North Dakota Railroad Involved In Accident Causing Oil Inferno Is Wholly Owned By Warren Buffett

The New York Post has the story here, but never mentions Warren Buffett, who has become richer off transportation of oil by rail because his pal Barack Obama did him a favor by stopping the XL pipeline in exchange for his support for higher taxes on the rich:

The derailment happened amid increased concerns about the United States’ increased reliance on rail to carry crude oil. Fears of catastrophic derailments were particularly stoked after last summer’s crash in Canada of a train carrying crude oil from North Dakota’s Bakken oil patch. Forty-seven people died in the ensuing fire. The tracks that the train was on Monday pass through the middle of Casselton, and Morris said it was “a blessing it didn’t happen within the city.” The train had more than 100 cars, and about 80 of them were moved away from the site.

According to Wikipedia, here, and BNSF's own website:

The BNSF Railway is the second-largest freight railroad network in North America, second to the Union Pacific Railroad (its primary competitor for Western U.S. freight), and is one of seven North American Class I railroads. It has three transcontinental routes that provide high-speed links between the western and eastern United States. BNSF trains traveled over 169 million miles in 2010, more than any other North American railroad. ... Headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, the railroad is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

Libertarians At Forbes Completely Misrepresent The Mortgage Interest Deduction

Here:

The mortgage interest deduction (MID) is the largest personal tax deduction on the books and is widely considered one of the most sacrosanct tax benefits in the country because it is seen as making homeownership more affordable for middle-class Americans. Our new Reason Foundation research suggests, though, that the average benefits from the MID are not enough to be the difference between renting and home owning for a household.

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If there's a sacrosanct tax benefit in this country, which by the way benefits mostly upper income people who also pay most of the taxes, it's reduced rates of taxation on dividends and long term capital gains, which the Joint Committee on Taxation says costs the federal government $596 billion in lost revenue between 2012 and 2016. The mortgage interest deduction, by contrast, will cost the feds $364 billion. Leave it to Forbes not to mention that.

The mortgage interest deduction may or may not be "the largest personal" deduction, but in the big picture of revenue forfeited by the feds due to tax preferences, which is categorized as "tax loss expenditure", the mortgage interest deduction represents just 6.9% of the revenue lost out of the largest 21 line items in the JCT's report representing $5.25 trillion in tax loss expenditures for the period mentioned (here).

Preferential treatment of income from stocks isn't the biggest preference either (11.4%), but it is much bigger than the preference given to mortgage interest. But businesses do get the biggest preference. When employers provide healthcare contributions, health insurance and long term care insurance, they get to deduct all of that. Cost to the feds? A whopping $706.6 billion (13.5%). And that figure will only grow under ObamaCare.

And how about retirement plan contributions? Cost of excluding both defined benefit and defined contribution plans comes to $505.3 billion over the period (9.6%).

Compared to these, the mortgage interest deduction comes in a distant fourth (in fifth is the earned income tax credit at $319.7 billion).

The much-maligned charitable deduction, meanwhile, which was the original basis for the standard deduction in the tax code, at $172.4 billion represents just 3.3% of the lost $5.25 trillion in revenue from 2012 to 2016. It comes in fourteenth.

There's lots of things wrong with the world, but changing the home mortgage interest deduction isn't going to fix them. For libertarians to focus on it as they do should tell you there's more going on here than meets the eye: an ideological bias against home ownership because it limits "freedom". Millions beg to differ.

Largest Sums Of Federal Revenue Forfeited Because Of The Tax Code, Joint Committee On Taxation, 2012-2016

$706.6 billion: exclusion of employer contributions for healthcare, health insurance premiums and long term care insurance premiums.

$596.0 billion: reduced rates of taxation on dividends and long term capital gains.

$505.3 billion: net exclusion of pension contributions and earnings to defined benefit/contribution plans.

$364.0 billion: mortgage interest deduction.

$319.7 billion: earned income tax credit.

$305.0 billion: exclusion of Medicare Parts A&B benefits.

$289.4 billion: credit for children under 17.

$259.2 billion: deduction of nonbusiness state and local government income taxes, sales taxes and personal property taxes.

$239.7 billion: deferral of active income of controlled foreign corporations.

$236.1 billion: exclusion of capital gains at death.

$184.3 billion: subsidies for participation in healthcare exchanges.

$182.8 billion: exclusion of interest on public purpose state and local government bonds.

$175.8 billion: exclusion of benefits provided under cafeteria plans.

