Alright, well welcome everyone. I'm thrilled to have you here for this incredibly popular talk, at least by RSVPs and regrets so either you're either here because you're super excited about it or the people who are not here wish that they were so nothing like inspiring fear of missing out among other people I would say, in terms of as far as Thursdays goes you're already winning. I'm Christy bear I'm the assistant director of the Center on finance law and policy. We hold these lunch talks every month as a chance for you have faculty to test ideas and to insight controversy to get comments from their accomplished colleagues across the university. One of the things about you event is that every sidewalk leads to a top 10 program. So we have don't we don't have just one good school we have a collection of really really good schools that make a strong team. And so these talks are a chance to kind of take advantage of that. The speaker today is Jim Heinz. He is the L heart right collegiate professor of law at the law school. He's the co director of the law and economics program at the law school. He is a Richard a this is a lot of names, the Richard a Musgrave collegiate professor of economics in the Department of Economics, the research director at the Office of tax policy research at the Ross School of business, and on top of all of those things a research at the National Bureau of economic research. So suffice it to say, Jim is like economist economist economist, and I would also add to this, that he might be clairvoyant, because this talk was booked before Congress made it so incredibly relevant. As a student, you can take one of his classes that would be impact economy, maybe international corporate tax taxation of individual income. He has been at the University of Michigan since 1997. A million years ago, he was at the department the US Department of Commerce. And what I like about Jim having had dinner with him a couple of times is that he is very good at explaining complicated things in a funny and interesting way. So the talk today is, he's going to talk about the controversial view. Here is say one. Here is say I never say that word right might say that the best way to pay for federal spending would be to raise taxes, and especially to tax the rich. So those of you who haven't been here in a little while. Welcome to along the way, ask questions by putting them in the chat, your, and you can interrupt in that way. You can also raise your hand using little icon thing. If you have a question that you're not sure if it's a good one. I'm happy to ask all of the questions that nobody's sure if they're good or not. Just send them to me only and I'll ask for you without attribution. So, to get started today. Jim, I think we're going to let you take it away. Thank you very much, Christie and thank you everybody for coming. I would like not to talk about and as Christie pointed out. Thank you to the US Congress which takes its lead from me and decided to put off resolving any budgetary or tax matters until after today's talk. I'd like to talk about government finance, and we can start with the question is government finance problem. I think everybody agrees that it is. It's not really a complicated problem in that somebody has to pay for government. Now, people want what government provides, but, you know, they usually don't want themselves to pay for it or because it's obviously costly and irksome to have to incur these costs. So, until recently, even in talking about these matters, I think there was a shared expectation that the country needs tax revenues and then we can talk about how best to get them. There is more controversy these days about the extent to which you really need to pay for government services currently. And I do want to start with the discussion of that, and then move to how best to pay for the expenses that we have. So, um, there's a. Okay, the really the need to pay for government comes from the proposition that the economy cannot provide something that it doesn't have. And that ultimately is where the need to pay for government comes from. So, the US government, the federal government has considerable expenditures. We pay for that with taxes and borrowing. The expenditures are projected to grow. Of course, we don't know for sure what the future will hold, but they are projected to grow in the future. And so our deficits. As a result, we will have to do a combination of things. And it can be any combination of these things. We have to maintain and increase tax collections, or we have to increase the level of borrowing, or we have to reduce expenditures. It's not complicated. It must. I mean, this is just the elements of accounting.  I will add quickly and I think this is generally conceded by liberals and conservatives that current deficit projections are unrealistically low. That is, when they make projections for the future. They embody very rosy assumptions. And in particular, often the way Congress drafts tax rules and spending rules. They involve automatic cuts of spending and or automatic tax increases in the future to sort of cover the costs of what's going on going forward, but nobody really expects those cuts and spending or those automatic tax increases to happen. So as a result, when you look at projections just keep in mind that from a deficit standpoint they're clearly unrealistic, they're too optimistic. This is the last 50 years this is from the Congressional Budget Office, other outfits have similar calculations. This is the last 50 years of federal government budget deficits. And the stuff below zero is a deficit. As you can see, the line has been, and this is measured as a percentage of GDP GDP is gross domestic product that's total national income. As you can see, almost all of the graph is below zero, meaning that the government has run deficits since 1971 they ran a small surplus in 1970 by the way. The only time when we haven't run deficits was right at the end of the Clinton administration, the late 1990s, second half of the 1990s, when basically a combination of tax increases and economic growth produced federal subsidies, federal surpluses. There have been big deficits, and in particular recently you can see on this picture that there are two big downward blips were actually living in the second of those two blips right now. The first was from the crash of the aftermath of the crash of 2008 when the US government basically bailed out the economy and did so with tax cuts and spending increases and that's where you get the, where you get the downward blip there. I mean the other, some of the tax cuts frankly are automatic because when the economy does badly, the government collects less revenue. And you can see the pandemic around 2021 of course, and you had massive government spending programs to try to combat the consequences of the pandemic. And so that's what you get. That's where that big downward blip is and you can see the dotted line. This is as of the summer that dotted line, but the projections going forward are that the government will not be running these massive deficits. And, you know, like we're currently doing, but that we will have significant deficits. It's just that it won't be quite like what we're currently doing. What we're currently doing just to be clear is the government deficit is 15% of total national income, meaning the amount that the government has to borrow is 15% of the total amount that the economy produces, which is, you know, enormous and clearly unsustainable. To have a budget like that for very long. I mean you can for a short period of time and that was the whole idea to have the government step in, do some things to help out, and then stop doing those things because you know they, the only way to continue doing that would be to have a tax increase to actually pay for all of that. And we didn't do that. Okay, if you look at the, again, this is the history of the last 50 years. And you can see, and this is again from the congressional budget office. And you can see where the deficits are coming from and you can kind of see the time pattern as well. So, there's a chronic gap between government expenditures which average about 20 or 21% of national income, and government revenues average between 17 and 18% of national income, they have to be equal for you not to be accumulating debt. The difference is made up for with borrowing that and so this is the source of government borrowing for the last 50 years. One of the things to notice. And again, if you look at the timeline there on the bottom is you've got the revenues that go down when the economy does poorly. And that would be around the crash of 2008. And again during the pandemic. And you have outlays that go up. Again, the most dramatic cases on this picture are in the crash of 2008 and the pandemic. But that's not the only time I mean there was there been there was a recession around 1991 1992 and you can see the outlays kind of went up then there was a big recession in the early 1980s. And you see the outlay is going up then as well. And that's because a certain amount of government spending kind of automatically goes up when the economy does badly because the government is stepping in to help people out. But it's expensive. Okay, by historic standards, at this point now we're in 2021 us governments accumulated a lot of debt. The current government debt to GDP ratio is about is at its historic high for the United States. It's about the same almost exactly the same as where we were right at the end of World War two. And in World War two, the government borrowed massively, you know, to pay for the war, in addition to having tax increases but the first question can you persist with debt to GDP ratio of this size or would you have to pay it off, you know, start to pay it down as we have in the past as we did after World War two, for example, or could you increase the amount of debt. These are good and interesting questions, I think. We could spend many hours on them and I have a suspicion that they will come up in the question and answer, but I'm for the moment going to proceed under the assumption that the government cannot just borrow its way out of spending out of its revenue needs that that there's no alternative to actually having taxes to finance expenditures. And I think realistically, that's true. Meaning, Heaven knows the US Congress has demonstrated over and again how willing it is to spend when it doesn't have taxes to pay for all of the spending. But I don't think that Congress will go in the direction of a massive increase in federal debt. And so then the question is, where are we going to get the money. Here's the federal debt, by the way, as you can see, and this is over the last 70 years. This is measured as a fraction of GDP. And as you can see, we're at a little bit over 100% right at the moment, which was the same as we were right at the end of World War two. After World War two, as you can see this federal debt went way down as a fraction of GDP. And the reason was the country paid it off. We had higher taxes back then and they use the taxes in part to pay down the federal debt from World War two. And it's kind of gone up and down and it went down, for example, at the end in the second half of the 1990s when there were, you know, the federal government was running surpluses. But it has gone up quite a bit recently, quite a bit in the last 15 years, and it's projected to go up further. And again, let me emphasize those projections are overly optimistic. I've pursued things such as an assumption that Medicare spending will automatically fall when the Medicare trust fund is exhausted, which it will be just in a few years. And that's an unrealistic assumption. I said, in my opinion, it's an undesirable thing, but whether it's desirable or not, if it were to happen. It's unrealistic. And so the deficits are going to get bigger. Okay. What should. What taxes do we need. And what will we do. Let's start with the taxes that the US government currently has the primary sources of revenue for the US government are personal income taxes, which is, and that includes by the way the tax taxes on the income of chapter S corporations and LLCs and partnerships and proprietorships, small business, you know, so called small businesses. Okay, so personal income taxes plus payroll taxes, the payroll taxes are your social security disability insurance and Medicare taxes. Those are the primary sources of federal revenue currently, there definitely are other taxes there's corporate income taxes, federal excise taxes, there's tariffs, but they don't add up to that much. And as I will mention again in a minute, the federal government does not have consumption taxes, we don't have a federal sales tax, we don't have a value added tax. The primary source of revenue is the personal income tax, and the payroll taxes. That's really different than other countries, because they're, they rely much more on consumption taxes, and social insurance taxes. So if you look at the percentage of GDP that the federal government raises with different taxes. This is, you know, the last 50 years of history again. This is from the congressional budget office individual income taxes are good chunk of the, you know, it's the biggest single source of revenue payroll taxes are also a very large source of revenue.  