Monday, May 7, 2012
Greater Europe Has 8 of 10 Highest Taxed Incomes
Showing highest marginal income tax rate and income level at which it begins:
10. Ireland, 48.0 percent + social security 4 percent, $43,900
09. Finland, 49.2 percent, $91,000
08. England, 50.0 percent + social security 12 percent, $231,000
07. Japan, 40.0 percent + 10 percent municipal + 5 percent social security, $217,000
06. Belgium, 50.0 percent + social security 13 percent + municipal 11 percent, $46,900
05. Austria, 50.0 percent + social security 18 percent, $80,000
04. Netherlands, 52.0 percent, $74,500
03. Denmark, 55.4 percent, $76,000
02. Sweden, 56.6 percent + social security 7 percent, $81,000
01. Aruba (Netherlands), 58.95 percent, $165,000
The slideshow and commentary at CNBC.com is viewable here.
China Dries and Pulverizes Abortions For Stamina Pills
Barbarism is alive and well in the world.
So-called advanced societies like the United States abort over a million children a year, where its president views babies as a punishment. In China it's more like 13 million a year, and many of those end up in a dried and pulverized form in pills which are sold on the lucrative stamina market.
Nowhere do I read in the gruesome stories here and here that this amounts to cannibalism, but that's what it is, pure and simple, and America and the world relies on this barbaric country for most of its cheap manufactures.
Forward!
Progress!
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Aging American Leftist: Social Security is Unaffordable
One Janet Daley, formerly of Berkeley, California, purportedly also a former leftist, in the UK Telegraph here:
Relying on the free market to support a vast system of entitlements (whichever of the two you choose to make your first priority) is not sustainable. The market economy simply cannot afford the enormous cost of the social security programmes that are now regarded as politically untouchable in Europe and in the US – as both of their political elites are painfully discovering.
Mark Steyn: Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren
Alas, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind — “people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white, and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.
PM Cameron Talks Up Sodomy While UK Takes On Water
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| Cameron, looking the wrong direction |
Mr Cameron is a charismatic leader who has refreshed his party, and made it far more comfortable with the modern world. But his political strategy and positioning are failing to deliver. By making a totem of issues such as overseas aid and gay marriage, he has alienated core voters without winning new ones. The result of adhering to a Westminster definition of the centre ground, and trying to be all things to all people, is that the Conservative Party now appears to lack the message, the focus, and the strategy to win a majority. ...
What [the voters] care about – and what Mr Cameron must preoccupy himself with – are earthier issues: fixing the economy, cutting the cost of living, getting tough on crime and welfare dependency, restricting immigration, standing up to Europe on human rights.
Such a strategy is being dismissed as a “lurch to the Right”. But what it actually represents is a lurch towards the public, a fresh offering that appeals to hard-pressed families and striving workers – to those looking for a reason to vote Tory and thus far failing to find one.
Saturday, May 5, 2012
Shills for ObamaCare Adopt Orwell's Newspeak: Mandates are Liberty!
An astute commenter on "Yes, the Health-Care Mandate Is About Liberty" by Jonathan Cohn and David A. Strauss at Blooomberg.com here captured the Orwellian Newspeak with this pithy formulation:
Mandatory Arbitration: Big Business' Latest Weapon Against The People
Susan Antilla has all the details for Bloomberg, here:
The McMahon decision was damaging enough for the impact it had on individual brokerage customers, who tell their stories about fraud, misrepresentation and churning behind closed doors where the public -- including reporters -- isn’t welcome. ...
“It means that all sorts of scams against individuals, however large, are very unlikely to come to the attention of the media and the public,” says F. Paul Bland Jr., a senior attorney at the public-interest law firm Public Justice in Washington.
Wall Street may have been first to catch on to the benefits of mandatory arbitration, but Bland worries that the closed-door trials are spreading to industries from retailing to homebuilding. “The silence and secrecy that surrounds arbitration is extremely harmful to the country,” he says.
These days, employers -- Manpower Inc. and Nordstrom Inc. among them -- require new hires to give up their rights to court before a fresh-faced recruit can check in for orientation. And consumers can forget about opening a Netflix account, signing a mobile-phone contract, or putting a loved one into most big-name nursing homes unless they are willing to give up their rights to go to court. Buying a Starbucks gift card? You are agreeing to mandatory arbitration of any fraud or misrepresentation by the company. ...
In April 2011, the court dealt a new blow to consumers and employees in a case known as AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion. AT&T had pitched a deal to woo new mobile-phone customers by offering free phones, but it turned out the freebie came with a $30.22 bill for “taxes.” Vincent and Liza Concepcion tried to bring a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all the other consumers who took AT&T’s deal. But the court said that when the couple signed the customer agreement, they gave up their right not only to sue, but also to a class action even in arbitration.
In the year since the Concepcion decision, lower courts have trashed dozens of cases in which consumers or employees were trying to sue as a group. The National Labor Relations Board pushed back against the impact the Concepcion decision might have on employment class actions, ruling in January that it’s a violation of federal labor law to make workers give up the right to pursue group claims. That decision probably will be challenged in court.
About 25 percent of U.S. employees are covered by mandatory-arbitration clauses, says Alexander J.S. Colvin, an associate professor of labor relations and conflict resolution at Cornell University. He figures the number will grow as a result of the Concepcion case.