$172.4 billion: deduction for charitable contributions.

$172.1 billion: exclusion of untaxed Social Security and railroad retirement benefits.

$153.8 billion: exclusion of investment income on life insurance and annuity contracts.

$143.0 billion: property tax deduction.

$124.1 billion: exclusion of capital gains on the sale of a home.

$119.1 billion: credits for tuition for post-secondary education.

So-Called Conservative Supporters Of Illegal Alien Amnesty To Meet Tonight In DC

Bloomberg has the story, here, naming the following so-called conservatives and right of center groups in attendance to launch a lobbying bomb on Washington for an illegal immigration amnesty bill from the Senate which is dead in the US House:

US Chamber of Commerce

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg

NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg

Marriott CEO Arne Sorenson

News Corp's Rupert Murdoch

Southern Baptist Convention

American Conservative Union

Americans for Tax Reform's Grover Norquist.

You have met the enemy, and it ain't us.

Vindictive CNSNews.com blames Speaker Boehner for $3 trillion jump in total public debt

Here:

Thus, all spending and borrowing by the federal government are the de facto and de jure—n.b. constitutional—responsibility of the House of Representatives that John Boehner leads.

Well, yeah, and the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "go and do thou likewise".

The author of the posting, Terence Jeffrey, never once places the spending and borrowing in their broader historical context of the economic depression which ensued in 2007, long before John Boehner took the reigns as Speaker of the House in 2011.

Never once does Mr. Jeffrey mention the revenue side, which dried up like an old prune in consequence of the panic which saw home prices crash and a record 29.5 million people file first time claims for unemployment in 2009. Nor does he bother to mention the deliberate, bipartisan decision taken to reduce revenues to relieve the American people in this situation by temporarily cutting their Social Security taxes by 33% for back to back years in 2011 and 2012 when nothing else seemed to be working to revivify the economy. Revenues constrained by declining tax receipts due to depression-like conditions all over the economy coupled with these tax cuts, after peaking in fiscal 2007 at $2.568 trillion, for the next five fiscal years never once got above that level after reaching their low in 2009 at $2.105 trillion. What did Mr. Jeffrey expect to happen given that, the debt to decline?

One suspects Mr. Jeffrey isn't interested, however, in any of the facts and their context, only in slamming John Boehner. Otherwise he'd have mentioned them, and that Boehner's predecessor Democrat Nancy Pelosi increased the debt at a rate 63% faster in 2009 and 2010 than Boehner has in his nearly three years as Speaker.

Really bad form, old boy.

Hey Mark Levin! Who Got The Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent Under A Democrat President?

John Boehner, you ingrate.

George Bush couldn't do that even with control of the House and Senate.

Obama Wants A Debt Default To Discredit His Opposition?

So suggests JT Young, who makes a plausible, although strictly political argument, here, for why Obama might want a debt default:

[T]he last time Obama faced Congressional Republicans in a debt limit fight, he lost enormously. ... However the roots of the administration's non-negotiating stance may run deeper than just that last defeat. It is not just a repeat of the past it must avoid, but a continuation of the present. ... Obamacare is hardly the worst of the administration's PR problems. According to a Bloomberg News national poll released 9/25, Obama's approval rating on the economy is negative, with 38% approving to 56% disapproving. On the federal deficit, it is -32% (29% to 61%). On the recent Syria sidetrack, his rating is 31% - 53%. ... It is clear that nothing the administration wants is likely to move over the next three years. Historically, the president's party generally loses seats in midterm elections - particularly second midterms - so the president's legislative situation is only likely to worsen. Should it do so, the president's political fortunes and popularity are sure to follow. In sum, there appears to be no variable that will change the chessboard. ... [T]he president's only hope appears to stake everything on a single move. In this case, it appears the move is to goad Congressional Republicans into a dramatic loss in a high-profile - and ideally prolonged - budget battle. That means a shutdown or worse, default, to discredit his opposition - in his best case scenario, to such an extent that he reverses the trend of normal midterm losses and the rapid decline of second term presidents' political relevancy. With his second term initiatives dead early, fighting a continuous rearguard action on his signature achievement, anticipating the loss of additional Congressional seats, and with lame duck status just over a year away, the White House may see little to lose by betting large. If so, America could find itself with quite a lot to lose, as this budget fight gets nastier, longer, and more dangerous than anyone anticipated.

