The Oxymoron of the Day

Here's one from the just-when-I-think-I've-seen-it-all department: "upfront addendum."

Umbday in any language.

If You Lost Your Job During the Crisis and Started a Business, You've Got Company

The easiest way for people who've lost a job to start a business is to keep doing the same kind of work they've always done, but no longer as an employee of a company.

Call it miscellaneous work income, freelance income, sub-contracting or consulting, you're most likely filing Schedule C as a sole proprietor who works for competitors of your former firm, or maybe even still for your former firm.

Believe it or not, it's the single largest category of "company" in America. In 2009 22.7 million sole proprietor returns were filed with the IRS representing total business receipts of $1.2 trillion. This is a relatively small sum as you'll soon see, but this category of Mom and Pop small business easily outnumbers the others.

Partnerships in 2008, for example, numbered just 3.1 million returns, and represented 19.3 million partners and total business receipts of $5.9 trillion. A close second for numbers of individuals represented.

S Corporations came in at nearly 4 million returns in 2007, representing $6.1 trillion in total business receipts.

Rounding out the picture are the corporation heavy hitters most Americans still work for, which filed 5.8 million returns in 2008 accounting for total business receipts of $28.6 trillion. That's a lot of moolah. These are the companies which provided you with such things as workmen's compensation and unemployment coverage as a matter of the law.

When they fired you in 2008, 2009 and 2010 and you started your own "business", you learned that you had to fly without that net under you. You also got to learn about the true cost of such things as Social Security, for which you only used to pay half. Now you get to pay it all, but of course you also get an adjustment to income for it, just like a real business.

If you're in misery about it all as tomorrow's tax deadline looms, you've got lots of company. Around 22,699,999 strong. 

Obama the Milker in Chief Mocks Critics in Cartagena, Says Scouting Next Vacation

Just days after a reporter confronted him on the issue.

The story and video are here.

Over 2 Years After the Depression, US States Still Collect Less Than Peak Revenue

CNBC.com has the details here:

[T]he Rockefeller Institute of Government noted on Friday that overall tax collections were still 2.1 percent below peak levels, and personal income tax collections were still 6.8 percent below the high reached in fiscal 2008. ...


The Rockefeller report noted that in fiscal 2010, total tax collections were down from the peaks by a much steeper 10 percent and in fiscal 2009 by 8.4 percent.

Brian Wesbury Attacks the VAT Because the Problem is Spending, not Taxation

Brian Wesbury is very skeptical on historical grounds that adding a VAT can do anything to increase revenues relative to GDP:

"[T]here have only been eight years of balanced or surplus budgets in the 61 years since 1950; spending as a share of GDP averaged just 18.1% in those years. In other words, the more the government spends, the harder it is to balance the budget.

"[N]o matter the rate on the income tax, tax receipts are rarely above 19.5% of GDP. The top individual income tax rate has been as high as 90% and as low as 28% in the past 60 years, but revenues have remained in a fairly narrow range. ...

"In 2011, government spending was 24.1% of GDP, and under President Obama’s budget proposal it is never going to fall below 23% of GDP. In other words, there is no tax regime in the history of the United States that has generated enough tax revenue as a share of GDP to balance the budget today, or in the future."

But the problem with this analysis, of course, is that Wesbury is comparing income tax "apples" with value added tax "oranges." The latter have never been on the menu here. They have been elsewhere, as he discusses, but not as stand alone systems. Like Christianity, a VAT isn't a failure. It just hasn't been tried.

While there is every reason to be as skeptical as Wesbury is that a VAT would replace the income tax and wouldn't instead be layered on top of it and contribute to an even more onerous spiral of taxation and spending, Wesbury leaves out of account the moral virtue of a VAT as a tax on consumption and a spur to saving and investment.

Historically conservatism has too rarely taken a stand critical of materialism, especially of the American kind where 70 percent of the economy has depended on consumption. From this perspective, taxing consumption is a much more commendable idea than taxing income, which we say we want to encourage. "If you want less of something, tax it." Is it any surprise that incomes are declining?

Instead what Wesbury is unintentionally demonstrating is that our civilization has reached the limits of the income tax regime instituted in 1913, just as the limitations of the tariff and excise regime for financing mass democracy had been reached at the end of the 19th century.

Perhaps the even more fundamental point is whether mass democracy itself is viable anymore, whether in fact "mass democracy" is not an oxymoron. After all, once the people vote themselves goodies picked from their fellows' pockets, it can't help but implode.

