China’s Good Samaritan Law (见义勇为法) Takes Effect

China’s Good Samaritan Law went into effect on October 1 to encourage people who are ready to help others. Under the law, people who voluntarily offer emergency assistance to those who are, or who they believe to be, injured, ill or in danger, will not have civil responsibility in the event of harm to the victims.

The new law aims to ease the reluctance people feel toward helping strangers for fear of legal consequences if they make mistakes in treatment. It is a response to the phenomenon of people hesitating     1     ( help) fallen senior citizens due to concern that they might be blackmailed (讹诈) later.

There has been no shortage of cases     2     people hesitated to offer assistance to those who are in need over the past decade. And some good Samaritans have been blackmailed for charitable acts. In 2011, a two-year-old girl known as Xiao Yueyue was run over by two cars, and 18 people passed by     3     offering emergency help. The girl died after days of medical treatment. In 2014, a man from Guangdong Province aided a senior citizen, but he     4     (accuse) of knocking him down. The man committed suicide when     5     (face) with demands for a large sum of money.

These cases     6     (arouse) debate about morality and heroism in China in recent years. “If you don’t provide help, you will blame yourself, but if you do help, you are likely     7     (hurt) by the people you help. It is really a difficult choice,” one netizen said on Sina Weibo.

    8     there had been calls for a national Good Samaritan law, only a few cities pushed ahead with such laws before the nationwide law came into effect.

However, some experts are concerned     9     there could be some danger from a nationwide Good Samaritan Law. “Rescuers who know little about first aid could bring serious harm to people in critical conditions,” said Yang Lixin, a professor at the Renmin University of China. He hoped that the government     10     introduce details of the policy soon while encouraging people to voluntarily offer assistance.

New York and New Tax

According to a Manhattan Institute survey, more than half of high-earning New Yorkers are working entirely from home and 44% are considering leaving the city. Ned Lamont, Connecticut’s governor, has said “the old idea of the commuter(通勤者) going into New York City five days a week may be outdated.” It does seem     1     that the tens of thousands commuting from Mr. Lamont’s state will continue to do so. The region’s governors have     2     well together to deal with the pandemic(流行病), but the friendliness may soon end over taxes.

When people from     3     states like New Jersey and Connecticut commute to New York to work for a New York-based employer, they must pay New York tax on the related earned income. Even those who work from home must pay New York taxes unless the employee is working outside New York by     4    .

Taxpayers and those states are looking closely at this loophole(漏洞). In December, Connecticut and New Jersey applied to the Supreme Court to consider a case which     5     a state’s authority to tax non-residents’ income while they are working remotely. They think this is definitely a(n)     6     to the city’s finances. “Firms have considered leaving the city before, and employees are gradually accepting the idea. They have been working remotely for almost ten months and they’ve     7     to that idea.”

Companies are also watching the progression of the billionaire Mark to Market Tax Act, which would treat capital     8     from billionaires’ property as taxable income. New York’s Democratic governor said he would reject any laws     9     heavy taxes on the rich, because it would drive out wealthy, mobile residents. It would not take too many moving trucks for the city to feel the economic loss, says Michael Hendrix. A 5%     10     of New Yorkers making about $10,000 would result in an annual loss of $933m—roughly the amount distributed to the city’s health department.

7 . E-cigarettes Ban:Good news for Tobacco?

The proposed ban on flavored e-cigarettes may drive many Americans back to cigarettes,said Christopher Palmeri and Jeff Green in the Los Ange Times.

Responding to an outbreak of hundreds of serious lung illnesses from vapes(电子烟)that killed a seventh person this week, FDA(食物药品监管局)will outlaw everything but tobacco-flavored-cigarettes, as Michigan and New York state recently did. Flavors like buttered popcorn and mango helped create "an explosion" in teen vaping. But hundreds of thousands of teens already addicted to nicotine-and 9 million adults who vape--may simply replace vaping with tobacco products. By banning favored vapes the government may be "closing the shed door after the horse has gotten out."

Nobody vapes "because the flavor is so amazing," said David Marcus in The Federalist com. That's why the ban is so clueless."If kids want to taste bubble gum,they can buy,you know,bubble gum." Vaping giants like Juul need to be honest about the fact that they’re in the nicotine business, and monitor themselves accordingly. They should spend billions ensuring that stores don’t sell to minors instead of touting the "scientific conclusion"that e-cigarettes are safer than smoking. The burning involved in smoking cigarettes creates tar and a bunch of chemicals not present in e-cigarettes' watery vapor. True, but nicotine is also a dangerous and addictive drug and vaping liquid itself contains chemicals that damage blood vessels(血管)."The idea of safe smoking" is"a lie," and the vaping industry's fruit- and candy-flavored pods" are proof of evil intent."

"The massive increase in teen vapers" is a reasonable concern, said Robert Gebelhoff in Washington Post.com.But the evidence suggests that the lung illnesses that led the government to act were caused by black-market products cut with dangerous substance.Banning favored vapes will only drive more nicotine addicts and teens to the black market,which will be happy to provide fruity pods. Instead of banning flavors, the government "should empower the FDA to fully regulate the industry." That would let science,"not panic,guide our policy."

8 . The teenage years of an individual is marked by evaluating one's values,experiencing a shift in outlooks,and a tendency to act rebellious. It can also be a time when someone becomes extremely____ to negative influences,and is drawn towards dangerous situations. On the other hand,for parents, the period of their children's adolescence means regularly worrying about their safety and formation as a citizen. Thus, a method of _____teenagers' security is needed, and curfews(宵禁)are often seen as such a measure，since they have proved their ______the same time, certain peculiarities exist about establishing curfews for children.

