Taxes, Downside of Electric Cars, Mapping Corruption

True Tax Burden (begins at 1:03)  Guest: Chuck Marr, Director of Federal Tax Policy at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities  Maybe you’ve heard the statistic that roughly half of Americans pay no income taxes. But that doesn’t mean today is a holiday for them. We tend to think about income tax on Tax Day, but those other little boxes on the W-2 for Social Security and Medicare taxes add up for everybody who works. In fact, most lower and middle-income Americans pay more in those so-called “payroll taxes” than they do in federal income taxes. And you better believe the government is glad for that money.  Families & Taxes (begins at 10:56)  Guest: Jocelyn Wikle, PhD, Professor of Economics at BYU  We dig a little deeper into how the tax system has – or really has not – evolved to keep pace with the reality of family life in America.  Poor Parent Interventions (begins at 21:31)  Guest: Jan Wallander, PhD, Professor of Psychological Sciences at the University of California, Merced  Being poor is a vicious cycle. Children raised in low-income households typically have less-educated parents and they tend to do poorly on cognitive tests. Which means they often struggle in school, are more likely to drop out and more likely to still be poor as adults. And then their children are prone to doing worse in school and the cycle continues.  A study published in the journal Pediatrics offers promising evidence that low-income parents can be trained to improve the chances their children will succeed. But the intervention has to be intensive and start well before the child is 3 years old.   Downside of Electric Cars (begins at 32:06)  Guest: David Abraham, Senior Fellow at the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, Author of “The Elements of Power”  Tesla’s latest electric car caused such a stir when it was unveiled recently that, in just one week, some 325,000 people plunked down a $1,000 deposit to get one. The Model 3 will cost $35,000 – which is less than half what previous models have sold for and