Thursday, November 27, 2014

Noah Smith is a shill for corporate America

Noah Smith is supposed to be an economist. But judging by everything I've read by him, just like Stephen Moore, he is only a shill for corporate America.

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Tax Uncle Jim as a Sugar Daddy, not a Job Creator

Those Rich Uncles

VOX did a study and found that high marginal tax rates on the top 1% of earners can make society as a whole, much better off. (Follow the conversation here at Mark Thoma's blog in the comments section).

Sunday, November 23, 2014

New GOP Congress has Sights on Social Security

GOP vs. Social Security

Before the 2014 mid-term elections, Republicans were changing their rhetoric on Social Security benefits. But now with the new GOP Congress, further cuts to Social Security are expected and service could get worse. Witold Skwierczynski, president of AFGE’s Social Security Council, warned of a “coming tide of budget cuts.”

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Robert Reich: Follow the Money

Robert Reich (November 17, 2014)

The richest Americans hold more of the nation’s wealth than they have in almost a century. What do they spend it on? As you might expect, personal jets, giant yachts, works of art, and luxury penthouses. And also on politics.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Obama's Amnesty Program

(* Below is a short clip at YouTube from Saturday Night Live where Mitch McConnell warns President Obama about his planned executive action on immigration. But when Obama asks whether the GOP has a plan, McConnell insists that the Republicans will pass immigration reform.)

Can the GOP pass a better and more suitable immigration bill? They're talking about building bigger and better high-tech fences (but only along the southern border). How will this be paid for? By cutting food stamps for the poor?

Time Line when Income Inequality began to Rise

Annual U.S. Income Share of the Top 1 Percent

Time Line When Income Inequality began to Rise

  • In 1969 NASA put the first man on the Moon (maybe one of the government's last greatest accomplishments)
  • Lewis Franklin Powell Jr. wrote his famous "manifesto" in 1971
  • In 1977 the maximum estate and gift tax was 70% with an exemption of only $120,000
  • In 1978 the capital gains tax rate was near 40% and the corporate tax was 48%
  • Both manufacturing and union membership peaked in 1979
  • In 1988 the corporate tax was lowered to 34%
  • Kodak began offshoring jobs in 1989
  • Bill Clinton signed NAFTA into law in 1993
  • Bill Clinton lowered the capital gains tax rate from 28% to 20%
  • Bill Clinton deregulated the banks in 1999
  • The China PNTR trade agreement was signed by Bill Clinton in 2000 (the labor force began declining)
  • George W. Bush lowered the capital gains tax from 20% to 15% in 2003 (aka "The Bush Tax Cuts")
  • The housing and stock market crash happened in 2008 (the deregulated banks were bailed out by taxpayers)
  • In 2010 the maximum estate and gift tax was only 35% with a whopping exemption of $5,000,000.00
  • There were multiple record all-time highs in the stock markets beginning in 2013 to the present (no banker ever went to jail, they only got richer)
  • In the 2014 mid-term election the GOP took control of Congress and now wants to lower the corporate tax rate and eliminate the capital gains tax and the estate tax.
  • Ted Cruz, the architect of the government shutdown of 2013, will likely assume chairmanship of the Senate’s Space and Science subcommittee, which sets policy and funding caps for NASA via regular authorization bills (so expect more cuts to NASA, or cuts to food stamps to pay for NASA).

About inheritances --- From Mark Thoma's blog --- Excerpts from Irving Fisher's presidential address to the American Economic Association in 1919:

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Over-Educated or Lacking Skills?

(* Excerpts from VOX with notes.)

A sizeable fraction of workers hold occupations that don't require as much schooling as they have ... Around 38% of college graduates have higher education than the typical worker in their profession. Even if workers manage to transit to better jobs, they experience wage penalties similar to those after unemployment.

Americans had accumulated more than 1 trillion dollars in student loan debt as of 31 December, 2013 ... Young college graduates earned 62.5% more on average than high school graduates in 2013. However, researchers have started paying more attention to the fact that the huge average ‘college wage premium’ masks large differences in post-college earnings. In particular, a sizeable fraction of workers hold occupations that do not require as much schooling as they have acquired. Think, for example, of college-educated secretaries or school teachers with a PhD.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

On Labor, Trade, Skills, College, Taxes and Unemployment

(* Recent tid-bits I found today.)

OECD Secretary-General Angel GurrĂ­a: "As recent revelations have demonstrated, the frayed international tax system has long allowed multinationals to plan their way around paying corporate taxes. And bank secrecy has let individuals stash money undetected, and untaxed, in hidden corners of the world. Such practices erode the integrity of our tax systems, damage the capabilities of our governments, diminish economic growth and corrode the trust of our citizens who are the vast majority of taxpayers. The way tax is levied and spent is one of the most important levers to address social inequalities, create jobs, pay for education, infrastructure and other public services and encourage investment in innovation." (More)

Friday, November 14, 2014

Tea Party Seniors just Screwed Themselves

It wasn't just white working-class Americans who recently voted against their own best economic interests in the 2014 mid-term elections, but seniors did as well. According to ABC News, seniors had voted Republican by 56-43 percent, and there are many more of them than young voters. This group has grown by 7 percent, making seniors 24 percent of the electorate, up from 17 percent in 2012.

