DOMESTIC ECONOMICS: “Repealing the Estate Tax” ☮

The Republican budget would give the richest family in America, the Walton family of Wal-Mart, a tax cut of up to $52 billion by repealing the estate tax – a tax that only applies to multi-millionaires and billionaires. But, if you are a lower income senior citizen you may not be able to keep your home warm in the winter because of a cut of about $4 billion to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

CRITICAL THINKING: “Why Skepticism is the Right Approach to the Afterlife, Immortality, and Utopia” / Michael Shermer ☮

Bear with us for a second, but do you know the Belinda Carlisle song “Heaven is a Place on Earth”? It’s actually scientifically accurate. American public intellectual Michael Shermer says that any idea of the afterlife makes zero sense: your mind and therefore your memories are beholden to your body and that any version of you that made it into heaven, should there actually be one, would just be a copy of you and unable to register that they were actually in heaven. Likewise, should you be able to scan your brain and “live forever” by being uploaded to a body in the future, it still wouldn’t be you, just a copy. Confused? The explanation makes more sense from the mouth of Shermer himself… writing the theory behind multiple you’s living in various timelines gets a little too Back to the Future… another sweet ’80s reference if we do say so ourselves.