Of course, if you get paid, wage or salary, a certain amount is paid by you in payroll taxes and your employer matches it. And individuals of course have to pay income tax. Again, a lot of that's withheld automatically but you're still paying the tax. There are other components of revenue including corporate taxes and these, you know, excise taxes, but they kind of don't add up to that much, and actually never really have over the last 50 years. You have to go back a long time, or more than 50 years obviously before corporate taxes or tariffs or excise taxes constituted a big fraction of the country's revenues.  And, you know, the highest income big countries are OECD countries so that's the closest group you're going to get to a comparison group to the United States. If you look at their sources of revenue, you'll notice that individual taxes are only a quarter of the total revenues for the United States, that number is 49%. So, the interesting thing is if you compare America to other countries America relies much more on the personal income tax, much more. Our social insurance taxes are kind of similar to those of other countries. The big difference is that America's consumption taxes are much smaller consumption taxes are things like sales taxes and excise taxes. And here, the real story is that other countries have value added taxes whereas the United States does not. And that is a huge source of revenue for them. Other countries rely much less on the income tax than America does. And we'll have a little more say about that minute. There's good and bad in all of these choices, but it is a pronounced difference between the United States and other countries. So, the United States famously does not have a value added tax. Americans often are not even that familiar with what value added taxes are because we don't have one value added tax is really a sales tax. It's a sales tax kind of done well, but it's a sales tax that's what it is. And if you think sales tax you have it about 99% right. Why doesn't America have a value added tax. The line that goes around is that we don't have one because liberals don't like it, because it is not progressive in the way that an income tax is. And conservatives don't like it because it's too easy to raise money for government with a value added tax. And people continue along these lines that will get a value added tax when conservatives realize it's regressive and liberals realize you can it's easy to raise money for government with one of these things. But the fact is we don't have it currently. And it is not one of the current suite of options that anybody is really talking about in Washington. Biden didn't propose it, and nobody is talking about a value added tax as a way of funding any current spending initiatives or paying off the debt. There's realistically, if your revenue needs become dramatic enough countries have no choice, but to adopt a value added tax. It does work. It does raise money for government. And the reason it raises money for government is that people, the economy ultimately does have to spend, and when it spends you can tax it with a value added tax that is why countries have it. In particular countries with a lot of revenue needs are much more likely than others to have high value added taxes, because that is what pays for your revenue needs. It sort of makes sense, but you know it's worth thinking a little bit about this, which is value added taxes again are like sales taxes and sales taxes. Think about the Michigan 6% sales tax and ignore for the moment that it doesn't apply to absolutely everything you buy, but it applies to a lot of things. So we have a 6% sales tax in Michigan. The same tax rate whether you're rich or poor. Now of course the rich spend more than the poor so they pay more tax, more of the 6%. But still, with an income tax the tax rate goes up as your income rises with a sales tax. The tax rate does not go up as your purchases increase. And so it is not progressive in the way that an income taxes. The value added the value added tax alternative is not a progressive alternative progressive in the sense of having the rich pay a higher portion than the poor portion of their total income or expenditure than the poor. So, you just have to know what you're getting when you get a value added tax. My own view is that one consequence of rising debt levels is that the more this happens, the more the country will be driven ultimately to a value added tax and that people should just be aware of it. I do think it's a little too glib these days to say that we don't really need to pay for things and can borrow without thinking about what the borrowing will lead to ultimately down the road. And I'm quite convinced that if borrowing continues I mean you know there's no way borrowing could continue at the rate it's currently going because it's you know we're in a crisis and that's why we have so much debt being generated right now but we will get a value added tax as a result of unfunded spending binge if that's what the country does. And when you get a value added tax you will not be getting a progressive tax. So, if if the country just continues to borrow. That is what it leads to and that is what it has led to in other countries. And so, you have to ask yourself whether that's really the tax system that you want I think it in my opinion it isn't, but of course people differ on this. Okay, let's think about income inequality and the tax system. The wealth are not equally distributed in the United States and it seems like things have maybe gotten worse in modern times, and the United States has a progressive income tax system that imposes burdens, based on with the concept that you have a higher tax rate on the rich because they have a greater ability to pay than lower income people do. And you can think of as implicit redistribution and and the tax system could actually do quite a bit more of that. But my point is the way to do that is not by eliminating loopholes but instead by having more tax loopholes than we currently do. This is not by the way a popular opinion up to now, the things I've been saying most, I think tax people agree with now we're getting into things that they should agree with, but but haven't yet. The tax system that we have has certain preferences that are often known as tax expenditures. People who don't like them sometimes call them loopholes. I have a great definition so it's not a word that I use much but but it's a good, it's a good way to criticize implicitly criticize something that you don't like. There's a lot of partisan bickering over tax expenditures liberals point out that tax expenditures go mostly to the rich, which is absolutely correct. There are numbers in a minute but prior to the 20 set 2018. The tax change introduced during the Trump administration. About a third of taxpayers itemize their deductions and the higher income people were a lot more likely to itemize their deductions. As a result, got advantage got the tax advantage offered in the tax code for certain things such as mortgage interest deductions and state and local taxes. Liberals don't like the fact that these deductions or loopholes if you want to call them that. Conservatives don't like the, these tax deductions either, or that, you know, both sides say they don't like them. Why don't conservatives like them conservatives don't like them because it kind of smacks of social engineering. That is the state and local deduction, for example, is a more favorable tax provision if you live in a high tax state like New Jersey or California. Then if you live in a low tax state like Wyoming. And so, you know the state and local tax deduction encourages state and local government spending, and it rewards high tax states with a deduction, compared to not having one to compare to not having that deduction. Conservatives don't like that. That is indeed part of why the 2017 tax legislation limited the ability to claim that deduction did not eliminate the deduction but captive. To hear them talk. Neither liberals nor conservatives like these tax expenditures, they don't like loopholes liberals are going to pay for government by getting rid of loopholes. The liberals are going to get government out of your business by stopping this monkeying around with the tax system, and no longer having political preferences expressed through favorable tax treatment. Neither side wants these things, they say, yet interestingly, we have lots of them. And we have for a long time. The liberal government's under liberal governments. It just keeps happening. Why is that. And, you know, again, here's some evidence for you. This is the best data that we've got is still pre 2018 I'm afraid but you can see that these are itemized deductions by by taxpayer category. And as you can see, no surprise, the deductions go mostly to higher income taxpayers, the really big deductions are the interest paid deduction which is mortgage interest on your own or occupied house. The contributions deduction which is for charitable contributions, and the taxes paid deduction which is state and local income and property taxes. And anyway, those are the big items and they tend to be a lot bigger for high income people because no surprise they have a lot more mortgage interest they pay a lot more state and local tax and they do more charitable contributions to because they got more income and they do more of everything. Are there many of these tax expenditures yes. There's a lot of controversy about what counts as a tax expenditure and I can talk at some length about that, as can a lot of people, but they add up to a lot of money. If you add them together which are not really supposed to do, but people often do. So you will get editorials about once a year the New York Times for example will have an editorial saying they're $1.4 trillion a year is lost through loop holes. And this is what they're referring to is the state and local tax deduction the charitable contribution deduction and you know all of these other things. It's not quite true that if you eliminated all of them, you could cut tax all tax rates in half but but there's no doubt they add up to a lot. Where do they go. It's almost all for in terms of dollar amounts. It's almost all on the individual tax which is not surprising because the individual tax is most of the tax collections on the there are corporate tax expenditures, but they don't. They don't add up to anything close to what the individual side does. And if you take now post the 2017 tax bill and which introduced a lot of changes. The three largest categories are the biggest one always is the exclusion of employer sponsored health insurance. Again, there's some controversy about the exact magnitude of this but everybody agrees it is the biggest single loophole or tax expenditure. What is this this is if you have a job and you have health insurance through your employer, whatever portion of the compensation, you know let's say that your employer has