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There is a widely held conception that progress in science and technology is our salvation, and the more of it, the better. This is the default assumption not only among the general public, but also in the research community including university administration and research funding agencies, all the way up to government ministries. I believe the assumption to be wrong, and very dangerous.

The post Let us not run blindfolded into the minefield of future technologies appeared first on OUPblog.

What role does reading play in Bill Gates’ life? For him, reading serves as a method of learning and exploration.

In an interview with The New York Times, Gates describes reading as “one of the chief ways that I learn, and has been since I was a kid. These days, I also get to visit interesting places, meet with scientists and watch a lot of lectures online. But reading is still the main way that I both learn new things and test my understanding.”

During this conversation, Gates also talked about his reasons for writing reviews and how he makes his selections. For the past few years, the Microsoft co-founder and renowned philanthropist has shared reading lists on his blog. Follow these links to check out his picks for the best books of 2015 and his 2015 summer reading list.

Bill Gates has unveiled a list of his favorite books that he read in 2015.

Gates’ six picks include The Road to Character, Thing Explainer: Complicated Stuff in Simple Words, Being Nixon: A Man Divided, Sustainable Materials With Both Eyes Open, Eradication: Ridding the World of Diseases Forever?, and Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. He also decided to give The Vital Question an honorable mention.

Here’s more from Gates’ blog post: “I just looked over the list of books I read this year, and I noticed a pattern. A lot of them touch on a theme that I would call ‘how things work.’…I didn’t set out to explore these themes intentionally, though in retrospect it make a lot of sense since the main reason I read is to learn.” Click here to check out Gates’ 2014 list.

John Green has been pondering this question: What Does It Mean to Be Human? In the video embedded above, Green reveals that he has been trying to write a novel about “how we define personhood.” The video itself was submitted to Bill Gates’ “Big History Project” contest; the winner will receive $5,000 and a contract to make three more videos.

It has been more than three years since the release of The Fault in Our Stars book. Since that time, it seems that Green has mostly been focused on advocating for charity causes, creating video content on a number of YouTube channels, and working on film adaptations based on his books. Are you curious about Green’s work-in-progress fiction story?

Bill Gates has unveiled a list of his favorite books that he read in 2014.

Some of the titles were not published this year because “sometimes I fall behind and don’t get to a book until well after it’s been published.” Gates’ five picks include Business Adventures by John Brooks, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, How Asia Works by Joe Studwell, The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion, and Making the Modern World: Materials and Dematerialization by Vaclav Smil.

Here’s an excerpt from Gates’ blog post: “I didn’t really plan it this way. But as I look at the list of the best books I read this year, I see how a number of them touch on economics and business. That’s fitting, in a year when Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century put a big spotlight on inequality. In addition, with the Asian economies so much in the news, I wanted to read How Asia Works, which promised to explain why some of the continent’s countries grew so fast while others languished. And I got to brush up on an old favorite, the best business book I’ve ever read.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

We’ve collected the books debuting on Indiebound’s Indie Bestseller List for the week ending October 12, 2014–a sneak peek at the books everybody will be talking about next month.

(Debuted at #2 in Hardcover Fiction) Lila by Marilynne Robinson: “Lila, homeless and alone after years of roaming the countryside, steps inside a small-town Iowa church—the only available shelter from the rain—and ignites a romance and a debate that will reshape her life. She becomes the wife of a minister, John Ames, and begins a new existence while trying to make sense of the life that preceded her newfound security.” (October 2014)

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Rick Horgan has been hired to serve as vice president and executive editor at Scribner, an imprint at Simon & Schuster.

Here’s more from the press release: “In a distinguished career that has spanned decades, Rick Horgan has worked with more than 400 authors and edited—across a variety of genres—more than ninety national bestsellers, including the recently published The Good Spy by Kai Bird. Horgan’s books have won numerous awards and honors, such as the Pulitzer Prize for Tom Reiss’ The Black Count, and the PEN Literary Award for Marshall Jon Fisher’s A Terrible Splendor.”

Some of the authors he has worked with in the past include Bill Gates, Condoleezza Rice, Jay Leno, Maria Shriver, Pete Sampras, David Baldacci, Jeffrey Archer, and John Lescroart. With this new role, Horgan will acquire both commercial fiction and nonfiction manuscripts. In nonfiction, Horgan will focus on memoirs, politics, sports, current events, biographies, and business books.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Author John Green has partnered with other writers in the past. His newest collaborator isn’t a writer; it’s Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist Bill Gates.

According to Time, Green has launched a campaign on water.org with a fundraising goal set at $100,000. This will help thousands of people in Ethiopia gain access to clean water.

