AI Fails to Predict… The Future?
Allan Rolnick, CPA If you had “Russian uprising” and “Titanic-related disaster” on your 2023 bingo card, congratulations! You’re either a time traveler from the Edwardian Era or very, very prescient. But the news is full of stories that could never have happened 100 years ago. Crypto prices are inching back up, despite the fact that […]
Tax Whac-a-Mole
Allan Rolnick, CPA Our beloved internal revenue code currently runs 4,968 pages. That’s a lot of fingers and toes! But you can reduce the whole exercise to three simple steps. First, Washington writes the rules to ensure that Uncle Sam collects an “appropriate” amount of tax from the income we earn. (Reasonable people can disagree […]
Tax-Free Ninjas
Allan Rolnick, CP Colleges looking to compete for students have added new fields like cybersecurity, political campaign management, and even beer fermentation. (That last one seems a bit indulgent, given how many college students pursue rigorous self-study programs in malt beverages with no promise of academic credit at all.) Perhaps it shouldn’t surprise you, then, […]
What’s Tax Got to Do With It?
Allan Rolnick, CPA Dealing with bureaucracy is rarely easy and never fun. Back in the 1980s, future NBA Hall of Famer Karl Malone earned the nickname “the Mailman” because he delivered. Today, that would be a cruel joke. But nobody in government is as hard to deal with as the IRS. Erin Collins, the National […]
What’s Tax Got to Do With It?
Allan Rolnick, CPA Singer Tina Turner’s death last month at age 83 leaves an enormous hole in the genre of rock and roll. Turner cut her first record in 1958 on her way to becoming a star with husband Ike in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Then, at age 44, she launched a solo comeback. Tina […]
Flying Friendlier Skies
Allan Rolnick, CPA In 1748, Benjamin Franklin published an essay called “Advice to a Young Tradesman,” where he wrote, “Remember that time is money.” Back then, a trip from Philadelphia to New York could mean four or five days bouncing up and down over muddy dirt roads and three or four nights sharing straw beds […]
Action!
Allan Rolnick, CPA When you think of a labor strike, you probably picture a line of blue-collar workers carrying picket signs in front of a coal mine or factory. The Writers Guild of America, which represents 11,500 entertainment writers, hardly fits that mold. Yet the WGA strike, which began May 2, is already rippling through […]
Check Your Speed
Allan Rolnick, CPA Here in these United States, tax policy rests on the notion that tax rates should rise with income, so those who earn more pay a greater share of their income. In 2020, the top 1% of earners took home 22% of all income and paid 42% of all federal income tax. While […]
It May be Artificial, But Is It Intelligence?
Allan Rolnick, CPA Last month, an outfit modestly calling itself “The Future of Life Institute” released an open letter calling for all artificial intelligence labs to pause the development of new AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, the current gold standard. The group argues that if labs won’t do this voluntarily, “governments should step […]
Sing for Your Supper
Allan Rolnick, CPA Summer is coming, and for music fans across America that means stadium tours. Swifties went through several bear attacks to get tickets to her Eras tour shows. And on May 10, a singer we’ll call B hits the road for 41 stadiums in ten countries. The summer renaissance is her first tour […]