sponsors a plan, and there's a subsidized health insurance that you can as a condition of your employment you're allowed to have, then the subsidy portion of it is not treated as taxable income to you. That's what this big number is. What does that do. It does two things. It means that employees don't have to pay tax on that portion of their compensation. And people who get this health insurance, you know it's a bigger benefit to them that it would be if this were taxed like your wage and salary and comments. So that's, that's huge. The other thing it does and this is part of the criticism is that it encourages companies to structure compensation that way, because when they, when you take a job. You get the benefit of that they can give you more health insurance and maybe less wage and salary, and it might be worth it to you. And in particular, on an after tax basis, it starts to look really attractive because it's not subject to tax. Professor can we let Jeremy ask interrupt you. Sure. Sorry, Jim, can I just clarify is this graph we're looking at here is this corporate tax expenditures. No, this, this is individual. How does this fit into your previous graph that showed that mortgage interest and charitable contributions were the primary sources of the individual tax expense. Sorry, I wasn't crystal clear that that was itemized deductions. And these are not interest and charitable contributions were the big itemized deductions which is only a component of this. So, you know, technically speaking, so for example, the reduced tax rate on dividends and long term capital gains. It used to be a deduction and now is just a reduced rate. So it's a little bit how you define these things but the sort of economic point is. These are, these are the biggest ticket items but there are other ticket items as well. The biggest one always is this exclusion of health insurance the next biggest is the retirement related stuff. And then that's followed pretty closely by the reduced rates on dividends and long term capital gains. The retirement stuff is, you know, there's a benefits of retirement plans. Again, if your employer has a plan where you work on the job and they make a defined contribution contribution like a 401k or 403b, or, or for that matter if you have a defined benefit plan. Anyway, a retirement plan through your job. You're not taxed currently on the benefits that you accrue by working, even though it's kind of you are sort of getting compensated because you're accruing these retirement benefits but you don't take them until you actually retire. And we don't tax them until you retire. And so that's a tax benefit to you and actually it adds up to a lot of money. The third piece on here is the reduced tax rate on capital gains and dividends, which are, you know, for shareholders, and they're subject to a maximum 20% rate currently. Congress is considering legislation that would increase that although heaven knows, you know, you need to kind of go hour to hour now with Congress to know where that's going to go but, but currently there is a significantly reduced rate on that. And if you, again, there's some controversy about how to categorize some of these things but you'll get some idea of what the big ticket items are here this is billions of dollars per year, and these are JCT estimates joint committee on taxation estimates. And there's, there's a lot of there's a lot of these things, these loopholes these deductions. There's a lot of money that is not being collected, the dollars not collected. That is because of these things. Okay, that's correct. So, an easy one is there's 73 billion point $1 billion of earned income credit. So that means that people got earned income tax credits of 73.1 billion dollars a year in 2018. So that means the tax benefits for defined benefit plans is 109 billion. And what that says is that if we didn't exclude your defined defined benefit plans are things like oh if you work for 20 years and you get half your salary, if we didn't exclude that, you would have to be taxed now on the retirement benefits that you accrue now, even though you're not going to retire for another 10 years.  And that's what that number is. Okay, who benefits from these tax expenditures from this failure to impose a more comprehensive income tax. And the answer is high income people is who benefits the liberal critique is certainly correct.  And part of the reason why they're getting most of the benefit of these tax loopholes tax deductions is that they also they pay most of the taxes. And so, even if the loopholes were kind of evenly distributed per dollar of what you're paying, it would kind of come out about the same in terms of the distribution is what we currently have. Exactly the same. And I think it is a fair critique that these these loopholes these deductions go heavily toward high income people. What are the advantages of eliminating these tax expenditures these loopholes, of course, a lot of the advocates of this say well we could get more revenue and that's absolutely correct if if nothing else changes. Another attribute is that you would reduce the distortions that may be attributable to some activities getting favorable treatment and thereby encouraging, you know, over encouraging people to do that kind of thing. And, and that it would produce a more equitable distribution of tax burdens because the burden would fall primarily on the rich. And I guess you wonder whether, I mean, if it's, if all of this is true, why it hasn't happened. One possibility is that we have terrible politics and we can't do a lot of smart things. Another possibility is maybe it's not quite as rosy as this makes it sound. Professor Stevenson, I bet you have an idea. Yeah, I just had to say that you didn't list my argument for why I hate tax expenditures. And it's because there's not transparent accountability on our spending programs I see them just like any kind of spending program and other spending programs have to be reauthorized year after year discretionary spending programs evaluated and reauthorized and tax expenditures don't. That was just one argument you skipped so I thought I'd raise it for you. No, no, you're, you're absolutely right that people sometimes raise that argument. And yeah, I mean, again, Betsy, we can go back and forth on this more. I think these days the tax expenditures are getting a lot of scrutiny. And I sometimes wonder about our spending programs, whether they're getting the proper scrutiny, but, but you're right it's a different way of doing things. I mean the other piece I would add, there's nothing intrinsic about these expenditures being permanent in the code or for that matter the tax law being permanent. Congress chooses to have a tax, and it's a fairly recent choice only done in the 1930s to have a tax law that does not itself have to be reenacted every year. We could, but they've chosen not to, and they could do the opposite with the spending, they could make the spending more prominent too if they wanted to but they don't want to. So, and there are reasons for that. But you're right. That is one of the arguments that is sometimes advanced. How should we think about equity. The tax system provide differentiation like a child tax credit, you take two families, one has children the other doesn't they both have the same pre tax income. And the question is, should we should they pay the same taxes. There's no coherent arguments on both sides of this question. I can tell you where I come down is that they should not pay the same taxes that we should adjust the tax system for families ability to pay and that includes the number of children. So I think, I think a child tax credit is a great idea. But, and that is one tax expenditure. Now they're not all of this ilk but there's one. There's huge variation. A lot of the tax expenditures have the effect of reducing the taxation of capital income of, you know, business income and income from savings and investments. There's the challenge there is that capital taxes like the tax on capital gains is imposed on activities that are highly responsive to taxation. And if there were no kind of separate regime no lower tax rate on that stuff. It would be very hard to have a top tax rate of say 50% with no adjustment for capital gains, because the capital gains would basically disappear. And then you get no revenue at all from raising from tax trying to tax that stuff. And all you would get is economic distortion. I believe that the real function of many tax preferences in fact most tax preferences is to permit the tax system to have higher rates. One of the critiques of when people critique the, these tax expenditures these loopholes for the benefits going to the rich. They're right, the benefits do go to the rich. The question is what we make of that. And a lot of the world is gone is to say, oh well therefore we should get rid of the loopholes, because the rich are not being currently taxed at the rate that they should be and the way to do it is to get rid of the loopholes. I share the view that the rich are not being taxed at the rate that they should be, but I say, keep the loopholes and raise the rates on the rich, because they are getting the loopholes. And since they're getting the loopholes, it'll be easier to raise the rates than if not. If you do that, that actually leads to a better tax system, then you would get by getting rid of the loopholes. I could go into the mortgage interest deduction. But I will, which is often the most criticized of the loopholes. I will summarize it this way. The mortgage interest deduction is because it allows you to have higher tax rates, what you need to do is follow through with the higher tax rates. What if we eliminated all the loopholes all the tax expenditures. I think you get something like a flat tax. And really, when people criticize the system that we have with all of these credits and deductions, implicitly, I believe you're criticizing a progressive tax system. If you want a progressive tax system, then you have to have these loopholes and deductions. It's a totally coherent argument to say, I don't want a progressive tax system. And again, we can have an argument about that. It's coherent to say, no, I want a flat tax, a dollar is a dollar and every dollar should be taxed the same. But if you don't feel that way, if you think the tax burdens should be adjusted for ability to pay, and that that means much higher tax rates on high income people. I think inevitably that pushes you to a highly differentiated system with favorable tax treatment of capital gains, but less favorable tax treatment of other stuff. And, and, and plenty of other credits and deductions. How do taxpayers feel taxpayers say they want the system to be simple, but actually most of the tax breaks that are out there are quite popular. I think what has happened is the government has responded to, to, to what people, in fact, want, and that is what has produced the system that we have. What we do is we should do more of it. That is, we should expand, if anything, the deductions and credits I would completely uncap the state and local tax deduction I think that was a terrible mistake in the 2017 bill. I hope Congress takes away the $10,000 cap, but I would raise the rates at the same time. Here's how you're supposed. Here's how you should get the money that you need, raise the rates. If you raise them at the top, you also need to raise them, not at the tippy top, but you know for people 100,000 to 400,000 of income as well, because we need money, and the way to get it is with higher rates. Where does it leave us. I think there are proposals to finance government with getting rid of these loopholes, I think they're mistake. The worry is that if we're not smart about what we do with taxes we will be pressed without even knowing that it's happening into a situation where you have to adopt flat rate type taxes like social insurance taxes and value added taxes, and those folks are not progressive with an income tax you actually have a chance of having a progressive system, but, but you have to do it smartly. Thank you. Okay. So we went down and cited controversy before we