Should Green and the “nerdfighter” community prove successful, Gates has pledged to match the amount. Gates announced on Twitter that he was “happy to help reduce world suck!”

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

What is Bill Gates‘ favorite business book? Business Adventures by John Brooks, a 1960s collection of New Yorker stories which profiles different companies.

Warren Buffett recommended the book to Gates back in 1991, and Gates says that the book is still relevant today. He reviewed the out-of-print title in The Wall Street Journal today, pointing out that while business times may have changed, human nature has not.

Here is an excerpt: “Unlike a lot of today’s business writers, Brooks didn’t boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success. (How many times have you read that some company is taking off because they give their employees free lunch?) You won’t find any listicles in his work. Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters and show how things went for them.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Looking for something good to read this summer? TED Talks speakers Elizabeth Gilbert, Melinda Gates, Bill Gates, Rashida Jones, Clay Shirky, Uzoamaka Maduka, Amanda Palmer, Stanley McChrystal and Blood Orange have put together their lists of recommended reads. Check it out: "Summer: the season for cracking open a good book under the shade of a tree. Below, we’ve compiled about 70 stellar book recommendations from members of the TED community. Warning: not all of these books can be classified as beach reads. And we think that is a good thing."

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

By Edward Zelinsky

One widely-discussed possibility for reforming the federal income tax is limiting the deduction for charitable contributions. Whether or not Congress amends the Code to restrict the income tax deduction for charitable contributions, Congress should limit the charitable contribution deduction under the federal estate and gift taxes. Such a limit would balance the need for federal revenues with the desirability of encouraging charitable giving.

On December 11th, the advocacy group Responsible Wealth called for the federal government to tax estates over $4,000,000 at rates starting at 45%. Among those joining this call were heirs to old fortunes such as Abigail Disney and Richard Rockefeller and owners of new wealth such as Bill Gates, Sr. Most notably, Warren Buffett agreed (as he has in the past) with this recent plea for higher estate taxes.

I am a fan of my fellow Nebraskan and agree with him that the federal government should impose estate taxes, particularly on large fortunes. I also admire Mr. Buffett for the Giving Pledge which he has promoted with the younger Mr. Gates. Under that Pledge, wealthy individuals commit to giving at least half of their wealth to philanthropy.

There is, however, considerable tension between the Buffett commitment to federal estate taxation and the Buffett commitment to philanthropy. By virtue of the estate tax charitable deduction, when a wealthy decedent leaves part or all of his estate to charity, no estate tax is paid on these contributed amounts.

It is perfectly plausible to call for estate taxation only for those who don’t distribute their wealth to philanthropy. It is, however, hard to reconcile that position with Responsible Wealth’s advocacy of strong estate taxation. Mr. Gates, Sr., for example, declared that “it would be shameful to leave potential revenue on the table from those most able to pay.” However, that is precisely what happens when large estates go to charity, namely, estate tax revenue which would otherwise flow to the federal government is instead diverted to charity. Such charity may be worthwhile but it does nothing to reduce the federal deficit.

Similarly, Ms. Disney argued that “a weak estate tax” falls “on the backs of the middle class,” presumably because the federal government will respond to reduced estate tax revenues by deficit financing, by raising other taxes on the middle class or by reducing government spending. However, when an estate is distributed to charity free of estate taxation, the government confronts these same choices.

A compromise could preserve the incentive for charitable giving while also generating some estate tax revenues for the federal government: Limit the estate (and gift) tax charitable deduction.

Many, including President Obama, have suggested such limitations on the income tax charitable deduction. If, for example, an individual is in the 35% federal income tax bracket, the President has proposed that the donor receive a deduction as if he or she were in the 28% bracket. In a similar fashion, the estate tax charitable deduction could be curbed, thereby generating some additional revenues for the federal fisc while also keeping a tax-incentive for charitable giving.

Consider, for example, a billionaire who leaves his entire estate of $1,000,000,000 to charity. To simplify the math, let’s assume that this billionaire would pay estate tax at the 40% rate if he did not bequeath all his assets to philanthropy. Because this $1,000,000,000 bequest is fully deductible for federal estate tax purposes, no tax is paid in this example. If this billionaire had not made this charitable bequest but had instead left his money to his children, the federal government would have received estate tax revenues of $400,000,000.

Suppose now that Congress limits the federal estate tax deduction to 70% of the amount donated to charity. In this case, the billionaire would leave a taxable estate of $300,000,000. At a 40% rate, this would require a federal estate tax payment of $120,000,000.

To provide the cash to pay this tax, this billionaire would probably reduce his charitable bequest to retain cash to pay this estate tax. However, at the end of the day, charity would receive the bulk of this billionaire’s assets while the federal government would receive some estate tax.