Climate Change Now? Or Jobs and Lower Electric Rates?

Obama outlined his anti-carbon policy to The San Francisco Chronicle in 2008: “Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

The State of Florida was predicted to lose 19 inches of coastline by the year 2050 (using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, one group mapped all areas along the continental U.S. coastline containing homes that lie within one to 10 feet from the water level at high tide).

Thursday, November 13, 2014

GOP Jobs Bill for 2015: Tax Cuts for the Rich

The GOP knows very well that the unemployed aren’t just lazy slackers who want to be on the government dole. From Glenn Beck’s website, The Blaze:

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Don't Expect Better Wages or Enough Jobs Soon

Or maybe ever again.

Yesterday Chris Matthews (on MSNBC) had on former Democratic congressman Harold Ford Jr. (a corporate shill, now banker) as a guest on his show to discuss a recent article at the New York Times, The Great Wage Slowdown, Looming Over Politics.

Dean Baker (at the Center for Economic and Policy Research) says in a post that the author of that New York Times article only cited two "experts", both Clinton administration officials with strong ties to Wall Street — and that their assurances includes no mix of the policies that are likely to lead to wage growth any time soon. But Baker says:

Monday, November 10, 2014

Is America the Greatest Country in the World?

Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels) hits the nail straight on the head in the opening minutes of HBO's series The Newsroom. He is asked by a college student a simple question during a campus debate: "What makes America the greatest country in the world".

Daniels initially goes the politically correct route, then at the last minute, he responds with an honest, bold, straight-forward answer that sums up a lot of the world's problems — problems that so many Americans are afraid to accept because we all want to believe that it is only our system that works.

But the evidence that is out there today is to the contrary. We used to be the world's "best of the best", but now we are just pretending. The first step to solving a problem is to admit there is one.

A very powerful 5 minute scene.

Why do White People Vote Against their Own Best Interests?

UPDATED November 22, 2014. From Mother Jones: Here's Why the White Working Class Hates Democrats

"There’s a coalition available to Democrats that knits together working class minorities and college-educated voters and slices heavily into the GOP’s margins among the white working class....The basis of the coalition isn’t a retreat from social progressivism, but making economic populism the party’s centerpiece."

Meaning, taking up causes like Elizabeth Warren's — things that matter, not just to the poor, but to the white working class as well — such as wages and Social Security. The article goes on to ask:

"Why does the white working class continue to loathe Democrats so badly? I think the answer is as old as the discussion itself: They hate welfare."

Then article goes on to give reasons why this perception is wrong: the white working class believing that the government is taking their hard-earned money to give to the undeserving poor, while doing very little for them. Then the article concludes with:

"The Democrats' problem with the white working class is far worse in the South than anywhere else."


(* Writing about anything that’s race-related can be like walking into a mine field. But this has been nagging me for a long time, so I decided to write about it.)

In 2008 the American people had spoken when they elected Barack Obama to be our 44th President, giving him a clear "mandate". But did the Republicans respect that mandate, or that the American people had spoken?

Saturday, November 8, 2014

How Eric Holder and JPMorgan Chase Betrayed America

This is from a story in Rolling Stone about a whistle-blower who tried to keep a big bank from committing massive fraud, and how the US Attorney General deliberately helped the statute of limitations run out for prosecuting these big banks for massive fraud.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

Will Republicans Finally Be Happy?

Take my poll: What will be the Republican’s very first bill introduced by their new Congress in 2015?

Just before the elections yesterday, the stock markets had already recently hit all-time record highs. So because Republican voters believe in the GOP's philosophy of "trickle down" economics, how many Republican voters will soon expect see big raises in their paychecks too? If not, would that be Obama's fault? And if so, why? Is Obama also the paymaster-and-chief for corporate America?

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The richest 85 now rake in $500,000 a minute!

Last January, just before the annual gathering of the global elites at the Swiss mountain resort of Davos, the anti-poverty group Oxfam released a shockling report that showed the world’s 85 richest billionaires hold as much wealth as 3.5 billion of humanity’s poorest half. That ungodly statistic quickly went globally viral. Now there's a new report...

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Uneasy Money: Pimping for Corporate Tax Breaks

* This was cross-posted at the Economic Populist as a rebuttal to "Why Are Corporations Hoarding all that Cash?" (posted at Uneasy Money on October 31, 2014)

The author of that article at Uneasy Money says one reason corporations are hoarding so much cash is because "cash now held overseas would be subject to the 35% corporate tax rate on either dividends or stock repurchases, imposing a huge penalty on returning idle cash to stockholders."

The author is making the old argument of "double taxation" — such as why some people believe that a CEO's stock-option grants (paid as "performance pay" in executive compensation packages) should not be taxed for capital gains —