to silence critics and whistleblowers (Aimee created TERF blocker) and thereby manoeuvre a paedophile into a position of authority and access to children.
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Liz Fong-Jones
@lizthegrey
Final keynote block: @lxt of Mozilla on practical ethics and user data. #VelocityConf
@lxt And also ethics of experimentation!

"just collect data and figure out later how you'll use it" doesn't work any more. #VelocityConf
We used to be optimistic before we ruined everything.

Mozilla also used to not collect data, and only had data on number of downloads, but its market share went down because they weren't measuring user satisfaction and actual usage. #VelocityConf
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Jimmy Song (송재준)
@jimmysong
1/ This is a ridiculous assertion and I'm going to tweet-storm here to tell you exactly why.
2/ Acting non-scammy, that is, being ethical, is not a one-time decision. You don't act ethically once and then get a free pass for the rest of your life. That's not how it works.
3/ Being ethical is something you have to do over and over again. It's actually pretty easy to be ethical when things are easy and there really isn't much of a price to pay to act ethical.
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Eugene Gu, MD
@eugenegu
Facebook received a public backlash for violating our digital privacy rights. But 23andMe and Ancestry are literally having people to pay to submit their genetic information to them. The privacy violations down the road with advances in biotechnology are huge and inconceivable.
What first alarmed me was when the CEO of 23andMe offered to use the DNA of all the immigrant children to reunite them with their parents. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. You cannot subject those under duress to experimental medical techniques and save their data.
The solution is simple. @23andMe and @Ancestry should publicly promise they will destroy all genetic data given to them once services are complete. Why hold onto our most personal data? You could make clones with it someday. Discriminate for predisposing conditions. Horrifying.
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AdvancedRabbit-15 Ruski BunnyBot
@evil_bun_bun
I guess I'll try this again.

What I'm starting to see and hear around is leading me to believe that things are becoming dangerously polarized in this country.

A while back I sent out another threaded 'state of the US' type tweet storm to warn antifa/etc against further ...
... further violence. I was seeing more and more people fed up with violent behavior.

I see, quite often, people advocating for the removal of 2nd amendment rights, often pitched as 'common sense regulations'. Lately I've started to see this in regards to the first amendment...
... amendment, this is a dangerous path.

Much like I tried to warn when Senator Reid made judicial appointments simple majority (aka the nuclear option), all of the above are dangerous positions to hold.

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." leaps to mind here...
Read 11 tweets
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Anand V
@iam_anandv
A story that I worked for 4 months is out today.

thewire.in/213761/uidai-a…
It is weird story that is in the realm of bizarre.
1. A Pakistani Spy Mohammad Akthar gets an Aadhaar using fake feeder documents (PoI and PoA)
2. Gets caught and ejected as persona non grata.
3. For *One year*, @UIDAI did not cancel his Aadhaar, till I reported it.
4. Both @ceo_uidai and @drvikashshukla was sent the email, but as usual they did not respond and simply deleted the Aadhaar issued to Akhtar.
5. However *One year* after the spy was thrown out, there was LPG and Bank accounts linked to that Aadhaar. How?
6. Did he come back?
Read 9 tweets

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