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But what if the non-negotiating stance is more than just political in the conventional sense? What if it's ideological in a more sinister way? What if Obama really means to transform the country not just by eliminating Republicans, who are the political representatives of the middle class, but by eliminating the middle class itself? And capitalism in the process? And using the crisis of a default to install himself permanently at the head of the government? Using the impressive means now at his disposal with surveillance capabilities, militarized police who care nothing for the Fourth Amendment as we saw in the Tsarnaev affair, drones, the Department of Homeland Security generally, and the TSA in particular to control travel? And a de-Christianized, paganized military loyal to the commander in chief?

As all students of communist revolution know, it is the middle class which is the greatest enemy of the communists because being more numerous than the upper class the middle class stands in the way of the revolutionaries' attacks on the rich and on private property as a concept. "Their special interests are absolutely incompatible with the economic disturbances which are the inevitable accompaniment of transitional periods. The disturbance of credit cuts the ground from under their feet. They begin shouting for order, for the strengthening of credit, in such a way that every concession to them leads in effect to a complete restoration of the old order", wrote Bela Kun in 1918.

Make no mistake. This has been a transitional period in the mind of Obama, who is trying to transform the country in a number of ways which are not in keeping with America's past. For example, despite growing public opposition since March 2010, Obama continues to insist that ObamaCare must be implemented even though he himself has underscored its unpopularity by unilaterally and unlawfully altering and delaying key features of it. The Supreme Court itself has validated its compulsory basis, which the regime constantly trots out as authoritative as any teaching bearing Pontifical imprimatur. But at what cost to the middle class whose numbers continue to shrink? The best estimates show that ObamaCare will force 16 million heretofore middle class Americans into Medicaid, the healthcare system for the country's poor which already has 70 million participants, dramatically reducing their numbers by transforming their condition to dependency on the government. Fully 93% of American wage earners already make less than $100,000 a year, and 75% bring home less than $50,000 annually. Between the two extremes lie barely 30 million people. This week's posterchild for ObamaCare, for example, was a law student who got cheaper healthcare through Healthcare.gov, ObamaCare's new web portal which just opened, because it shunted him into Medicaid because his income is too low to qualify for a subsidized ObamaCare compliant health insurance plan. This was widely viewed as a positive!

The truth is Obama has done nothing to help the middle class even though he claims to be their champion, just as the Affordable Care Act will neither provide care nor be affordable. In fact, one might say Obama has been exacting revenge on the middle class. Even though he's been in charge of the government going on five years, Obama has done nothing to improve middle class incomes, which have instead headed in the other direction under his watch. Annual household income has been reduced by over 5% since June 2009 alone.

Similarly the hallmark of middle class membership, the home ownership rate has been reversed to the 1996 level after 5 million homes have been repossessed by the banks. During Obama's tenure in office the ranks of those not in the labor force have soared above the 90 million mark as the longest unemployment recession in the post-war period appears to have no end in sight nearly 6 years since it began, driving college graduates back home with their parents and dramatically reducing family formation. The credit expansion of the post-war economy upon which home ownership was based has hit a brick wall since 2007 while the powers that be have claimed to fix it while enriching only the bankers and the richest investors. Total credit market debt outstanding is up less than $8 trillion in the interim when by all rights it should be up $25 trillion. We even have so-called right wingers who both applaud this decline of home ownership and enthusiastically agitate for the elimination of the home mortgage interest deduction. They are as much useful idiots to Obama's pinched leftist vision as have been Republican free-traders who helped the investor class get rich by shipping American jobs to cheaper labor markets abroad, gutting American exceptionalism long before Obama came along.

As if all that isn't bad enough, unprecedented financial repression of the savings of the middle class is the official policy of Obama's Federal Reserve through Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing, arresting the basis of the gains which customarily accrue over time from compounding and destroying the incomes of the already retired.

Its main sources of wealth in employment and earning power, housing and savings already severely punished under Obama, the middle class is just an inch away from losing it all in a debt default. And once they are out of the way, there will be nothing standing between Obama and finally spreading the wealth around of the 2-3 million at the top who hold it.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Used To Be "The Law Of The Land" Too, But That Didn't Stop Democrats From Trying To Repeal It

Rich Lowry in The New York Post, here:

Having done the deed, Democrats now expect Republicans to salute smartly, accept “the law of the land” and suggest minor improvements that Democrats will, in their wisdom, decide whether or not to adopt. In other words, they recommend the acquiescence of surrender. If this were a consistent principle rather than opportunistic advice, Democrats would have been content to leave “don’t ask, don’t tell” in place and never would have agitated to repeal the Bush tax cuts, out of deference to duly constituted policy and law. ...