start asking questions can we all have a moment to acknowledge Jim Heinz turn on your video or do a little applause or something. Thank you for bringing this to us this thought provoking provoking argument. Who wants to start with questions. Okay, go ahead Jeremy. I think one of the politics of this gym and how it affects people and how that may affect the potential for adoption I think, you know, one of the trade offs is people see higher rates and they can intuitively feel how that's going to affect them when they're trying to do their taxes. But when you're talking about deductions and expenditures, it requires more complicated mental math and it may be less obvious how an individual's tax burden will be affected. So I'm just skeptical about the argument of oh we should adopt higher rates, and more expenditures, because I feel like that that's unlikely to be to be widely acceptable. So people are going to only see the higher rates and viscerally resistant. So I, how do you sell this idea. If people perceive it as potentially increasing their own tax burden. I have a question. I mean, again, there is a certain zero sum aspect to all of this in that it can't be that anyone plan causes everyone to pay more because it's sort of a closed system so politically, how does this work. Look, politically, some of the things that are most attractive to politicians and to voters are the tax breaks. You know, are things like the charitable contribution deduction, or the state and local tax deduction, and some of them I think are easy cells that is. For example, Congress could say well we're going to reinstate a complete state and local tax deduction, but pay for it with higher rates. Will they actually do that. We'll see. I mean, look, I will say it is hard. If if a politician campaigns on a promise that no one with an income under 400,000 will pay any more tax, you've tightly constrained what you can possibly do. And, you know that you kind of put yourself into an impossible box that way. And so that's kind of the situation that we're in right at the moment so I look I completely agree. They run for office, they take office, and the first thing they do is they increase the top tax rate America to 55%.  The top tax rate should be 55%. By the way, but but I get that that's hard. The response can be. Yeah, I'm, I'm like, trying to address our long run funding needs.  Medicare Part D is actually going to get some funding. And, you know, which is true. And, ultimately, there's kind of been a conspiracy of silence by both Republicans and Democrats about government finance going forward, where nobody wants to acknowledge the social security and Medicare funding shortfalls, and kind of will continue not to acknowledge them until I assume the crisis hits, but it's not a great way to run things. But that's what I would hope they would do. Hi, Jim. Thanks for the talk. There's sort of one question and one comment. What you showed us that the tax incidence is very different between OECD in the US. But compared to many OECD countries, my impression is that they don't all have state taxes and local taxes as much maybe I'm wrong. So once you took the state taxes into account, you know, sales taxes imposed and real estate taxes, how does the distribution from the US look from the OECD? Is it as different as you portrayed it? Yeah, I didn't think it's a great question and I wasn't clear when I presented it. No, it basically is as I portrayed it. I, you know, some of the numbers I was talking about included the state and local taxes. And the United States, half of our money comes from income taxes, and that in the OECD, it's, it's 24%. So that's really the biggest difference. That plus, you know, it's true, states have sales taxes like Michigan has 6% sales tax, but this is nothing like the average VAT rate around the world. So there really is a big difference. You know, the sort of politics of the regret, people in Europe and Canada and other places understand that these value-edited taxes are not progressive. Their argument is, well, you can have a flat rate tax like that and it funds progressive government expenditures, you know, expenditures that kind of do a better job of helping out disadvantaged people. And that is, that is totally one way to go, although it is more interventionist, you know, than the kind of what has been the practice in America. And the comment is, I mean, this is not necessarily a well-thought-out comment, but it's sort of in response to Jeremy's question. A high sales tax, and if you collect revenues through that or value-edited tax or what have you, does make the tax code simpler for every individual. So there is a trade-off between inefficiency and simplicity too. You're absolutely right. Professor Carrot. But unmute and start over though. So okay, a couple of quick things. One, just on the last comment, the tax system is enormously complicated if you have a lot of money. It's actually pretty simple if you don't. And so, and that's the case for, you know, you buy turbo tax and it does an okay job. Anyhow, that's actually not the main point I want to make. Two other points. One, so Jim, the problem you want to solve is, so you're convinced that we don't raise enough money. So how do we raise more money? We're going to actually we're going to have some kind of revenue target. We haven't quite figured out what it is, just how tax and spend liberal we are today, but considerably more money. And then if you're going to do that, you say, well, actually, you might, you know, if we're going to get more money in a reasonable way, that should involve raising the rates, and we should be willing to sort of engage in bargains with the lobbyists, in this tax expenditure by tax expenditure, in order to get an overall more effective system. But the thing that you need to believe is that there's political will or social will or whatever it might be to actually believe that raising revenue a lot is an important thing to do. And as you have pointed out several times and several different angles, finding the people who will run for office to say that isn't so easy. Third, third point is a point that I like to make him that nobody makes any more but I remember having this conversation with you know the likes of Herb Stein and Charlie Schultz back in the day. And certainly your namesake bus grant. The state and local deduction is actually its history is that it supports federalism right it allows different levels of government to be able to essentially tax and spend at their net rate, instead of a gross one in a country where we actually believe that we are a sovereign state that just makes a lot of sense in terms of political philosophy, and then we can get the economics right. I completely agree with you and look, there are a lot of reasons why I think it was just a mistake to cap that state and local deduction. Yeah, nobody wants to pay the bills I agree with that I just wish that people thought about the consequences of that. I mean it's simply not true that you can not pay your bills forever that that that cannot be true. And so I agree with that too. But if you acknowledge that, then what you're really doing is you're teeing up a different world going forward by not paying your bills today. And people should just think about what it is they're doing. If you want to ask your question you want me to ask for you. I'll ask for you, because you're still on mute. I was once wondering why can't we get the payroll tax rate for Social Security and Medicare increased. Yeah, I would say try it, and then you'll see why you can't. Yes, it is a little known fact that I was on the Social Security Technical Advisory Commission 31 years ago. I know I was a child and I was a funding shortfall then it has come to pass. And the last time the country addressed anything about Social Security was in 1983. And back then that's that's when they extended the retirement age, you know pushed it out, phased it out over two years, which is a benefit cut. What it is is a benefit cut. There's a big problem right now with the funding. And there are two ways to address it, you could have a tax increase, or you could have a benefit cut, or you could do a combination of the two. But there's no, there's no fourth alternative. That's it. It's either you cut the benefits, or you raise the taxes, or you do some of both. That's it. If the question is, you know the look the conservatives want to cut the benefits. I mean they don't say I want to cut the benefits but that's that and the liberals want to raise the taxes. I mean I'm not everybody but pretty much. And so then where do you go on that reasonable mind, you know they're coherent arguments on both sides of this question I have my own take, which may not be different from a lot of other peoples but but here's what I do know. It's really hard to do for the same reason that other big problems are hard to do, which is the cost is kind of distant. The pain of addressing the problem is immediate. So it is by far the easiest thing in the world, not only to kick the can down the road but to deny that there is a problem. And it's just, it's just not true. It's, you know, not a problem, but the pain is immediate the game is comes later, but it's just it's a bad way to run things. Okay, last question I know we're at time. I'm James is wondering do you've thoughts about the administrative ability of having more tax expenditures. Look, it's potentially a problem and I think that limits how many you can have so your point is you asked it nicely but your point is well taken that we have to worry about administrative ability, no doubt about it. I do think that the income, if you're going to have a progressive income tax, it actually has to have these things that that is simply, you know, you can't have a progressive system that is with rates that rise, unless you've also got these tax expenditures and and so if you don't want the tax expenditures, you have to scale back on the progressivity of the system. That's the cost, but I agree if you do have the tax expenditures you've got problems of administration. Perfect. Thanks very much for being here. Jim is writing a book. And so if you have burning questions that you didn't get a chance to ask Kelly or Tracy will one of you drop his email into the chat please, he would love to hear from you via email. Thank you to Tracy van dozen and for Kelly will often for handling the tech on the background today. Thank you again Jim for inciting controversy everywhere you go. This has been really fun. Thanks to all of you. Next month, our speaker will be Jerry Davis from the Ross School of Business and the topic will be about taming


keep moving eventually you'll bump into your tribe, the people who get you. And the one of the ways you know when you found your new people is that you stop explaining yourself.


Accident pictures of James Ney worshiper at ECG Church by Prophet Shepard Boucherie. It is with great sadness that I announce the sudden passing on of our great worshiper, James Ney who died early this morning in a car accident. I learned that James along with my other two sons Vestankamba and BrainGlant were traveling in a vehicle that collided with a truck and in the process overturned and claimed the life of all three of them, said Prophet Shepard Boucherie in a statement. Ney, a singer, songwriter, producer and businessman from Malawi, is well known for being a singer in the Enlightened Christian Gathering Church. E, along with two other people, were killed on impact when a truck and a sedan collided head on along the N1 north near the waybridge at around 4 o'clock this morning, Tuesday. Boucherie says Ney touched the hearts of so many and was known for worshiping God relentlessly. You were a great part of ensuring that souls were one to Christ. Your dedication, commitment, submission, and loyalty to God have left an example through which millions will follow, he added. The cause of this accident is not clear at this stage but a case of culpable homicide is being investigated, police spokesperson, C.O.L. Mochi and Goipi said. Details of the funeral and arrangements will be announced soon, Boucherie concluded.