Friday, May 4, 2012
UK Guardian None Too Happy Sarkozy Played Muslim Card
In an editorial, here, about the one and only debate between Sarkozy and Hollande:
At one point Mr Sarkozy plumbed new depths in a campaign which had already turned xenophobic to recapture ground from Marine Le Pen. This was where he explained that he was not bothered about Canadian or Norwegian immigrants getting the vote, but Algerian, Malian and Nigerian ones – the Muslim ones of course: "Community tensions come from whom and they come from where?" This was the Sarkozy of old, the former interior minister of raw political ambition who earned the loathing of his colleagues by calling delinquents rabble, and promising to cleanse minority suburbs with a Kärcher high-pressure water hose.
Michigan Public Libraries Prefer Liberal Bill Press to Conservative Deneen Borelli
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| ranks 6637 at amazon |
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| available from 8 libraries |
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| ranks 1994 at amazon |
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| available from 2 libraries |
Irrational Exuberance in French Real Estate, as in USA, Began in Late 1990s
And a long, steady slide back down is in the cards.
So Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the UK Telegraph, here:
The price-income ratio was stable from the 1960s to the late 1990s, before exploding over the past 12 years as a perfect storm of demographics, state sweetners and cheap credit led to a 12-year blow-off.
There are parallels with Spain and America but Mr Sabatier said the French twist is a replay of the early 1930s when investors fled stocks after 1929 and rotated into "safe" property. Hence the paradox of rising prices during the Depression. The strange boom did not end until premier Pierre Laval cut rent ceilings in 1935, triggering a long slide.
"Laval's policy change was the catalyst. The same could happen now as austerity forces brutal measures," he said. An array of market props are eroding, including tax relief on some mortages and certain capital gains. ...
A housing slump would hammer the economy just as long-delayed austerity begins in earnest. Property makes up 65pc of French household wealth, compared with 57pc in Germany, 39pc in Japan and 27pc in the US.
Under Obama 5.4 Million New Americans Take SSDI, Doubling Total to 10.8 Million
For the full story by John Merline and all the data, go here at Investors.com.
Nothing is said about the cost of this exodus to dependency, which other stories have said is $200 billion annually, but Merline does mention that the funds designated for the purpose of disability benefits will run out in 2018, six years from now.
80 Percent of Unemployment Rate Decline Due to Persons Leaving Labor Force
“Some 80% of the reduction” in the unemployment rate from 10% hit in October 2009 to today’s 8.2% “has been from adults quitting the labor force,” says economist Peter Morici.
Morici adds the unemployment rate “rises to 14.5% if you factor back in those who’ve stopped looking for work but would re-enter if there were jobs, as well as part-time workers who would prefer full-time positions.” ...
The U.S. economy is creating jobs, but it is struggling, adding jobs at a rate of just 131,000 a month in 2011, which is not enough to reduce the unemployment rate.
Morici says the U.S. economy “must add 13 million jobs over the next three years -- 362,000 each month -- to bring unemployment down to 6%. GDP would have to increase at a 4% to 5% pace.”
So there you have it.
Since when does a nation’s labor force shrink during a recovery? It should not shrink, it should grow in a recovery.
Unemployment Falls to 8.1 Percent, 115K New Jobs
Consensus estimates had new jobs at 170K. Gee, they were off by only 55K this time.
Obama has been president for 39 full months, all of them with unemployment above 8 percent.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the anemic results for April 2012 here:
Nonfarm payroll employment rose by 115,000 in April, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in professional and business services, retail trade, and health care, but declined in transportation and warehousing.
Unemployment in the US in the post-war period seems to get progressively worse only since America jettisoned strong dollar policy under Richard Nixon in 1971, as this graphic from The Wall Street Journal plainly illustrates.
And Obama wants us to go FORWARD with that, which means unemployment will only get worse over the long haul with the likes of him at the helm.
If only forward meant the past, like 1948-1968.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
The Euro Area is Walking into Depression
"The euro area is walking, eyes wide open, into depression. Led by its periphery, which is already there."
How's Your Health Insurance? Mine's Up 25 Percent Since ObamaCare Passed
ObamaCare passed in March 2010, and since then my costs for health insurance for my family have gone up, and up again.
My first increase was effective in May of 2011, a 6.7 percent increase in the premium.
The second increase was effective just a few days ago on May 1, 2012, a whopping 17.2 percent rise in the cost.
Overall, my rates are up 25.1 percent for a plan that discounted a recent doctor-ordered 4 hour emergency room visit and follow-up care less than 23 percent.
Owie!
Between October 2006 and October 2011, US Real Estate is Down $7 Trillion
See here for the data.
The decline measured by the Federal Reserve's Z.1 Flow of Funds Release, B.100, shows the peak value of US real estate in October 2006 at $25 trillion. As of October 2011 the metric has fallen to $18.1 trillion.
Note the dramatic new uptrend in valuation which began in the late 1990s coincident with tax law changes permitting tax-free capital gains up to $500K in some circumstances to owners who occupied their homes for two years. Prior to that the gains were tax-free only once in a lifetime.
Call it housing commoditization.
Can you imagine returning to the trend line status quo ante? Hell to pay: at least another $2 trillion in declines coming.
Total Private Employment Today is at April 2000 Level
For the data, go here.
Peak private employment in America was reached in January 2008 under George W. Bush at 115.65 million. As of March 2012 the level is 4.85 million fewer, at 110.8 million.
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
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