How a $100M IRS website upgrade could slash $191B off America’s $650B annual tax compliance costs. Learn about potential 70% time savings, 90% cost reduction, and $76B in recovered tax revenue.
Economics
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Bottled Water Costs 40x More: Why Don’t Poor Areas Have Water Plants?
Many poor communities spend up to $740 per person annually on bottled water. A water sanitation plant could slash this to just $18. So why don’t they build one?
Science
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There’s about a 0.1% Chance that COVID-19 Coincidentally Arose in Nature near the Wuhan Institute of Virology
Exploring if COVID-19 emerged by chance near Wuhan’s virology lab, this analysis uses a Feynman estimate, showing a 0.1% probability, based on lab distribution and the Earth’s land area. It doesn’t consider population density or natural habitats, while China’s investigational opacity exacerbates speculation regarding a lab origin despite historic leak rarity.
Health
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How many NET lives are saved by efficacy trials?
The NET outcome of lives saved minus lives lost is likely between 11,000 and 115,000 additional deaths each decade due to added delays and costs of the regulatory process.
Health
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Only 0.000000002% of Potential Treatments Have Been Studied
What We Don’t Know We’re only 2 lifetimes from the use of the modern scientific method in medicine. Thus, it’s only been applied for 0.0001% of human history. The more clinical research studies we read, the more we realize we don’t know. Nearly every study ends with the phrase “more…
Economics
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How The Federal Reserve Steals from the Poor and Gives to the Rich
Federal Reserve policies are effectively stealing $54k from the typical family every year.
Federal Reserve
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Zombie Companies Will Lead to America’s Lost Decade
Much of the massive amount of new money the Fed is printing is going into Zombie Companies. How Zombie Companies Survive Zombie Companies are firms that don’t survive by producing value for their customers. Instead, they survive by parasitically draining resources from the overall economy by borrowing at near 0%…
Economics
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Top 1% Received all of the $4 Trillion Printed in 2020
The $4 trillion created by the Federal Reserve as part of the 2020 stimulus program appears to have gone entirely to the top 1% wealthiest people in the world.
Economics
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When the government prints new money, who gets it?
The primary recipients of newly created money are currently banks and corporations who are able to borrow from the Fed almost 0% interest and loan this to the public at much higher interest rates.
Economics
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Long-Term Trends in Human Well-Being
For millennia, everything sucked. Then something magical happened!
Government Spending
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USPS Has Received Over $45 Billion from Taxpayers to Reduce the Cost of Junk Mail, Killing Billions of Trees
100 million trees and $178 billion worth of time could be saved every year by not subsidizing junk mail.
Military
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We Have Enough Nuclear Bombs to Kill EVERYONE 130 Times
A 10 kiloton nuclear weapon can kill 1.32 million people. The 15,000 nuclear weapons globally could cause 19,500 megadeaths.
Economics
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US Financial Crisis: Who Killed the Economy?
The cause of the US financial crisis is simple. It’s debt. This is a very simple and graphical evidence-based explanation of what caused the collapse.
Government Spending
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Anti-Terrorism Spending 50,000 Times More Than on Any Other Cause of Death
The US spends more than $500 million per victim on anti-terrorism efforts. However, cancer research spending is only $10,000 per victim. Evolutionary psychology may offer an explanation for this irrational threat amplification.
Terrorism
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Iran US Foreign Relations: A History of Violence
Many Americans consider Iran to be a psychopathically violent nation that would be willing to commit suicide in order to kill as many Americans as possible. The statistics behind historical Iranian US relations do not support this view.
Corporate Welfare
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Financial Sector Costs Us More than Any Other Sector In Economy
The financial sector receives more of the average paycheck than any other sector of the economy. Its share of the economy totals $2 trillion dollars. In 1985, the financial sector earned less than 16% of domestic corporate profits. Today, it’s over 40%. In the 1960s, finance and insurance accounted for only 4%…
Politics
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There’s a 0.00001% Chance that Your Vote Will Matter
There’s less than a 0.00001% chance that your vote will be the tiebreaker that decides the outcome of a national elections.You are more likely to be injured in a car accident driving to the polls (0.002% chance). Hence, if you are trying to make a practical improvement in your life and those of your loved ones, it is much more rational to just stay home on election day.
Utilitarianism
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How Much Direct Suffering Is Caused by Various Animal Foods?
This is a rigorous analysis from the brilliant utilitarian mind of Brian Tomasik originally published at http://www.utilitarian-essays.com in 2005. I made this graph in 2007 to try to illustrate his point visually. Abstract. Consuming equal weights of different animal products may produce vastly different expected amounts of direct suffering. Farmed seafood may cause the…
Drug War
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$1.5 Trillion Has Been Wasted on a Drug War that Hasn’t Even Reduced Drug Use
Dear President Obama, I know you’re very busy, so I’m very sorry to bother you with this. However, I think what I have to say too important for you to ignore. I appreciate that you are trying to make the world a better place. I respect you as a person. Against all adversity you…
Empiricism
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How To Calculate Morality Using The Utilitarian Calculator
Calculate the utilitarian ethical value of an action with the Felicific Calculus, developed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham.
Terrorism
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Foreign Military Occupation is the Primary Cause of Terrorism
95% of suicide terrorist attacks are targeted at occupying foreign militaries. 0% of suicide terrorist attacks have been directed at countries not militarily involved in geopolitical disputes.
Corporate Welfare
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Bailout Costs $16,000 per Worker
A clear examination of the true costs of the bailouts.
Utilitarianism
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Is it morally optimal to rescue a cat from the pound?
When faced with the decision of rescuing a cat from the pound or allowing it to be euthanized, the ethical considerations can be complex and multifaceted. This article explores the dilemma through the lens of utilitarian calculus, weighing the pleasure and pain generated by each action to determine its moral worth.
The Solution to Every Problem in the World
Guess what holds the solution to every problem in the world? It’s the human brain!