The Ethical Barometer

You can’t write stuff this good.Â Treasury secretary nominee Timothy Geithner should get along well with Rep. Charles Rangel (D. N.Y.) who chairs the House Ways & Means Committee.Â Working together they will be responsible for drafting, amending, and interpreting the Internal Revenue Code.Â Geithner, if confirmed, will see the largest part of his agency’s budget go to the IRS, theÂ IRC enforcerÂ via audit.Â Rangel didn’t seem to understand that rental income is income in the sense that it must be reported.Â Mr. Geithner, to whom we are about to entrust the regulation ofÂ investment banking, hedge funds,Â and CDOs, didn’t seem to understand that all income is income, including IMF compensation, especially when IMF tells you that you need to pay your SS and Medicare taxes yourself.Â These are complex concepts.Â Why, the Barometer has seen an internÂ bookkeeper struggle for 2.5 seconds to conclude, “Yup, rent is income and consulting income requires SS taxes.”Â Mr. Geithner calls the failure to pay the $43,200 an “honest mistake,” (actually, it’s $48,268 with some other “honest mistakes” including improper charitable deductions and utility deductions taken for business purposes that were really for personal use) and he did ante up the dough to the IRS, but the Barometer worries. Continue reading →

Professor Jerry Burger of Santa Clara University has finally put the doubts to rest.Â Many psychologists have maintained for 40 years that the 1963 Stanley Milgram studies could never be repeated with the same results.Â Milgram was the Yale psychology professor who had confederates pose as learners who were to be given electric shocks by study participants when they gave wrong answers.Â (You Ghostbusters fans have seen Bill Murray do the experiment as “poor scientist” Dr. Peter Venkman.) The confederate learners feigned pain with each shock the participants thought they were administering.Â The participants, who often looked around for reassurance,Â were told by a lab-coated supervisor to keep going.Â 80% of Milgram’s participants went to 150-volts of shock, despite the cries of pain.Â Milgram also had 65% take the shocks up to 450 volts.Â Professor Burger had 70% of his participants take the shocks up to 150 volts.Â We do follow orders.Â Â The Barometer teaches students about Milgram’s and Burger’s work because it helps them understand that, on occasion, saying “No!” to authority figures is important.Â That “No” applies to orders to cook books, pay bribes, andÂ sell air to investors, actions that canÂ produce painÂ as stunning asÂ electric shocks.Â

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The Ethical Barometer

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Make them read The Ten Commandments before a test…

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