The rich will only put up just so long with this arrangement until they pick up their capital and leave. Indeed, one could argue that precisely that has been occurring for quite some time already. The exodus of manufacturing capacity is the form it has most obviously taken since the opening to China. Less well recognized is the rise of the international citizen who picks up his family and settles in places like Singapore or Macau as the case may be. Greece has imploded under similar circumstances, its richest citizens having long ago made arrangements to avoid the plundering which its tax system means.

Aristotle even longer ago understood the affinities between extreme democracy and tyranny. The rich do what they can, and exile themselves. The rest do what they must.

The Size of Obama's Base Puts Him at a Disadvantage to Romney

Scott Rasmussen provides some insight about the size of Obama's base, here:

"Economic concerns dominate the voters’ agenda, and here the numbers for the president are more troubling.

"Some 49 percent of the voters trust Romney more than Obama when it comes to the economy. Just 39 percent trust Obama more.

"Middle-income voters are especially likely to have more confidence in Romney. Obama does best among those who earn less than $20,000 a year and those who earn more than $100,000 annually. Especially troubling for the White House is the fact that 20 percent of Democrats trust Romney more than Obama on this core issue.

"On other issues, however, Romney and Obama are essentially even. This includes health care, taxes, national security and energy."

The under $20K and over $100K wage earners favoring Obama numbered 71 million in 2010, according to Social Security. That leaves 79 million in the in-between category which tends to favor Romney.

Hence Romney's (inelegant) pitch to the middle class during the early primary season:

“I’m in this race because I care about Americans,” Romney told CNN’s Soledad O’Brien this morning after his resounding victory in Florida on Tuesday. “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”

“I’m not concerned about the very rich, they’re doing just fine. I’m concerned about the very heart of the America, the 90, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling and I’ll continue to take that message across the nation.”

This statement notwithstanding, it's going to be a 52-48 type of fight, with the economy center stage right now.

Safely Out of the Way, John Tamny Decides to Attack Rick Santorum

In the special pleading voice of one for whom conservatism is only conservatism when it is libertarianism:

"Santorum’s candidacy should have horrified conservatives."

Here, in Forbes.

The problem with libertarianism as argued by Tamny ("as human beings our natural rights are infinite and extend right up to when our freedom of action hurts others") is that both reason and nature tell us that it is not true.

Reason tells us that rights which extend only up to a certain point cannot be infinite.

And Nature teaches us that rights are not infinite. Otherwise the right to life would not end with the grave.

Thus the basic insight of conservatism is metaphysical: life has its limits, a man's got to know his limitations, government which governs least governs best, life is a mixture, into every life a little rain must fall, if it's got tits or testicles it's going to cause you trouble, simul justus et peccator.

115 Million Working Age Americans Have No Unemployment Coverage

According to the figures posted by Mish, here. That's roughly 126 million with such coverage.

Why no coverage? Either because these 115 million people have no job, have jobs which do not require the employer to provide such coverage, or are self-employed. With 88 million "not in the labor force," the part-time and self-employed in this category would come to 27 million workers.

Obama keeps boasting that 30 million people without health insurance are going to get it under ObamaCare. By 2020. How are they going to survive until then without jobs to get it? 

Hope. Change. 2012.

Massive Numbers of Americans Go Without Benefit of Unemployment Coverage

Mish has the charts and details here:

"[W]e need to add 17,598,279 to the work force with unemployment benefits coverage just to get back to equivalent coverage of 2001! ...

"[T]he number of people eligible for benefits is actually 911,000 lower than in 2001. ... 

"This does not imply an improving labor market but rather clearly demonstrates the continued deterioration of [the] workforce in the USA and probable pressure on those working to provide even greater amounts of their income to those not working.

"This 52.2% is a very scary number. It says 47.8% of those of working age are either not working or they are self-employed with no benefits."

Sweden Cuts Taxes and Spending, Wipes out Deficit, Achieves Highest Growth in Europe

All thanks to a conservative government with a libertarian finance minister with an earring and a ponytail:

‘Look at Spain, Portugal or the UK, whose governments were arguing for large temporary stimulus,’ [Anders Borg] says. ‘Well, we can see that very little of the stimulus went to the economy. But they are stuck with the debt.’ Tax-cutting Sweden, by contrast, had the fastest growth in Europe last year, when it also celebrated the abolition of its deficit. The recovery started just in time for the 2010 Swedish election, in which the Conservatives were re-elected for the first time in history. ...