[T]he law suffers from basic design flaws beyond the question of whether the Obama administration can get its software to work. It depends on young, healthy people buying insurance even as it reduces their incentive to do so; it encourages employers to dump workers off their current insurance; it suppresses full-time work, through the employer mandate; in 10 years, the law still leaves 30 million people uninsured.

ObamaCare Will Force Millions More Into Medicaid, And DENY Them The Right To Buy Private Insurance

It will deny them because ObamaCare-compliant plans will simply be too expensive for them to afford, and those will be the only ones available. 

John Goodman tried to warn us over two years ago, here:

"While defenders of the new law have chattered endlessly about people who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions (turns out there are only 12,500 of them) almost no one seems to have noticed that 16 million people are not only going to be forced into Medicaid, they are effectively going to be denied the right to buy any private insurance — whether or not they have a pre-existing condition."

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But today it is coming true.

For example, in one county in Michigan an older, married, full-time worker with one child still in the home must make at least $19,530/year to get a tax credit to make the bargain basement Bronze plan monthly health insurance "affordable" for his family, but go below that threshold and he loses the subsidy entirely and ends up in Medicaid whether he likes it or not. That means he must make almost $9.39/hour, almost $2/hour above the Michigan minimum wage of $7.40/hour, or he's out of luck.

A single parent in the same situation must make no less than $15,510 to stay out of Medicaid and get the subsidy.

There were almost 61 million Americans making less than $20,000/year in 2011, and nearly 50 million making less than $15,000, meaning many of them will be forced into Medicaid under ObamaCare if they are not among the 70.4 million already in Medicaid in 2011, already 46.5% of all wage earners in the country that year.

Two kinds of insurance, ObamaCare and its crappier forerunner Medicaid, and one unhappy nation.

Total Public Debt Outstanding Kept At $16.738 Trillion By Treasury Dept. For Four Months!

I can't show you all of the data because the format is too long for me to capture it all in a single screen shot.

All of June, all of July, all of August, and now all of September at $16.738 trillion, despite the fact that federal revenues are estimated to be running at $226 billion per month in fiscal 2013.

See for yourself here.

Most Of The Free-Rider Problem Is An EMTALA Problem, Not A General Healthcare Problem

Maybe a guy who can't count shouldn't mess with your health insurance.

One good estimate of the cost of uncompensated hospital and doctor care in 2008 was just $43 billion, or 5.7% of a hospital care economy of $750 billion that year. But total spending on health care is much higher than that. For example, for 2011 the total size of the healthcare economy has been estimated at $2.7 trillion.

Consistent with that, Megan McArdle recently cites an Urban Institute estimate here for the following year, 2009, showing costs of all uncompensated care, not just for hospitals and doctors, at $62 billion, saying "this is a relatively small amount of overall health spending ... in the trillions."

She's right. $62 billion is just 2.3% of a $2.7 trillion healthcare economy.

The spread between those two numbers for 2008 and 2009 is $19 billion. Assuming a 4% increase in the costs of the hospital/doctor portion only from 2008 to 2009, the spread declines to $17 billion. That's the non-hospital side of the free-rider problem in 2009, less than 1% of all healthcare spending in 2011. Passing ObamaCare to fix that is like firing a bazooka to kill a gnat.

Clearly the bulk of the free-rider problem has been in the hospitals, which will continue to experience problems with uncompensated care despite Obama's Affordable Care Act.

That problem exists because of Ronald Reagan's 1986 signature on EMTALA, requiring hospitals to provide care regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. It drove up visits to emergency rooms over 26% in the first 15 years, and uncompensated cost totals over 600% since 1983, when they were just $6 billion compared with over $45 billion today. Those costs have been paid by all of us over time in a variety of ways, not the least of which have been increased healthcare insurance premiums, higher taxes, and longer waits in fewer available ERs.

While we're at it trying to overturn ObamaCare, EMTALA should be scrapped with it.