for the first time. We've got a trilingual movie workshop today. So enjoy it. I'll pass it over to you now David. Hi everyone. Thank you Peter. Welcome. We're going to have a great time today. I think we will certainly have some emotions flushed up from the unconscious mind. Sometimes I show movies that are very metaphysical. Sometimes they're pretty seemingly extreme and they're also mind watchers, flushers of deep emotions. I wouldn't say today's movie has any overt metaphysical meaning. It's not you'll go away and go, wow, what a spiritual movie David should today. But actually it is very, very helpful for forgiveness, for cleaning the mind. And we had the polls this week coming in and I'll read the topics of our combined poll, both the English poll and the Spanish poll, so you can have an idea of the themes that we're going to be looking at today for our healing. I think this is going to be such an experience today that I feel by the end of the day you're not going to think of yourself in the same way. This is kind of like a roto-ruder. We're just going to expose and vacuum a lot of ego beliefs that are so tightly protected and so buried in the unconscious mind and so kept hidden that you may notice yourself reacting to some of the scenes and to some of the words and things that you see in this movie. This is based on the events of maybe about five years ago. So these are events that took place and the movie is going to be giving us a glimpse at some events that took place five years ago, but I think they're very relevant for us, for our forgiveness and coming to peace of mind. So our combined poll coming in at number one was unwinding from people pleasing. I noticed even last week when I showed the devil's advocate that I stopped the movie in the scene where the Charlize Theron Marianne was putting green paint, rolling green paint on the wall and I stopped it and talked a little bit about people pleasing and I noticed how that struck a chord and that's because people pleasing is accepted as natural and normal in this world. It's actually a defense mechanism that was made up by the ego to keep you from knowing who you are and yet the ego made up the whole world and all the people so that the identity or the self-concept, this false self-concept that God didn't create would be accepted as a replacement for true nature of the Christ, of a pure spirit, of pure love. So this people pleasing is an addiction, it is an obsession, it is the defense against the truth. There's absolutely nothing helpful about it, it's part of it. It comes from a death wish and whenever you're people pleasing, all it's doing is reinforcing your identity as a body. It's a body identification defense mechanism that is so accepted that when you start to look at the extent of it with mom and dad and brothers and sisters and children, with co-workers, with bosses, with everything in this world of time and space, even with pets like the bodies of the pets, those are part of the self-concept. Everything that's perceived is part of the self-concept. Even the stars, the galaxies are part of the self-concept. The trees, the mountains, the oceans, the rivers, everything perceived is part of a denial of the truth. It's, as Jesus says in the workbook, that the world was made as an attack upon God, a place where God can enter not. And we're going to look at the full extent of that misidentity because the core of that is a body identification. And then on top of the body identification, there's a gender identification being identified as a man or a woman, being identified with masculine traits or feminine traits and characteristics. And then it just goes on from there, projecting the world and the environment and everything is tied into this self-concept. But the first in the combined poll is unwinding from people pleasing. And I happen to think this is one of the best movies you will ever see that will help you unwind from people pleasing. I mean, this is like a scale of 1 to 10. This is an 11. This is so good for getting at people pleasing. The second in the poll, second theme was personal strength versus real strength. You know, when we talk about powerful people, most of the time people are talking about their personality or that they have a lot of money or that they have a strong presence, a dominating presence. When you talk about personal strength versus real strength, a lot of times people think of Olympic athletes as having personal strength or people that are famous or very, very, they have high status and so on and so forth. People associate a lot of things with personal strength and that's always egoic. There is no such thing as personal strength because the ego made the personal and strength is of God. The people get into arguments about power. I always just say, well, all power is of God, meaning all power is of spirit or of love. Love is powerful because it's the only law there is. It's the law of heaven and there is no other. There is no opposite to love. So love is all powerful. God is all powerful and everything that goes for power in this world is a distortion and it's just a projection of the ego. So when we talk about real strength, we're talking about the strength of following the Holy Spirit and Jesus because that's where you find your happiness, your joy, your peace and any sense of, if I say the mind is powerful, I'm talking about the divine mind. I'm not talking about the mind that believes in the ego. That's another trick. Actually, that's a way to attempt to weaken the mind by not recognizing the mind's natural state as divine, as created by God. The third one is the authority problem and I would say anything at all that you are upset with or perceive as challenging or difficult in this world, whether it's poverty or it's fame or it's all the versions of guilt, status, anything that you find challenging in this world is because of one belief, the belief that you're something that you're not.  Your true reality is spirit. You live in a state of grace forever because your reality is only spirit and the authority problem is the belief that you can separate from your source, separate from God and make up an identity that's unlike the real identity, Christ. Believe me, the body identity is a sorry substitute for the glory of God and the glory of Christ. It's not even close. There is nothing valuable about the body per se. We could say that the ego made it so the Holy Spirit can use it as a communication device and in that sense you could say it has temporary value as a communication device but then as you go much deeper you start to realize communication is actually beyond words and it's beyond the body entirely and that that's just, it's like you use a knife and a fork and a spoon to eat but you don't have to identify being a spoon. You guys watch The Matrix, right? There is no spoon. That was the teaching of The Matrix. The little boy when Neo's like what does it mean? There is no spoon. What is truth? There is no spoon. Now you may use the spoon to eat while you identify with the body but the whole point is to forgive the world and wake up and there is no spoon in heaven. You don't need a spoon. There's no need for food. There's no body to feed in heaven. So the body is just a useful device that can be used by the Holy Spirit and the authority problem is the belief that the body is valuable in and of itself. That the body has some kind of seeming intrinsic value. Ken's show I think on Thursday it was above the battleground and basically it was a beautiful quote in there that you know anything that you invest in the body or you believe you can still get through the body is murder. That's what it is. We're not used to thinking of murder in terms of using a body to get anything but actually to Jesus he's saying yeah all your difficulties are coming from a body identification. If you had spirit identification if you were identified with the I am presence that's prior to time you would see that all is love all is glory that there are no problems. So all perceived problems in time and space are generated from the authority problem. One belief the belief that I can make myself any way I want to be in time and space that's the authority problem and the solution to the authority problem is the atonement which is I accept the correction that I am as God created me I can never change that happily I'm as God created me and I would not wish to be something else other than what God created me as because that's where my happiness is my happiness is in heaven my happiness is knowing who my source is my happiness is love my happiness is joy but this is spirit identification. I think in the Bible Jesus said you know that which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. There it was 2,000 years ago all we need is one sentence from Jesus and you can ride that carpet all the way back to the kingdom of heaven from one little red red letter a sentence that which is born of the flesh is flesh that which is born of the spirit is spirit. St. Francis used that too in the 1200s and then he followed it up with I now am born again mainly saying I'm going for the spirit I'm going for God I'm not going for the flesh. So the authority problem is the root of everything even you know even some of you who color your hair know that if you color your hair sometimes if you get down there you see the roots are still the color that sometimes the coloring doesn't go all the way to the roots oh I got some roots going on there I don't know anything about coloring hair I just it's enough for me to shave it off but but that the root of every single difficulty is the authority problem make no mistake it's you're never upset at any person place or thing you're never upset at the environment for the reason you believe it's just the belief that you can be something that you're not is very disturbing but it's it's pushed out of awareness you know most people don't wake up in the morning and open their eyes and go oh god there's still a body damn you know it's just so accepted as an identity woke up get out of bed drank comb across my head the Beatles you know it's or it's just another day it's so accepted it's so accepted it's it's the authority problem but it's so ingrained and accepted that if you just begin to question it you are on the road to heaven just through the beginning of questioning the belief in the body your that your identity is a body you are on a fast track to heaven but how many people wake up in the morning and think I am not a body how many wake up and think I am not a man or I'm not a woman how many wake up and think I have zero masculine qualities and traits and zero feminine I'm not even androgynous I can't pull from both because I'm none of them I'm I am a spirit I am spirit you see how radical this is it goes has to go way beyond the body identity and everything associated with the body and and this movie is really good at getting at gender identity it's actually quite a good movie for that because you're going to be watching these events that occurred back starting around we'll say 2016 is basically the time when these these events are occurring and when you watch it just notice your emotions coming up because whatever you're reacting to from this movie it just is giving you an inroads into what you believe about yourself that's what this movie is for it's a good movie for showing you what you believe about yourself next one coming in number four undoing male female roles there it is that's that's our theme and that's that is going to be a huge opportunity today to watch this movie and undo male and female roles and the last one is guilt around sexual thoughts and desires that actually came in fourth I think an English poll and and last in the Spanish poll but but sexual thoughts and desires will say are distorted miracle impulses and so if you're attracted to the body you will also be repulsed by the body if you believe the body can be attractive it's just remember it's a learning device so it's