And says the plan maintains progressivity in the tax code. In other words, it keeps the rich paying far more than their fair share.
Read about it, here.
Monday, October 15, 2012
Milliman Study Ups Ante On Unfunded Public Pensions By $443 Billion
The Pew Center on the States study discussed by The Associated Press here in June put unfunded public pension liabilities for 2010 at $757 billion.
Now in October Reuters reports here that the sum is more like $1.2 trillion according to a different study by Milliman actuaries.
Both stories refer to unrealistic earnings expectations for public pension funds, which sometimes are in the vicinity of 8 percent when actual experience in the past five years has been more like 3 percent.
With long-term interest rates continuing to fall well below 2 percent and the Fed explicitly suppressing interest rates as a matter of long-term policy, such expectations seem more outrageously optimistic than ever. If taxpayers don't wake up they'll be left holding the bag for the shortfall.
Not mentioned in the Reuters story is the other problem, almost as big, mentioned by AP:
"Pensions aren't the only retirement problem. States also faced a $627 billion shortfall in health care services for retirees. Essentially, for every $1 they'll eventually have to pay out in health care, states had set aside only 5 cents."
Promises to public sector workers at all levels far exceed what private sector workers can expect for themselves, and promise only to bankrupt municipalities and states.
It is high time we change the promises.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
The Depression In Real Disposable Income: We're Stuck At 2006 Level
The most recent observation of inflation-adjusted disposable personal income per capita shows that we're still at the level reached nearly six years ago.
The Depression In Charitable Giving Continued In 2011
As reported here:
For the second year in a row, charitable giving barely grew, rising just 0.9 percent after inflation in 2011, according to Tuesday's release of "Giving USA," the annual yearbook of American philanthropy, which found that donations to educational institutions also edged up by 0.9 percent.
The report estimated that the total donated was $298.4-billion. ...
"If we continue to grow at this rate, it will take more than a decade to get back to where we were in total giving in 2007," said Patrick Rooney, executive director of the Indiana University Center on Philanthropy, which compiles "Giving USA." ...
Total charitable giving last year was still 11 percent below what it was in 2007, before the effects of the recession were felt. Donations to charities dropped by a total of 13.4 percent in 2008 and 2009, "Giving USA" said as it released new estimates for contributions in those years.
Saturday, October 13, 2012
VP Joe Biden Grossly Underestimated The Drop In Housing Equity
My jaw almost hit the floor when I heard Vice President Biden in debate with Paul Ryan say this:
BIDEN: I don't know how long it will take. We can and we will get it [unemployment] under 6 percent. Let's look at -- let's take a look at the facts. Let's look at where we were when we came to office. The economy was in free fall. We had -- the great recession hit; 9 million people lost their job; $1.7 -- $1.6 trillion in wealth lost in equity in your homes, in retirement accounts for the middle class. We knew we had to act for the middle class. We immediately went out and rescued General Motors. We went ahead and made sure that we cut taxes for the middle class. And in addition to that, when that -- when that occurred, what did Romney do? Romney said, "No, let Detroit go bankrupt." We moved in and helped people refinance their homes. Governor Romney said, "No, let foreclosures hit the bottom."
The vice president isn't even close to appreciating the devastation endured by home owners in this country.
Here's a chart I posted previously taken from the most up-to-date figures from the Federal Reserve showing peak to trough owners' equity dropping a whopping $6.9 trillion, not $1.7 trillion.
The vice president not only doesn't grasp the scope of the losses experienced by the middle class, the Obama administration hasn't done one thing to put housing on a proper footing going "forward", the slogan of their campaign.
Instead, Obama & Co. spent the first two years ramming health care reform which we didn't want down our throats at the same time we were losing our homes.
If ever anyone should be FIRED! for incompetence and malfeasance, it's these guys. Otherwise get ready to spend your retirement years living in the back seat of your rescued Government Motors automobile.
Friday, October 12, 2012
VP Joe Biden Voted For Both Wars He Accused Ryan Of Putting On The Credit Card
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| lying sack of shit |
As seen here:
Sen. Biden voted for the Afghanistan resolution on Sept. 14, 2001 which authorized “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
And on Oct. 11, 2002, Biden voted for a resolution authorizing unilateral military action in Iraq, according to the Washington Post.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Uncertainty In NH, PA And WI Whittles Away At Obama At Real Clear Politics
See this map, here, where Obama's electoral college advantage now shrinks dramatically to 217 with New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin all becoming toss-ups instead of Obama wins.
As recently as October 2 this map showed Obama with 269 electoral college votes.
That means that in about one week Obama has lost 20 percent of his support.
As recently as October 2 this map showed Obama with 269 electoral college votes.
That means that in about one week Obama has lost 20 percent of his support.
Jim Cramer Is So Full Of It: Panic! No, Don't Panic!
Four years ago on a fateful Monday morning in early October Jim Cramer was telling us if we needed our money in five years we'd better get out NOW. The market tanked that day, even though TARP had been signed the Friday before. The market kept tanking for 3 more weeks, in part because of Cramer's own televised statement on October 6, 2008. The market stabilized after that for a while, and then the market tanked some more in March 2009, and then came roaring back because of Federal Reserve interventions to the present day. Long term investors who stayed all-in through all that until now aren't quite fully redeemed from five years ago, but from four years ago they are, and then some. I'd rather still own the same stocks at this level in excess of 1400 today than have listened to Jim Cramer after S&P 500 at 1100 on Friday October 3, 2008 when George W. Bush signed TARP into law and sold into a sea of frickin' fallin' knives! The market has rebounded 27 percent nominal since that time, and if you missed that Jim Cramer owns some of the blame.
