EDITORIAL By Dhiren Shah
Hello Readers,
We had another storm, but luckily it did not cripple a lot of our neighborhood. However, those who have a leaking problem from the roof have to wait until the winds calm down, as contractors cannot go on the roof to fix it.
Facebook is facing problems due to their policies. A whistleblower frankly said that Facebook and Founder Mark Zuckerberg have a policy to keep the profits in mind over the expense of the people’s privacy. Also, documents about the January 6th Capitol riot revealed that it is Facebook’s ability to spread content that potentially incites violence. According to the Associated Press, “We’ve been fueling this fire for a long time, and we shouldn’t be surprised it’s now out of control.”
The worst part of Facebook is how it addresses different languages in the world. Facebook does not have great control over different languages like Arabic, Hindi, Japanese. The methods are meant by some to avoid an overzealous content moderation system. The AP reported that certain measures have managed to avoid Facebook’s hate speech censors. In India, Facebook added hate speech classifiers in Hindi and Bengali. It is not easy for Facebook, but they are making billions of dollars and they are the number one social media platform in the world. So, they must be very careful. They have a department to handle hate crime languages, but how the department handles millions of messages is very important. They should keep their political agenda, if any, aside and act in the best interest of the people.
President Biden made a smaller infrastructure plan from $3.4 trillion to $2 trillion. But he wants his infrastructure plan approved before he visits the climate change summit on Monday November 1, 2021. As per Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, the negotiations have been done and a final version of the draft is almost materialized. They are expecting to propose the resolution in the senate this week. Let’s see what happens.
The democrats have stated they would tax billionaires in their campaign in 2020. Senator Wyden of Oregon has proposed a billionaire tax annually on their assets (like income tax) and appreciation on their assets every year. The proposal is good, but it is complicated and the billionaires with their best legal and accounting advisers will find loopholes and save money. For Wyden’s proposal, Elon Musk, owner of Tesla, tweeted “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”
The democrats have tried to get bipartisan support to pass the debt limit ceiling increase. That requires 60 to 40 votes in the Senate, so due to no support from the republicans, the proposal never came to the floor of the Senate or Congress.
Biden’s plan is better than Wyden’s plan. Biden suggested the death tax be raised (from 20 to 25%). It gives almost the same amount of taxes to the Feds, and there are less chances of loopholes. However, the country needs money now, and with the death tax, the government has to wait until someone dies. It is very critical which plan is adopted. The Biden administration will make a deal as it is very important for Biden to show the world that he is in charge and he has achieved his plans of climate change and infrastructure. Biden has visited New Jersey, Michigan, and Virginia. He visited Virginia to give support in a close contest for former Governor Democrat Terry McAuliffe.
Have a wonderful week.
I’ll talk to you next week.