it's actually the Holy Spirit is just a neutral learning device but if you believe it can be attractive or repulsive those are just two sides of the ego's judgments about the body the body the ego actually hates the body because even though it made the body it now considers the body is not a good enough home for it talk about never satisfied I can't get no satisfaction it made the body and now it is it hates the body because it's not good enough for it it thinks it deserves a better home it breaks down seems to grow old get sick and die and he goes like come on I could you know a mobile home's better than this something you know it's it it is not too happy with that and then when the mind sleeping mind says but wait a minute I thought you you made it to help me and to protect me and then the ego just pushes the question out of awareness it can't talk about hypocrisy it has no no answer when the mind says but you said it would protect me and it's not protecting me very well yeah push the question out of awareness into the unconscious mind don't even ask that the ego doesn't want that one to even hear that question again so I thought first of all I thought when I watched this movie I said what what are some of the themes that come up in this movie when I watch this movie what are some of the topics and themes I think these can be really helpful inroads to forgiveness because if I read some of these off I know you're going to say at some point you had an issue with some of these I wrote down I wrote down womanizing sexism greed pride stereotyping hypocrisy cover up lies abuse of power and news as big business and the last one I put down I just couldn't resist it's it's NDA does anybody know what an NDA is a lot of times somebody usually knows but most of the times when people are into spirituality they don't know what an NDA is it's a legal term non-disclosure agreement they're very popular in big organizations you get hired by an organization you have to sign an NDA basically you can't say anything bad about the organization you have to agree that you're muzzled talk about no private thoughts I thought well that's a that's like a representation of of the desire for thoughts to stay private and to perpetuate secrets NDA because in this movie you'll find that these news news journalists that are hired by this news company you know they are facing the same emotions that all humans go through but but when you go on and you sign your contract to get paid it's all about getting paid you have to sign an NDA these are also I think with the last administration that was in the United States they there was NDA agreements all over the place everybody who got hired had to sign an NDA this is kind of a business corporate way of trying to protect itself from all these things I just mentioned it's trying to cover itself to make sure the thoughts don't get out and so that that generates a whole world of secrecy and NDAs are part of that I happened to just that came across my mind today NDA I said yeah I said probably nobody and most people don't even know what it means Eric was like not disclosure agreement can you imagine working in a place where you have a non disclosure agreement actually Jesus wants you to have an FDA a full disclosure agreement and believe me this movie will give you an FDA today that's also Food and Drug Administration but believe that out this is a Jesus Christ full disclosure agreement when you agree to listen to the Holy Spirit you agree to bring all the unconscious hidden beliefs all the hidden emotions all the hidden thoughts to awareness to the light so they will disappear in the light but the ego is all about privacy and secrets and that's why if any of you go to work for somebody and they say oh you have to sign an NDA yeah I would walk out the door I don't I don't particularly like the idea of non disclosure agreements I'm all for complete exposure let's be transparent let's be authentic let's be open how else are we going to heal we don't need to be hiding and protecting things because who are we protecting them from you know are we thinking we're going to hide them from the Holy Spirit and keep ourselves separate from the light that that's not really a good motive for anything secrets or anything like that so a little bit of context I mentioned greed and money the context of this movie is that in this day of corporations owning many things there there are people who who own news outlets imagine you know it's one thing to own a book publishing company where you can print the kind of ideas and words you want on the books it's a way of distributing I think in some of the the countries of the world it's called propaganda if you want to influence people you you either take a plane and you drop little leaflets but now people are pretty much onto it like yeah what are you trying to convince me of now you're dropping leaflets from planes but most people know that using Facebook using social media using news media outlets that's a way of sharing ideas well the ego also likes to share its ideas that's why we have NDAs that's why there are all these laws of privacy and protection there are secrets that different organizations around the world different governments try to hide you know we have in the United States CIA central intelligence agency I think intelligence is not the word I would use for spying on people that I would use another word maybe like stupidity but we'll say CIA you know it's greatly feared and I guess if you go to Russia it's KGB you know there's different every country's got their own little spy agencies they call intelligence but they're basically spying on each other and with news media we have an interesting day where we've had an explosion ever since the industrial revolution and then we've had the information explosion computers now we have devices smartphones tablets computers and you have news agencies that are owned by people that are very very very wealthy so in this movie there's a guy he's originally born in Australia but his name is Rupert Murdoch and he's an Australian born American media muggle they call him Muggle he's he owns this company called News Corp and he's the owner of hundreds of local national and international publishing outlets around the world he has two sons okay it's a dynasty it's a publishing dynasty and they own one of the major uh news media outlets in in the United States Fox so they basically can control the content that they put on their news because the owners of it they can they can put publish anything they want from politics to their perspective on food to anything that you can imagine that's what happens when you have a news media that's basically owned by a conglomerate and they basically can share the ideas that they want it's no different from anything else I mean if you if you have a website you can publish the ideas that you want to publish if you have a news agency you can publish that way you can do it through podcasts we have a couple new podcasts out now you can do it in many many different ways but when you it gets into a lot of money then it's a business and I don't know if you've noticed that but the purpose of a business is to make more money it's not so interested in the well-being and peace of mind of everyone on the planet it's basically to make more money and as they say sex sells drama sells wild sensational stories sell and so if you want to be a successful news media uh corporation you you the ego will use the body and the world and the events of the world to make more some of you have heard me talk about this more idea jesus says in the beyond idle section of a course of miracles what is an idle do you think you know an idle is for more of something it does not matter more of what so when the motive in this world is for more more anything more fill in the blank you know it's coming from the ego because the present moment is all that there is it's the gateway to eternity it's the gateway to to spirit to happiness to love the present moment isn't more of anything the present moment has to be uncovered it has to it has to be exposed as reality is the gateway to eternity and everything of linear time has this more motive and that's why when i read off a few of these things i think you can see how they're related to uh linear time uh womanizing it's in linear time that's a problem in heaven no sexism no problem in heaven in time it's a mess greed heaven there is no greed but linear time there's greed that's where the more comes in more more more personal power more money more sex appeal more skills more abilities stereotyping hypocrisy cover-ups lies abusive power news as big business you can see all of these are basically versions of the authority problem of the belief that you can make yourself into something that you're not really that makes it really simple there's nothing more simple than the authority problem you know really that once that is you accept the correction for that then that's that's heaven you're back you're back in heaven there's nothing blocking you nothing can block you from love if unless you want to be the author of yourself unless you want to make an identity different than the one god created so let's get to some specifics they there are a cast of actors and actresses in this this is an ensemble cast of of amazing actors and actresses charlie sarone nicole kittman margo robbie kate mckinnon that's top of the line and then the there's john lithgow plays the the man who is the the chairman the ceo and chairman of fox news fox television station in 20th century fox and his name is roger ailes so roger ailes is going to be a key person because he has he's a media consultant he shapes perceptions believes he can shape perceptions through influence of of money power and control and so he is the the the head the the chairman of fox news fox television 20th century again robert murdoch is the owner of of many many news outlets and distributions around the world and this is fox so roger ailes is to give you a context he's the one who's the executive the ceo then you have the newscasters in this and they are we could say to the world standards blonde and beautiful megan kelly gretchen carlsson keila and jess it's just the name for charlie sarone nicole kittman margo robbie and kate mckinnon and let's talk a little bit more about roger roger is he's such a good media producer a media consultant that he's he's consulted with richard nixon the press ronald reagan george bush donald trump during this movie prior to uh trump you know running for president there was roger helping him consult on his image he's an image maker he he uses money and seeming power and influence in this world to shape images to to build the image of politicians and those were four presidents uh he also rudy juliani who's who worked for trump he was the mayor of new york city yeah roger shaped his his image too to help him become elected the mayor of new york city so here we have a master image maker an image shaper and you can see all of the components of the ego there the fame the money the greed the whatever makes the corporation money and so we have a situation where roger likes to hire beautiful women that's going to make money because he wants the ratings to be the highest and he wants to make the most money making news that he can and so he hires blonde beautiful women and he not only hires them but he he tells them how they can dress they can't wear pants they have to wear skirts and then one of the these news reporters the men who are co-anchors with her start to joke their sexism jokes their stereotype they call her the skirt imagine being on the air broadcasting to millions of people and having your co-workers say oh she's a skirt talk about objectifying women down to a skirt being called a skirt on television national television so this we're going to look at extreme forms of of sexism he also he starts to he's trying to figure out how to raise the ratings so he gets them to wear short skirts