His main advice to [the UK] is: ‘Keep on dealing with the deficit, because deficits destroy everything else.’

[O]n Reinfeldt’s 45th birthday, Borg presented him with a graph showing Sweden’s tax-to-GDP ratio dipping under the 45 per cent mark for the first time in decades.

Read the whole story here at the UK Spectator.

"We’re the best horse in the glue factory"

So says Gary Shilling, quoted here.

But he understands the fundamental fact that there's really no there there:

"Consumers have a lot of reasons to save as opposed to spend. They need to rebuild their assets, save for retirement. A lot of reasons suggest that they should be saving to work down debt as opposed to going the other way, which they have done in recent months. So if consumers retrench, there is not really anything else in the U.S. economy that can hold things up.”

Maybe Obama Owes America The Results Of An MRI Of Joe Biden's Brain

“I am an internist by training. I believe that years ago Biden suffered a ruptured cerebral aneurysm. His life was saved by modern medicine. When aneurysms rupture they frequently lead to brain damage. Biden’s behavior suggests to me that he may have suffered frontal-lobe damage. The frontal lobe is sort of our censor — it allows us to inhibit our impulses so that we do not immediately utter everything we think. Biden behaves as if his cannot successfully carry out this function. An MRI might very well show residual damage to his frontal lobe which might explain his inability to control his mouth. Alternatively, he may just be a typical liberal idiot."

-- Peter Welch, MD, quoted here

Vice President Joe Biden's Idea of a Legal Scholar

"[O]ne of the leading legal scholars."

Two Years Later, Incompetent FBI Can't Return Acquitted Hutaree Property Yet Because It's Not Finished Doing The Inventory

The story is here, in The Detroit News:

Stone asked a federal judge to force the government to immediately return the wedding ring and other property, including the title to his vehicle. The FBI told Stone's lawyer, William Swor, the agency was still inventorying the property, which was seized in March 2010, according to the court filing.

These are the folks who want to run healthcare.

Yeah right. Into the ground.

Seven Days After Wisconsin Primary Loss, Santorum Packs It In

See the primary results to date here.

The New York Times here suggests that pressure was mounting from evangelicals for Santorum to quit in order to unite the party.

Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul remain in the race but cannot muster enough delegates in the remaining contests to deprive Romney of the nomination.

Folding like this before the contest in his home state of Pennsylvania suggests that Santorum knew he would suffer an embarrassing loss there. One can imagine not wanting to have to explain why Pennsylvania voters decided to reject him like they did in 2006 and have to quit the race in the wake of that anyway.

Breivik Ruled Not Insane by Court in Norway, But What About the AUF?

The UK Telegraph reports here:

"The experts' main conclusion is that the accused, Anders Behring Breivik, is not considered to have been psychotic at the time of the actions on July 22, 2011," the Oslo district court said in a statement which reopens the debate on whether the self-confessed killer can be sent to prison.

The real unanswered question in this case is not whether Breivik is or was nuts. He's confessed to his crime and should be punished.

No, the real question is whether the rabidly anti-Semitic AUF, which he attacked, and the rest of the Norwegian left, is nuts.

Why else would an isolated, low-population, prosperous and frozen country of the north go out of its way to befriend Muslims and the PLO, and send ships to invade the sovereign waters of a Mediterranean country hated by them thousands of miles away?

Romney's Uphill Battle to Presidency: Must Win Over 70 Percent of Toss Up States

Based on the map and analysis here.

Pretty grim.

This is the legacy of George W. Bush: unable to repudiate his past, unable to pick up the torch of the possible bright future signaled by the Tea Party revolution of November 2010.

They deserve what's coming to them, but the country doesn't.

Full-Time Jobs Still 6.6 Million Below 2007 Peak

See the data here. 

The level in the range of 115 million full-time jobs last prevailed in 2004-2005.

AIG, GM and Ally Financial Still Owe TARP Repayments to Feds

CNBC.com has the story here from Reuters:

The government pumped $68 billion into AIG . . . $50 billion in[to] GM . . . and $17 billion in[to] Ally Financial to save them from collapse during the 2007-2009 crisis. ...

Don't look at me. I just work here.

AIG has reduced its obligations to the U.S. government by more than 75 percent, while Treasury has recovered nearly half the TARP funds it put into GM and close to one-third of the money that went to Ally Financial.

America Punished With A Baby