The issue of teenage curfews is widely debated in the United States, where this method is still rather _____, and in European democracies, where this measure is yet not so widely used .The first and foremost reason for establishing curfews is children's security. ____curfews require teenagers under 17 years to stay out of streets starting from 11p.m.or midnight. This is believed to protect them from crimes committed after nightfall,as well as from breaking the law, and there exists serious evidence _____this belief. For example, when New Orleans enabled a dusk-til-dawn curfew in 1994, the rates of juvenile crime were reported to fall more than 20 percent.Even more impressive _______were recorded in Dallas, which reported a 30-percent decrease in violent juvenile crime,and a 21-percent decrease in the overall rates of crimes committed by young people (The New York Times).

On the other hand, curfews can be seen as a preventive measure that rob young people of their rights,____ their freedom. This opinion is _____ supported by the fact that curfew violations(违规) and the respective charges are among the most often committed juvenile crimes in the United States. _______, there were reports claiming that police arrested more non-white teenagers for curfew violations.All this can cause a teenager to believe they have crossed a psychological line dividing them as criminals; thus,such teenagers may start to see themselves as outlaws, which can _____ committing more serious crimes than a curfew offense.

What is important for a parent to remember when establishing a curfew for their children is that a teenager's misjudged view of certain______may cause them to misbehave in some other way; this is proved by research conducted by the University of Minnesota, according to which teens tend to protest against what they see as _______. Considering this,parents should ______the authoritarian style of establishing curfews; instead, they should have a conversation with their teenager that would be aimed at finding ideal conditions for a curfew that would ______both sides.

9 . Progressives often support diversity missions as a path to equality and a way to level the playing field. But all too often such policies are an insincere form of virtue-signaling that benefits only the most privileged and does little to help average people.

A pair of bills sponsored by Massachusetts state Senator Jason Lewis and House Speaker Pro Tempore Patricia Haddad, to ensure "gender equality" on boards and commissions, provide a case in point.

Haddad and Lewis are concerned that more than half the state-government board are less than 40 percent female. In order to ensure that elite women have more such opportunities, they have proposed imposing government quotas（配额）. If the bills become law, state boards and commissions will be required to set aside 50 percent of board seats for women by 2022.

The bills are similar to a measure recently adopted in California, which last year became the first state to require gender quotas for private companies. In signing the measure, California Governor Jerry Brown admitted that the law, which clearly classifies people on the basis of sex, is probably unconstitutional.

The US Supreme Court frowns on sex-based classifications unless they are designed to address an "important" policy interest. Because the California law applies to all boards, even where there is no history of prior discrimination, courts are likely to rule that the law violates the constitutional guarantee of "equal protection".

But are such government mandates even necessary? Female participation on corporate boards may not currently mirror the percentage of women in the general population, but so what?

The number of women on corporate boards has been steadily increasing without government interference. According to a study by Catalyst, between 2010 and 2015 the share of women on the boards of global corporations increased by 54 percent.

Requiring companies to make gender the primary qualification for board membership will inevitably lead to less experienced private sector boards. That is exactly what happened when Norway adopted a nationwide corporate gender quota.

Writing in The New Republic, Alice Lee notes that increasing the number of opportunities for board membership without increasing the pool of qualified women to serve on such boards has led to a "golden skirt "phenomenon, where the same elite women occupy multiple seats on a variety of boards.

Next time somebody pushes corporate quotas as a way to promote gender equity, remember that such policies are largely self-serving measures that make their sponsors feel good but do little to help average women.

10 . Financial regulations in Britain have imposed a rather unusual rule on the bosses of big banks. Starting next year, any guaranteed bonus of top executives could be delayed 10 years if their banks are under investigation for wrongdoing. The main purpose of this “clawback” rule is to hold bankers responsible for harmful risk-taking and to restore public trust in financial institution. Yet officials also hope for a much larger benefit: more long-term decision-making not only by banks but also by all corporations, to build a stronger economy for future generations.

“Short-termism” or the desire for quick profits, has worsened in publicly traded companies, says the Bank of England’s top economist, Andrew Haldane. He quotes a giant of classical economies, Alfred Marshall, in describing this financial impatience as acting like “Children who pick the strawberries out of their pudding to eat them at once” rather than putting them aside to be eaten last.

The average time for holding a stock in both the United States and Britain, he notes, has dropped from seven years to seven months in recent decades. Transient(短期的) investors, who demand high quarterly profits from companies, can hold back a firm’s efforts to invest in long-term research or to build up customer loyalty. This has been called “quarterly capitalism”.

In addition, new digital technologies have allowed more rapid trading of equities( 股 票 ), quicker use of information, and thus shortens attention spans in financial markets. “There seems to be an advantage of short-term thinking at the expense of long-term investing,” said Commissioner Daniel Gallagher of the US Securities and Exchange Commission in speech this week.

In the US, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 has pushed most public companies to delay performance bonuses for senior executives by about a year, slightly helping reduce “short-termism.” In its latest survey of CEO pay, The Wall Street Journal finds that “a substantial part” of executive pay is now tied to performance.

Much more could be done to encourage “long-termism,” such as changes in the tax code and quicker disclosure(披露) of stock acquisitions. In France, shareholders who hold onto a company investment for at least two years can sometimes earn more voting rights in a company.

Within companies, the right compensation design can provide motivation for executives to think beyond their own time at the company and on behalf of all shareholders. Britain’s new rule is a reminder to bankers that society has an interest in their performance, not just for the short term but for the long term.