he can't wear pants and then he says let's get glass desk see through desks so that they can film these women broadcasting the news with see clear glass desk and in their skirts and that's just the beginning of it roger that's just a start i mean roger he thinks i'm a media consultant so i can shape the images and and i'm hired to make money so he's going to use sexuality to sell the news to keep the ratings up and and then when they get hired they have dress code just no pants skirts and then they have the glass desk and then they have to sign what non disclosure agreements so he hires them to look pretty and then muzzles them from sharing any of their emotions and that's just the beginning now this is these are actual events that occurred and in a news broadcasting corporation based in in new york city with a high rise and they have entire floors of the high rise you know they talk about the china and the ming dynasty and malatang and and all the russian czars and everything this is a modern day czar kind of system in a high rise in new york city that's broadcasting to millions of people and i'm just giving you the tip of the iceberg when you get inside of this little menagerie it is a secrecy privacy it's people pleasing to the max you know i've been practicing with our community for the last 20 years 20 25 years no private thoughts and no people pleasing well in case some of you who do write in a lot and say i still don't get what you mean by no private thoughts and no people pleasing well we'll give you a contrast if you don't understand what people pleasing is because this is people pleasing laid on so thick that it's like if you were making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich it's just the peanut butter is so thick you can't even see the jelly you don't even know that there's jelly there it's just a hunk of inches of peanut butter and this just shows that this is the egos world all of this is unreal because all of us just generated by the ego but the reason we're watching this movie is because you need to take a close look and see if you believe in any of it because if you believe in the tiniest part of it then you believe in all of it and it doesn't feel good and that's why we watch movies like this as mind watchers these are like our rotor routers for our mind we're just like letting we're just going to stir up and get all these unconscious beliefs that are all based on the authority problem we're going to get them into the surface because most people would say well if you look at society there's some problems and they might say racism and and sexism stereotypical thinking stereotypes you know you can go down through the whole thing violence and on and on and on but what Jesus does in the course of miracles is he simplifies it for us and he says all those things that you feel aren't right in the world in the society in the culture that you perceive you may even see it in the people but it's not in the people or the culture or the society it's in your mind and it's all rooted in the belief that you can create yourself it's all rooted in the authority problem it's all denying that god is your author because an author is the one who who creates who writes uh and and god authors in spirit and god only authors in spirit god doesn't author in any other way spirit creates spirit just like in this world we get apples from apple trees we get oranges from orange trees we get peaches from peach trees and in heaven if you'll take my analogy a little higher you get spirit from spirit spirit doesn't create matter you know god created man in his likeness and image meaning god the essence of mankind or humankind is spirit that's what it means god created man in his own image it doesn't mean god thought i'm going to make a body you know i've got nothing better to do i'm going to make adam and eve and uh i'm going to make a tree three of the knowledge of good and evil and yeah that's a good day's workout but it is and then then and say don't eat from that tree you know this is this is all make believe god authors in spirit god doesn't make adam and eve god doesn't make the world of time and space god doesn't know what male and female mean god doesn't know masculine or feminine these are artificial constructs and concepts that the ego has generated and they're all based on one belief and that's the belief you can create yourself that you can be the author of yourself instead of be authored by god so that's why this movie i think will be so helpful to us because when you watch it typically you do get engaged in what's happening


Bismillahirrahmanirrahim I start in the name of Allah, the All-Merciful, the Ever-Merciful and the Everlasting Curse beyond the Satan and his followers. Allah's blessings and peace be upon Muhammad the Prophet and upon his pure family. Our respective viewers, one of the Shi'a poets has written some verses of poetry describing the situation and the circumstance of Imam Hussein on the 10th of Muharram and these are the verses I'm going to read up to you. All my followers, whenever you drink or freshen water, remember me or whenever you hear of a martyr or a lonely person, weep for me. I am the son of the Prophet of Islam and I was martyred cruelly and then my body was smashed intentionally by the hooves of the enemies' verses. I wish you all were present, the Imam is addressing his Shi'a. I wish you all were present on the day of Ashura to see how I asked them for water to my infant but they refused to quench him. Our respective viewers, peace and blessings be upon you and welcome to Imam Hussein. A series of episodes in which we talk about the different stages of Imam Hussein's life starting from his miraculous birthday, talking about some of the events and stories happened to him during his holy life, mentioning some of the perfect quotes in his right and then ending up with his unmatchable martyrdom. My name is Hassan Hadi and I'm honored to be hosting this program. Our respective viewers, we have started talking about fitna and sedition in Kufa and we are still talking about the same topic yet more largely. Our respective viewers, yet Ibn Ziyad was neither as easily fooled nor as weak-willed as his predecessor, Al-Naman bin Bashir. He proposed in a step to hold Hani until he had handed over Ibn Aqil. However, Hani refused this outright and an argument ensued between the two until one of Hani's acquaintance pulled him aside and speaking privately urged him to comply with the governor's demand. There will be no shame or failure upon you. You in turning him over because you would only be handing him over to the authorities, this person said to Hani bin Orwa. Still Hani refused, saying by Allah I will never hand Ibn Aqil over to him. Having heard this, Ibn Ziyad, Allah's curses upon him, became enraged. He commanded Hani before him once again where he issued a clear ultimatum either bring Muslim bin Aqil to him or be executed. It is here, our respective viewers, that Hani miscalculated. He believed that he was largely untouchable due to the protection of his tribe. Thus he boldly told Ibn Ziyad that he would have to go through them to get to him. Ibn Ziyad, however, predictably did not respond well to this perceived insolence and beckoned Hani to come closer.  He continued beating Hani bin Orwa until his stuff all together broke him. You have been behaving like Akharjit all day, Ibn Ziyad secreted out him. And as much her blood is lawful to us, with that he ordered Hani removed from his presence and locked up. Rumors spread to the tribe of Hani that he had been killed and indeed some of them did not march on the governor. However, once they were assured that Hani was very much alive and only imprisoned their crowds quickly dissipated. Quintan that he was well on his way to putting down and potential uprising Ibn Ziyad ordered an assembly gathered where he ascended the member and warring the people again as attempting to subvert the illegitimate government of the profligate sinner Yazid bin Muawiyah, the false governor. Yet our respected viewers, as he finishes his speech he had not even descended from the member when the color rose from the gates of the mosque. Muslim bin Akil has come.  Our respected viewers, this is the end of today's episode. Until we meet again, let's pray that Allah the Almighty hasten the reappearance of the master of our time to interpret the message of the grandfather. Imam Al-Fasayn who says, I only desire to spread good values and to prevent evil. Thank you very much. Peace be upon you.


Hello everybody, welcome to my channel, it's Eva from Bohemian Crafting and today I'm coming to share with you another my one page journals, one page art journals and this time I'm gonna choose one of the images from the sheet I shared in the previous video, here was those two guys, so today I'm gonna choose this standing guy with playing guitar and I think he looks so cool, so calm and satisfying, so I'm gonna choose him and from my stencils I've got here a kind of small collection of studio light stencils, I love them so much, they look so awesome, look at this one, it's a beautiful stencil, so I was thinking to use this one because it's kind of strange and I really like those stripes, so I'm gonna choose that stencil for my background and I will also have for those who maybe don't have some vintage background stamps, like I mean large stamps, I will have this simple sheet that will be linked down below, it's for free, it's just base for building up your art, so there is just this simple vintage advertisements and I will have in the future few more, kind of similar way but different adverts and it's for free, so don't be afraid to click on that link, if you like this as a base, as a starter for your art, just download it, so and of course I do have here my envelope that preparing envelope and the page it will be same like before, so I do have prepared the base for my like cover and my page and as a first I'm gonna use this stencil and I do have here just basic white acrylic gesso and I'm gonna use that to make some kind of texture on my paper and also I'm gonna this time try also on envelopes so I guess I'm gonna go here because this is actually can nicely frame the window here that maybe will be awesome, I have to try, so with the gesso I'm gonna do and this is not too thick gesso, I think it's not too thick because it's too old that's why I need to use my stuff, it's losing all those amazing amazing characters or characteristic things which it should do and I don't want to lose that, so this art journaling is what I need for my stuff, for my colors, for my paints, for the sprays I've got here and I'm not using them at all and I would like to use them, that's why I bought it, you know, so art journaling is actually perfect for not just using my stuff but for short crafting to make junk journals, it's time consuming if you ever try that, you know what I'm talking about, to make one book, it takes a time but to make one art journal page it's much much more shorter and I have to say in that shorter time period you have so much fun because you can try so many techniques, you can try so many different art supplies, you can try it in a junk journal making as well but it's taking, you know, longer time because there is so many pages, so this art journaling it's perfect for relaxing and for that wow effect, if you haven't used your stuff for a long time maybe you forget or you forgot how amazing things you can get using by those supplies, by those modeling paints and embossing powders and embossing folders, you know, all that cool stuff we have in our drawers or you planning to get to your drawers this way or I think this way, okay I do have there some leftovers but I think I can still do it this way, so I think I do have my basic stenciling done, I'm gonna wash up my tool and I'm gonna dry this and I can't use my heating tool on envelope because there is that acetate piece which will which will get destroyed if I will use my heating