And now Jim's telling us to be patient in October, the month of "the willies", and start buying in earnest in January? Fear motivated Jim Cramer four years ago. Today? Not so much.
OK Jim. Whatever.
Steve Malanga Thinks Romney Flips To Tax Deduction Caps To Avoid A Bloody Fight
Here, for Real Clear Markets:
Pressed to explain last week how he would lower tax rates without sacrificing revenues, Mitt Romney suggested that he might cap tax deductions at $17,000 per return. This was entirely different from his earlier suggestion that he'd eliminate some of our dizzying array of tax deductions in pursuit of a simpler and more economically efficient tax system with lower rates but fewer write-offs.
In his latest proposal for reform that started out as a way to simplify our tax system, Romney would make it more complex. The political virtue of this new approach is that it lets him preach lower rates without identifying specific deductions he'd eliminate, and therefore without incurring political opposition from interest groups that fight to protect those deductions. But it's a stretch to call this tax reform as it's generally understood.
You will read the rest of the article in vain looking for any discussion of the fact that when the much vaunted lower tax rates which came in the 1986 tax reform disappeared under Clinton, the deductions which went away in 1986 were no longer present to protect taxpayers from the full force of the those rate increases.
The presence of many deductions in the tax code represents the political success of the American hatred for taxes. They constitute rear guard actions, reactionary impulses if you will, against an otherwise intractable imposition of unconstitutional coercion and immoral inequality before the law. It is unjust to charge some taxpayers more than others.
Tax reform as we know it is a fool's errand for conservatives. Reagan, Kemp, Bushes I and II and now Romney are all to one degree or another really liberals with respect to the tax code, dancing around the fact that the income tax itself was the innovation in American history. They play with the details, protraying their proposals as conservative now and again, without ever coming to the root of the matter that the introduction of the income tax was a revolutionary impulse and was itself just one in a series of many radical changes foisted on the American people during the Progressive era.
When conservatives in our time begin to roll back those assaults, then we may legitimately speak of "reform". Until then, Romney's waffling between eliminating deductions or capping them is significant only to people without a long view of the matter.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
ObamaCare Is Already Destroying Full-Time Jobs
The Orlando Sentinel has the story here, about how Darden Restaurants, with 185,000 employees nationwide, is beginning to limit hours to under 30 per week in order to avoid the requirement to provide affordable care under ObamaCare:
Analysts say many other companies, including the White Castle hamburger chain, are considering employing fewer full-timers because of key features of the Affordable Care Act scheduled to go into effect in 2014. Under that law, large companies must provide affordable health insurance to employees working an average of at least 30 hours per week.
Pretty soon, we'll ALL be working TWO part-time jobs, all because of ObamaCare, and buying lousy health insurance through the exchanges instead of getting it at work.
Way to wreck everything, Brownie!
Government Uses ZIRP To Help Itself, And Screw You
Government interference with interest rates is punishing savers like never before, but allows the Feds to pay record low rates on the US Public Debt it racks up in obscene fashion. The zero interest rate policy effectively nullifies returns from savings which older investors rely on for income in retirement.
The official policy of our civilization is to abort the young before they ever see the light of day, and to impoverish the prudent out of existence.
Government has now suppressed interest rates to such an extent that the $16.2 trillion US Public Debt in fiscal 2012 effectively costs the Feds a paltry 2.2 percent to carry.
Meanwhile they continue to pile on ever larger sums owed, and never pay off even so much as one thin dime of it.
Mitt Romney is right to call this immoral:
“In my view, it’s not just bad economics; it is immoral for us to pass these burdens on to coming generations.”
Monday, October 8, 2012
Not Even Fox News Catches Romney's Debate Gaffe
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| The answer to EVERYTHING is 42. |
Romney still hasn't corrected himself. Why would he when he's soaring in the aftermath of the debate of a lifetime?
Obama didn't catch the mistake, of course. He's too stupid about economics, with or without his teleprompter.
Jim Lehrer didn't catch it either (no surprise there--I don't think he's ever caught anything, not even a fish. Well, maybe a cold.).
And no commentary I am aware of has caught the mistake made by Romney.
And it is a big one.
Fox here spends a whole column on it, focusing on Spain's perceived insult, and of course the Spaniards aren't going to point out the mistake, even if they knew what it was. Would you, especially if it destroyed your sudden new-found equality with the most powerful nation on earth?
This is really depressing. The failure to catch the mistake indicates how deep the ignorance of economics is in the world today.
Here's the mistake, once more, as quoted, but unnoted, by Fox:
"Spain spends 42 percent of their total economy on government. We're now spending 42 percent of our economy on government,” Romney said during the debate. “I don't want to go down the path to Spain."
The mistake? Romney meant to say 24 percent, not 42. If he really meant 42, what relevance does warning about going "down the path to Spain" contain if we're already there?
Historically America has spent around 18 percent of GDP on average on government. Obama has ramped that WAY UP . . . by 33 percent in just four short years. That is fundamentally alarming because the expenditure is abnormal . . . and all borrowed.
But if America were already spending 42 percent of its GDP on government, we'd already be Europe with all its sclerotic problems. Life here would be much different than it is, more like what Obama wants it to be. Maybe that's why Obama hasn't said anything about it. The reason we are still so strong as an economic force in the world is that we are relatively much more free of such a burden as Spain endures, and the rest of Europe endures for that matter.
It's something of the utmost importance which we should all be discussing right now, but that the guy who holds the most promise for keeping us from such a fate as Spain's has flubbed the opportunity to discuss it in such spectacular fashion makes me pretty pessimistic about the future.
If you don't understand the problem, you won't understand the solution.
h/t Nita
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