Stereotypical Federal Spending Wei Tu Hai

Federal outlays from fiscal 1985 through 2012 are up 274%, from $946.3 billion in 1985 to $3,537.1 billion in 2012. Federal receipts have lagged those outlays, however, up only 234% over the period, resulting in a net addition to deficits in nominal terms of $9.08 trillion as of the end of fiscal 2012, exploding the national debt. The political argument has been whether the taxes were insufficient to cover the spending, or the spending too high given the taxes. But in 24 of those 27 years there were annual deficits, each a message that Sum Ting Wong. Many Democrats shrugged and answered on taxes "Wi Tu Lo". Republicans looked at all that spending and said "Ho Lee Fuk, spending Wei Tu Hai". And now that we are $17 trillion in the hole the people say "Bang Ding Ow". But will they demand a cut to spending? No Fuk Hing Wei. Nao Tu Suun, they will say, as always. Po Ni up Tai Ni Sum later, maybe, but No Like Lee. Besides, Ri Li No Won Tu, anyhow. No Fun. Rather Tai Wan On.

Kudlow Is Right That Obama's Glorious Immediate Post-War Never Existed, But Completely Misses The Spending Cut Angle

Larry Kudlow, here:

[S]peaking in Galesburg, Ill., this summer, Obama served up a convenient historical fairy tale: "In the period after world War II," he said, "a growing middle class was the engine of our prosperity." Presumably he was thinking of a time when high taxes on the rich and industrial-union rule had the middle class soaring. The trouble is, Obama's history is wrong.

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Arguably, government spending cuts were the engine of post-war prosperity.

While Truman's record is second only to JFK/LBJ for real GDP growth in the post-war period, it occurred under special circumstances of extraordinarily deep government spending CUTS, which is little appreciated today when politicians and Keynesian and monetarist economists stress the importance of government spending for GDP. The truly remarkable thing under Truman is how the economy soared as spending decreased by TWO THIRDS from 1945 to 1947, as Arnold Kling reminded us here last year. Funny how Kudlow doesn't mention this. I guess they don't teach that at Princeton.

Under Truman's successor Eisenhower, real GDP growth slowed dramatically because of onerous levels of taxation maintained primarily to retire the war debts, but Eisenhower spent almost as frugally as Truman at the same time, making them the two best presidents we've had when it comes to small increases in the US public debt. That said, only the two Bush presidents and Obama have turned in poorer GDP performances than IKE. Funny also how Kudlow mentions only the one Bush. He leaves out the other one. You know, the "read my lips . . . no new taxes" Bush who ended up raising taxes.

Interestingly enough for US public debt growth, JFK/LBJ come in right behind Truman and Eisenhower while introducing the tax cuts which might have made Eisenhower's GDP record better than it was. Despite the guns and butter era under LBJ, the presidents occupying The White House between 1945 and 1968 were the most fiscally responsible we've had in the post-war, and it was a dramatic resetting of the baseline for spending LOWER under Truman which was the foundation of that period's economic growth.

The Immorality Of Keynesianism Explained In A Thought Experiment

From the conclusion of Jeffrey Dorfman for Forbes, here:

"Actions by private individuals that are not beneficial to society do not suddenly become so when the government does them. Ask yourself if government policies [of printing money and income redistribution from the rich to the poor through the tax code] would be legal and have a positive effect if a private citizen did the same thing [by counterfeiting money and robbing banks]. If the answer is no, using government to accomplish the same aims will not change the policy into a good one."

Inequality! Obama Delays ObamaCare Penalties For Big Business, But Not For You.

Time reports here:

The delay deprives the federal government of a year of penalties that would have been paid by companies that do not meet the law’s requirements, with as yet unknown budgetary effects. Republicans had warned of a downturn in hiring as a result of the mandate.

The so-called individual mandate is unaffected by the rule change. That provision requires the vast majority of Americans to purchase insurance or pay a penalty, with tax credits provided to those who can’t afford coverage.

Nolan Finley Of The Detroit News Wants To Junk The IRS, And The Income Tax

THIS IS NOT NOLAN FINLEY

Here:

"[R]eplace the income tax with a national sales tax. You’d pay tax on the money you spend instead of the money you earn. That would eliminate the need for an IRS that audits tax returns, hands out non-profit status and enforces a tax code that is egregiously complex and unfair. If the national sales tax isn’t the answer, then a similar outcome might be achieved by drastically lowering current income tax rates in exchange for eliminating all deductions and credits. With no reason to examine returns, the IRS could be much smaller. Without auditing power, it’d be less intimidating."

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Why not do both? A low flat sales tax and a low flat income tax? We already have one flat tax, called Social Security. And we already pay an average state sales tax of 5+% everywhere. Just abolish the income tax and augment the current flat Payroll Tax with the new one. Business everywhere is already set up to collect that and withhold, so dovetailing that with a corporate flat tax should also be easy to do. Presto. No IRS needed for America's 151 million wage earners and the millions of businesses who employ them.