tool so my envelope I need to let dry on the air, so because I'm impatient I wanted to dry it fast I was thinking oh I'm gonna take that acetate piece off from the backside and then I will glue it back and that way I can use my heating tool and I rip it off here because it was too wet from that gesso but never mind I'm gonna dry my envelope and then I will glue it back using some probably masking tape to mask my mistake so both those pieces are dry I did cut out the guy also but for next part I will need some sprays and I do have some old painting I mean old sprays I used I think once three years ago maybe and I do have quite lots of them which I haven't used and I they are just laying here around and first I was thinking I'm gonna just threw them to the bin but now I'm thinking no no so I'm making my own mix mixes you could hear this nouveau it's that ivory color and I do have here Americana white this was warm warm white or warm white warm white acrylic paint there was about that much of acrylic paint and I fill it with a water till here and then I mix it properly so it's quite liquidy now and what I'm doing here I'm making my beautiful colors I bought on Amazon these empty bottles and I'm taking clear water about half of but that bottle I'm placing clear water to my bottle about half of the bottle yeah about that much then I'm taking that white acrylic mixed with water so there was that much and I filled till here with water so it's really liquid now beautiful liquid you will see and I'm putting quite lots of that white acrylic and then some painting do I want to read no or maybe I can do some crazy one so I do have two different colors of red so I'm gonna take this one mix properly dot pigment and I'm gonna make small drop of this red painting just small amount not too much just like this maybe that was even too many and I'm gonna take this nouveau ivory and I'm gonna just add it here and maybe a little bit of black and we will see just a small oh come on give me something oh that's too much not that much just a small amount of black and mix it like really well interesting color it looks like movo oh this this is not the right one this one I guess this one will be the right one and we're gonna give it to you it's not bad I actually I actually like this color it's very strange looking color so this way I'm mixing I mixed also this kind of reminds me that sage color and it's really beautiful it's this one and it's also it's green with a little bit of the black it's green that ivory the white one and just a little bit of black and it makes this beautiful kind like sage color so from my mixtures I'm gonna use this light blue and this what I said that it looks like sage that was green that white acrylic ivory nouveau and a little bit of black acrylic and I mix it really well and it looks really beautiful but before I will spray my papers I'm gonna use this tea dyed Distress Ink and I'm gonna very lightly go over of my papers with my tea dye Distress Ink and I will see what it will do once I will spray it with my spray because I really don't know what to expect right now so first I think I'm gonna spray it a little bit with water clear water just a little bit and now I'm gonna take my sprays and try to do my best okay not bad maybe here a little bit more and with that sage or not gonna I'm gonna call it sage why not oh and maybe I can make those colors a little bit not sure if I want to spray it with water again I kind of like how it looks like now that Distress Paint went down from my uh from my texture and it looks beautiful so I'm gonna use my heating tool and I'm gonna dry my papers okay it's a few days later I think I can continue I caught small flu so sorry for my voice I've got here my little fella and I've got the quote I like I really like this quote music gives a soul to the universe wings to the mind flights to the imagination and life to everything plateau so we're gonna create something around this quote and with that I've got here those two heads I really love them so I've got those two heads I've got my butterflies that fella and because the purple is color of Wisdom I'm gonna use purple colors and I'm gonna color the heads and the guy first for the face I'm gonna use again my collection of Kohinoor Hartmund pencils as I used before so I'm gonna color his face hand and probably guitar as well because here it's collection of brown brown colors so I'm gonna use all of this to color my guy and I will use the pencils for the faces here as well and make them nice and interesting and his hair and the guitar I think I'm gonna use this one for guitar I will see no no this is too bright this one go for guitar and now that purple color I've got here my markers so I think I'm gonna use them I'm gonna start with light one because I'm not sure if I will like it hopefully I will okay and now his coat I'm gonna start with light purple as well and his shoes oh he does have socks so shoes I'm gonna make with dark brown socks I don't know so I think I do have the base here and here and now make it the way I want I'm gonna take this antique linen distress ink and I'm gonna distress all the edges with that antique linen to make it look vintage to cover the white spaces and because my ink pad it's nearly dry so going this way if you do have juicy ink but don't do it this way okay my ink pad is nearly dry so we get there some color I kind of need to do this this way so I do have colored my three images kind of like that combination of purple and a little bit of lilac and I'm thinking to create the universe here but not big universe just small one so because I will need to control kind of like that space where I want to create that universe I've got here this this word the word stencil and I'm thinking this shape will be actually what I want to create as my universe so I'm gonna take masking tape and I will try to not yet first I'm gonna take the brush and the binder this is acrylic binder I will put link for this binder down below I'm using it now as a like top coat of my of my page to make sure that later I will be able to wipe off anything I don't like this will make kind of like separating coat from my background and because of this bind dex I will be able to wipe out anything which I will mess up if I will I hope I will not but if I will I know with this bind dex I do have that chance to wipe it off I hope it's dry and I'm gonna put my shape here and type it together with my masking tape I'm gonna place my masking tape here to hold the stencil and I will need to cover also the spaces around okay yeah just in case that I will be too messy like this so here I do have a space where I would like to create my small universe so first I'm gonna use just simple black ink and I'm gonna literally just wipe that black ink on the top and hope for the best I've got here my mixtures of my colors I'm gonna start do some sprays here I will have to be a little bit careful because the stencil it's from plastic so I can't heat it too much I've got here a white color so with that white color I'm gonna make small splatters I'm gonna take it off yet and again black ink so I messed up okay that doesn't look bad and I've got here these stars stencils so I'm gonna have a look to my paintings so in the nouveau acrylic I found this is metallic silver and I oh shoot he thinks that maybe it will work hopefully it will work they will see so I'm gonna try to use just those small ones and kind of tap tap tap tap if that will work not really I don't like it no you don't like this one okay hopefully I'm able to take it off ish so not silver it's not good one I'm gonna have a look one more time so I'm gonna give it a try with that ivory I used before ivory color and we will see just here and there are the small ones here I think I'm gonna do it this way I don't want to mess it up it's not perfect but I'm happy I didn't mess up totally so I'm gonna leave it like my small universe see there are some colors and there are stars as well so I'm gonna leave it like it is and I think it's time to put my images on the bright spot so first a little fella here and I'm thinking that he will be really beautiful right here and because I use that um antique antique antique linen distress ink I have to be kind of fast with spreading this this binder bindings over it because distress ink can react with this oh and it's also taking my black ink from here okay have to be more careful with that and all right I think it's time to put there also my quote somewhere here sit down sit down plateau oh not you guys yet so I'm gonna make another top coat hopefully that first one it's dry enough to make protection for my colors so for my wingman's wing head I cut it with my scissors this spot between hair and the brain so I cut it to the ear on both of them exactly same way and I'm gonna take I think those biggest butterflies here but I need to take it without that background and if it's possible also without the antennas because I don't need antennas so I'm gonna cut off the antennas will I or I will use because it's sticky so maybe I will use that I'm gonna cut it on half stay I'm gonna try to slide the antenna with the body or half body of my butterfly here okay stay there stay there come on stay there don't be silly shoot and glue it here with that butterfly thingy yeah I think this way and the other one I will need to glue a little bit up so I'm gonna cut that antenna that will be too visible so first boy okay okay I'm gonna take my bindings and hope for the best I'm not sure how it works with acetate pieces so that this is literally just guessing hoping for the success I'm gonna make small shades and place it there and position this way this way yeah well you do have very creepy wings my little boy oh okay I think stay like this which way this way yeah he does have a very creepy wings come on stay there and I will need to let it dry so that's one and same as before I'm using bindings and just usual acrylic black paint and I'm gonna make my shading I will again put link down below for inspiralo she does have amazing amazing tutorial how you can where you can lean how to do this shading so for those who will not want to know how how to lean that shading I lean that from inspiralo so I will put link down below and for me it's very helpful to have that bindings link will be again in the description box so I'm gonna do my shading under each of these images and now with posca paint with white one I'm gonna make just small like do the link around the quote nothing too complicated just do the link here and there maybe some lines to frame it a little bit this I saw many times on Marta Marta Labkovska channel from Maremi Small Art and on wiki I can't say the right way her's a name so I will put the link down below I don't want to mess it up but go to have a look she does amazing art journals I love her style so much so all these ladies were from I'm trying to take inspiration and lean some tips you know tricks what they do and what I like what they do I will put link down below for them because it's amazing to watch them hey your wings so just some highlighting here and there we have also prepared my envelope I just glue it back here on the frame and the rest which I ripped off I backed with a masking tape and I'm gonna glue it on my paper so it has that sticky strip here and as before I'm gonna fix it to my background black paper and here is how my finished art journal page or mini journal looks like it has pocket here for writing it has pocket here if I will want to add there something and this is the look of my new art journal page and I didn't like that I like those wings they look so weird and I like my small galaxy here I'm so happy it went this way that it looks like a little bit of universe so this is my new art page I hope you like it I hope you did enjoy it even in those floors thank you so much for sharing your time with me today thank you so much for visiting me have a wonderful day take care about yourself and I will see you soon bye