So the Felician Institute’s Tenth Annual Conference took place this past Saturday. PoT bloggers Michael Young and David Potts were in attendance, as I mentioned they would be; David gave a revised version of a post he did at PoT, and Michael chaired a session on hypocrisy and standing to blame. A great time was had by all.

Over the next few weeks, while I have the conference freshly in mind, I want to write a few very brief posts summarizing and commenting on some of the presentations I attended. My track record in living up to such resolutions is, of course, a pathetic farce, if only because I often think of them at the most inopportune times, and also because I’ve characteristically been (self)-defeated by the lethal combination of time constraints and the desire to be “thorough.” The obvious remedy occurs to me: ignore time constraints and be slipshod. (By the way, ignore the fact that I keep promising to go on blogcation and never do, and that I have a bunch of outstanding comments to respond to, but haven’t responded to them.)

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Just a last minute reminder, for those in the area, of the Felician Institute’s Conference on Ethics and Public Affairs, to take place this Saturday, April 23 (9 am – 6 pm) at our Rutherford, New Jersey campus (223/227 Montross Ave, Rutherford NJ 07070). PoT bloggers David Potts and Michael Young will be there; plenary session by J.L.A. Garcia (Boston College); and don’t forget the 4 pm session on the ethics, economics, and politics of adjuncting. Here’s the nearly finalized program. Here’s a link to the Institute’s home page.

I’ll be scarce at PoT until after the conference. Seriously.

Am I the only person who finds it puzzling that people who insist that they believe in the legitimacy of government, but in five decades have not coherently been able to explain how they intend to fund it, insist on trashing the only mechanism that exists for funding it–while bitterly criticizing people who demand the unearned?

The title of the article in the second link is, “On Tax Day, What if Atlas Shrugged?” Here’s my question: On Tax Day, what if an article about taxation by The Atlas Society made minimal sense? How about any day (or any topic), come to that? Frankly, I’m not sure which event is more likely to take place.

Incidentally, I’d like to thank my accountant Vikrant K. Kapila, CPA for making Tax Day more bearable than it would be if I actually had to do my own taxes.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the minimum wage, now that New York and California have increased it to $15 (over the next few years).

This is a literal, not a rhetorical or loaded question: what stands in the way of keeping the minimum wage where it is, but (where mathematically possible) decreasing payroll taxes on minimum wage workers by the equivalent of the proposed increase in the minimum wage? I encountered the proposal decades ago in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post by James Glassman, but have heard almost nothing about it since.

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Back in February, I threatened to go on a temporary vacation from blogging. Like so many of the threats and promises I make at PoT, I didn’t follow through–but with a new online course on my plate, and a  conference to organize, I’m thinking that a few weeks’ blogging hiatus would be the better part of valor.

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