Herman Cain's more or less revenue neutral 999 plan looks better and better with every passing day of the IRS scandal targeting Obama's political enemies: a flat 9% federal sales tax, a flat 9% tax on all income, and a flat 9% corporate income tax.

A man before his time.

How To Become Fat Like The Government

h/t Scott

Big Deal: Debt To GDP Ratio Comes In At 105%

The debt as of 4/24/13 was $16.7943 trillion. GDP in the latest report was $16.0102 trillion. So the one divided by the other yields 1.05, or 105%. To which I say, Big deal.

In other words, the current annualized national income no longer is sufficient to cover what we owe. But there is no situation in which anyone stops consuming and simply works for a year to pay off everything one owes. At this you'd last maybe 40 days if you were Jesus Christ, but trust me, you aren't Jesus Christ. This is not the way to look at it. Instead, we should look at the debt like a mortgage.

Interest payments on this ever-growing debt in fiscal 2012 came to $360 billion, implying an interest rate paid of a little more than 2%. This rate is artificial. It is the result of manipulation afforded to us by the Federal Reserve's deliberate policy we affectionately call ZIRP, zero interest rate policy, which pushes long term interest rates down into the cellar. A more realistic rate would be double that, 4%, about a half point higher than current averages for 30-year mortgages (call it an extra penalty for having less than AAA status if you want). So, if one were to treat the total public debt outstanding like a mortgage amortized over 30 years at 4% fixed, our "mortgage" payment to pay off the debt would be $80.304 billion monthly, or about $964 billion a year. And you'd have to stop deficit spending.

In the current spending environment, $964 billion annually is about 25% of current government outlays of $3.8 trillion. Current government receipts, however, have lagged the outlays by about $1 trillion annually, so the "mortgage" payment would be closer to 35% of income.

Responsible persons all over this country pay off mortgages with that percentage of income devoted to debt service, and they do it all the time. It's high time the federal government started acting like them. In order to do so, however, current spending apart from the "mortgage" payment would have to be cut $1.96 trillion annually, or 48%, to $1.84 trillion annually for all programs. (That squealing you hear is the sound of stuck pigs).

Somebody get on this right away.     

Rich Liberals Pay People Under The Table. Doesn't Everyone?

The Washington Post has drunk the KoolAid offered up by The New Yorker that there is an enormous underground economy out there where child-walkers and nannies get paid under the table helping to account for as much as $2 trillion in unreported income. $2T! Imagine it!

This must be part of a softening up campaign underway to raise taxes on the middle class. After all, we can afford to pay, they lie to themselves. But in all my long life in the middle class, I have known exactly two persons who could afford a nanny, one of whom can't anymore. She is an MBA who worked in an industry that actually made things. People stopped buying those things, and she lost her very good job. The other one deals in trouble. She is a liberal insurance company lawyer who still has hers. As for the child-walkers, I have known exactly none. In fact, I've never even seen one, not in Colorado, not in Illinois, and not in Michigan where I now live.

This is a liberal fantasy projected onto the rest of the country. It is rich liberals, denizens of America's great cities, who hire the nannies and pay the child-walkers, all under the table. The rest of us drive our own kids to school or walk them to the bus ourselves, clean our own homes, and do all the other things of daily living for ourselves. We can't afford to hire anybody. In fact, we're plundering our retirement accounts just to maintain our former standard of living. You know, the one we had in the years B.O., Before Obama. For many of us in the years A.O., our income has been cut in half because we got fired after long, productive careers. The nearly 30 million people who filed first time claims for unemployment in 2009 were a response to the 2008 election, not the effect of you know who. Employers knew what was coming, and boy, were they right. That contractor I'd like to hire and pay cash to replace the windows with the broken seals will just have to wait, about four more years is my guess.

In 2011 over 80% of wage earners made less than $60K per year, but we are somehow supposed to be the ones paying all these people under the table for services we can't afford? That's 122 million wage earners out of 151 million who are shelling out all this dough? You know, the same ones who've canceled cable, stopped eating out, jacked-up all their deductibles and learned a hundred ways to make red beans and rice.  

They used to call it liberal projection syndrome back in the day when education was good enough to transmit subtlety. Now we just call it bull.

Tax Compliance Costs: Over A Full Week Of Your Time

The poll tax in the north for 1873

If it takes 6.1 billion hours to comply with the tax code as reported here, for 114.7 million households that's over 53 hours per household, or 6.7 eight hour days, each.

It took me four six hour days but still, this is insane.