A limit on the estate tax charitable deduction could be constructed to fall only on relatively larger estates. For example, the first $10 million of charitable bequests could be fully deductible for estate tax purposes and only the amount gifted over that threshold would be deductible in part.

Alternatively, the limit could be phased in as charitable contributions increase. For example, the first $10 million of charitable bequests could be fully deductible for estate tax purposes. Then the next $50 million of philanthropic gifts could be 90% deductible and any further gifts would be 70% deductible for federal estate tax purposes.

The details are less important than the basic policy: By limiting the estate tax charitable deduction, all large estates donated to philanthropy would pay some federal estate tax revenues at a reduced rate. This would balance the need for federal revenues with the encouragement of the kind of charitable bequests quite commendably encouraged by Mr. Buffett and the Giving Pledge.

Edward A. Zelinsky is the Morris and Annie Trachman Professor of Law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University. He is the author of The Origins of the Ownership Society: How The Defined Contribution Paradigm Changed America. His monthly column appears here.

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Image credit: Macro shot of the seal of the United States on the US one dollar bill. Photo by briancweed, iStockphoto.

The post Limit the estate tax charitable deduction appeared first on OUPblog.

By Bill Wiist In 2009, there were 2,733 corporate foundations with assets of more than $10 billion and an annual donation of $2.5 billion. In that year foundations made grants of more than $38 billion of which $15.41 billion was from family foundations. In 2009, the 50 largest contributors to health donated more than $3 billion through almost 5,000 grants. The extent of corporate-based foundation funding in public health raises two critical questions for public health policy, research, and programming. First, should corporate-based foundations be setting the public health research and program agenda?

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Dear Mr. Gates:

You have, by dint of your intelligence and sincerity, become a major spokesman for wealthy Americans calling for higher taxes. Since the nation’s budgetary problems will only be solved by combining spending reductions with tax increases, this is a compelling claim.

However, the devil, as they say, is in the details. Allow me to call three details to your attention:

1) Microsoft’s tax avoidance. Microsoft has become increasingly adept at parking its profits in low tax foreign jurisdictions, rather than paying U.S. taxes. After analyzing Microsoft’s financial statements, Tax Analysts’ Martin A. Sullivan recently concluded that Microsoft “has dramatically stepped up its efforts to take advantage of lax U.S. transfer pricing rules.” In lay terms, Microsoft is avoiding U.S. taxes by accounting maneuvers which shift its profits to low tax havens.

Of course, Microsoft is not alone in this behavior. However, Microsoft is the source of your family’s wealth and influence. I suggest that you start a campaign to press U.S. corporations to pay U.S. taxes and that you lead with Microsoft as the campaign’s first target.

2) Millionaires and billionaires are different. You are the leading proponent of the plan to establish an income tax in Washington State. The tax will be levied at a rate of 5% on annual incomes over $200,000 ($400,000 for couples). The rate will increase to 9% on annual incomes over $500,000 ($1,000,000 for couples).

Individuals earning these kinds of incomes are undoubtedly affluent. But few of them are software billionaires. Unfortunately, the Washington State levy will tax millionaires and billionaires at the same rates.

Many individuals triggering the first tier of the Washington income tax will be professionals like me. Many of the individuals triggering the higher tax level will be small businessmen and businesswomen. As to this latter group, the Washington tax will be among the nation’s highest. For these people, the tax will impose a noticeable burden and could lead to economic distortions such as a decision to leave Washington for a state with a low or no income tax.

It is neither fair nor efficient for the billionaires of Microsoft to pay the same marginal tax rates as these other taxpayers.

I suggest that you call for a third, substantially higher rate for the Washington State tax to apply to individuals such as you. The resulting revenues would permit a reduction of the rates applying to other, less affluent Washington State taxpayers.

3) The Gates Foundation is a tax shelter. The Gates Foundation does great work of which you and your family can be justifiably proud. But there is one thing the Gates Foundation doesn’t do: pay taxes.

You and your son have both been outspoken proponents of federal estate taxation. However, the resources you and he contribute to the Gates Foundation avoid such taxation. Moreover, the foundation, as a tax-exempt entity, pays no federal income tax.

I understand and applaud the charitable impulse which animates the Gates Foundation. My wife and I have established a private foundation in memory of our son though this fund is, needless to say, much smaller than the Gates Foundation.

It is, nevertheless, problematic to call for others to pay higher estate and income taxes while the Gates Foundation, one of the country’s largest, effectively shelters your and your son’s incomes and estates from the federal fisc.

I urge that the Gates Foundation annually and voluntarily